Review: Grave Of The Fireflies

We watched Grave of the Fireflies tonight, one of the outside-view DVDs for my Harvard Summer School class on Japanese and Chinese film. I haven't been so disturbed by an animated film since seeing Watership Down when I was a kid.

Grave of the Fireflies is a Japanese story about a boy and his young sister set in the closing days of World War II. The suffering of civilians during this conflict, especially German and Japanese civilians, is something that's glossed over in the war films and documentaries I've seen in the past. Grave of the Fireflies does not shrink from showing the suffering of ordinary Japanese during this period -- firestorms, bombs, strafing, injury, hunger, rationed food and housing, familial strains, propaganda, and the other desperate qualities of that period are depicted in anime style. There are many, many touching moments as well, as the relationship between the boy and the girl comes across as authentically loving and protective.

The story could have been told with film and special effects, but not with the same degree of emotional intensity. The fact that the little girl, Setsuko, is just a little younger than my daughter made an especially difficult connection in my mind. I have to admit: I cried at the end.