Grave of the fireflies

Grave of The Fireflies (originally 火垂るの墓 Hotaru no Haka) is an anime film directed by Isao Takahata in 1988 and produced by Studio Ghibli. It is based on a book of the same name written by Akiyuki Nosaka in 1967. This movie is considered by the respected film critic Roger Ebert one of the best war-based films ever. It tells the story of two Japanese siblings after the bombing of Fukushima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the U.S., partially based on the experiences Nosaka lived during the Second World War. Grave of The Fireflies was released in the U.S. in the Chicago Film Festival of 1994 and in 2003 in Europe. It is considered, along with The Pianist of Roman Polanski and Schindler’s List of Steven Spielberg, one of the three best anti-war films of all History. The film was remade two times in live-action, one in 2005 and another one in 2008, both were Japanese adaptations.

Grave of The Fireflies starts in the train station of Sannomiya, the 21st of September of 1945, few days after the end of World War II. A 14-year-old boy, called Seita dies of starvation and encounters the spirit of his 4-year-old sister Setsuko, who died in similar conditions, and both remember what happened after the bombing. They tell their sad story of survival after the death of their mother due to the fire the bombs caused. Seita also has the hope to see his father return home from war, as he is a soldier of the Imperial Army of Japan.

The orphan siblings escape from the destroyed city and go live with their aunt in the countryside. Their aunt treats them with contempt and cruelty so both escape to live in an abandoned cave near the forest. Seita and Setsuko try to survive helping each other showing their love, but the little girl starts to get sick due to the lack of a proper nutrition and slowly dies. Seita survives some time after that but finally starves to death in the station, finishing the film how it started.

This masterpiece of anime films is beautiful and sad. It mixes extremely well-drawn beautiful images of landscapes where the siblings are joyful and happy with sad, emotional scenes of the suffering war causes, especially in the lives of children. The film plays with the concept of how fragile and ephemeral beauty and delight are. The name of the film comes from a scene in the middle of the story where Seita catches some fireflies for Setsuko in order to illuminate the dark cave where they sleep. Unfortunately, the bugs die in a short period of time. This is a metaphor of how the childhood of Seita and Setsuko has been destroyed. It also represents how the innocent happiness children should experiment during that period has gone to never come back. The film has got a flawless artistic design in each frame, full of colour and emotion and it has an adult approach. It is not easy to watch as it shows how innocent children suffer from war, starvation and neglect through friendly animated characters, telling a story where genuinely good things are destroyed by cruelty.

In addition, I would like to say that Akiyuki Nosaka had the opportunity to adapt his book several times, but he only accepted the animated version. This happened because, from his point of view, only this type of cinema could reflect the devastation Japan suffered in 1945 and because no children of our days could act as one of the children of his book. This shows us the power animation has in order to tell us stories or deliver us deep messages.