User:Sjones23/Grave of the Fireflies

Plot

In 1945, teenager Seita Yokokawa lives in Kobe, Japan with his younger sister Setsuko and his mother. On June 5, a group of American Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers launch an air raid on Kobe. Seita buries some supplies Setsuko escape Kobe's destruction with , their mother dies in the hospital. Seita and Setsuko later move in with a distant aunt, and Seita retrieves supplies he buried before the bombing and gives everything to his aunt, save for a tin of Sakuma drops. The aunt persuades Seita to sell his mother's silk kimono for rice as rations shrink and the number of refugees in the house grows. Using some of his mother's money in the bank, Seita buy supplies, but the aunt deems them unworthy of earning her food.

Leaving their aunt's home after excessive insults, Seita and Setsuko move into an abandoned bomb shelter. They release fireflies into the shelter for light. Later, Setsuko is horrified to find that the insects have died. Burying them in a grave, she asks why they and her mother had to die. With their rice rations getting low, Seita steals from farmers and loots homes during the later air raids. After Seita is sent to the officer realizes Seita is stealing due to hunger and releases him. When Setsuko falls ill, a doctor explains that she is suffering from malnutrition. After withdrawing the last of the money in their mother's bank account, Seita becomes distraught when he learns that Japan has surrendered, and that his father, an Imperial Japanese Navy captain, is most likely dead, as most of Japan's navy has been sunk. Seita returns to Setsuko with food, but finds her dying. She later dies as Seita finishes preparing the food. Seita cremates Setsuko's body and her stuffed doll in a straw casket. He carries her ashes in the candy tin along with his father's photograph.

On September 21, Seita succumbs to starvation at a Sannomiya train station surrounded by other malnourished people. Later, a local janitor sorts through Seita's possessions and finds the candy tin containing Setsuko's ashes. After the janitor throws the tin, Setsuko's spirit joins Seita's spirit and a cloud of fireflies. They board a ghostly train and look back at the events leading to Seita's death. Their spirits later arrive at their destination, healthy and happy. Surrounded by fireflies, they rest on a hilltop bench overlooking present-day Kobe.

Themes and analysis

The central theme of the film is post-war tragedy. According to Film4 critic Daniel Etherington, he felt that Grave of the Fireflies is an anti-war film due to the graphic and emotional depiction of the pernicious repercussions of war on a society, and the individuals therein. He said that the film focuses its attention almost entirely on the personal tragedies that war gives rise to, rather than seeking to glamorize it as a heroic struggle between competing ideologies. It emphasizes that war is society's failure to perform its most important duty to protect its own people.

Isao Takahata intended to convey an image of the brother and sister living a failed life due to isolation from society and invoke sympathy particularly in people in their teens and twenties, whom he felt needed to straighten up and respect their elders for the pain and suffering they had experienced after World War II.

Reception

Grave of the Fireflies received very positive reviews from film critics.

References

Sources

• Cavallaro, Dani (2006). The Animé Art of Hayao Miyazaki. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2369-9.
• Goldberg, Wendy (2009). Lunning, Frenchy (ed.). "Transcending the Victim's History: Takahata Isao's Grave of the Fireflies". Mechademia 4: War/Time. 4. University of Minnesota Press: 39–52. doi:10.1353/mec.0.0030. ISBN 978-0-8166-6749-9.
• Rosser, Michael (November 23, 2012). "Dresden to produce live action Grave of the Fireflies". Screen International. EMAP. Retrieved November 24, 2012.
• Takahata, Isao (1991). 映画を作りながら考えたこと [Things I Thought While Making Movies] (in Japanese). Tokuma Shoten. ISBN 978-4-19-554639-0.