Following on from last time, here’s another rather iconic film covering those final days of the Second World War, as we turn over to the other side of the world—from Isao Takahata, this one also remains a very standout piece in the repertoire of Japan’s seminal Studio Ghibli. It’s not the only animated feature from there to eschew the fantasy elements for which it’s most famous for, but it also remains their bleakest and starkest, released back in ’88 as a double feature with the far lighter fairy tale My Neighbor Totoro. It’s also considered a film you should watch only once—and that’s not without reason.
Japan has a somewhat complicated history of dealing with their legacy of WW2, touched on in some future Ghibli films—but that’s an issue sidestepped here with the very specific focus Grave of the Fireflies has. Like some other Japanese media, the opposing US forces are hardly even named, and seen only as distant bombers overhead. The politics through it all are alluded to, but we’ll get to that. No, here the effect is squarely on the individual, and it’s all executed in a way that perhaps only animation, at least at the time, ironically could.
Our focus is on siblings Seita and Setsuko, the former a young boy forced to take on more responsibility than his age may warrant with the disappearance of his father, and the latter his young sister he soon finds himself solely caring for. The story that follows them isn’t especially complicated on paper, but it hits hard from the first opening scenes—the most memorable is the firebombing of Kobe in 1945, leading to the death of their mother and soon a struggle merely to live.
Such obliteration of entire cities was a sad recurrence in this conflict, incepted by the Luftwaffe from the Spanish Civil War to the ravages of Dresden, Warsaw, and more—and here there’s nothing spared as fires slowly and mercilessly consume the wooden structures popular then. Soldiers commit seppuku, bodies are charred—and remember, this was to be a family feature back in 1988. Still, at the time, there was perhaps no more effective way of illustrating all of this without compromise than in animation—and on cels and with paints a relentlessly grim picture is achieved.
The rest is perhaps more low key, as Seita and Setsuko mostly aim to survive in the countryside—there’s moments of levity, as they admire the arising light shows of fireflies, hence the title. Even then, the effects of the militarism rampant in Imperial Japan are felt, as Seita defaults back to memories of propaganda naval shows even when taking in natural beauty. It’s not beaten over the viewer’s head, but more of this is felt—like at the end when he is shattered by the revelation of the total defeat of the Imperial Navy, something kept away from the citizenry at large until there was no more hiding it. Those more knowledgeable can even note that his father’s ship was one destroyed months before—such are the toll the lies of the pride and warmongering can be alongside bombs and shells too.
What keeps things going is Seita’s determination until near the end—for all the depressing events around them, that’s what keeps the viewer invested still even as the horrors of conflict grind on and on. The ending also shows a light of hope for the future—but it has to be seen by itself.
Some people claimed that Takahata aimed this at youth delinquents of the then contemporary era to show what their forefathers survived, but that’s debatable at best as far as I can see. He also claimed this to be not in fact an anti-war movie—but for all the uncompromising effects it has on those caught between it all, it might as well be. For that older generation, lied and misled by uniforms and more, it feels like a sampling of what they went through—and I know personally some who, even if on a different continent, tasted such things.
80 years on, and while the sheer scale of such destruction across the whole globe remains but history, much of what we see here remains very much a reality—some things have to be seen without compromise to be truly felt…
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