This movie was on TCM the other night. And…whoa. I do not like anime. Most of it looks cheesy and bores me. The rest of it reminds me that there is a thriving market for anime porn. But this movie, Grave of the Fireflies, was disturbing and touching and scary and wonderful and sooooooooo sad. Has anyone else seen it? It’s not new—it came out in the 80’s. I saw and now I can’t stop thinking about it. It should be required viewing for anyone contemplated a war. Can I get an amen (insert sly aetheist irony here)? Or at least a discussion of it?
This one often comes up in the “saddest movies” and “saddest scenes” threads that we have here. I first saw it in March of this year and it’s seriously the first movie to make me cry like a baby. I loved it.
I can’t get any friends to watch it as they unwaveringly hate anime. Their loss, it’s one of maybe three of four films to elicit a strong emotional reaction from me (i.e. crying like a four year old girl).
I was in the Asian grocery store and I saw they had tins of hard candy just like in Grave of the Fireflies. I about burst into tears. No joke. Really heartbreaking movie.
I love this movie. I remember Ebert saying (writing?) that it was a good thing that this story was told in anime, because it would be too sad to watch with live action.
It was too sad for anime too. I had to stop watching. The rest of the Studio Ghibli fare has more… uplifting tendencies to balance it out.
Many of Studio Ghibili’s films pack an emotional punch, but this one is by far the strongest. Even though Hayao Miyazaki wasn’t directly involved in this one (to the best of my knowledge), it shares a lot of the style and attention to detail of his works.
If you’re interested in anime that doesn’t fall into the ‘ultra-megatron-battlebot’ or ‘tentacle porn’ genres, Studio Ghibili has a lot of good films to offer.
Cowboy Bebop.
-FrL-
In 2005, they did make a live action TV movie in Japan. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t vouch for quality.
I started crying about 10 minutes into that movie and pretty much didn’t stop crying until it was over.
I was glad I saw it, but I don’t think I could ever watch it again. I don’t think any film I’ve ever seen has had that effect on me.
Can someone spoil it here for me, please? I’m curious as to how an anime can make one cry but I’m such a wuss to watch it myself. Just describe the scenes that tugged at your heartstrings. It may not be so sad when read, I think. Thanks.
Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, Grave of the Fireflies is the poignant tale of the relationship between two orphaned children, Seita ( 清太 ) and his younger sister Setsuko ( 節子 ). The children lose their mother in the firebombing of Kobe, and their father in service to the Imperial Japanese Navy, and as a result they are forced to try to survive amidst widespread famine and the callous indifference of their countrymen (some of whom are their own extended family members). Ultimately both children die of starvation, and the graphic nature of their suffering and death is uniquely harrowing in the annals of anime.
[RIGHT]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_fireflies[/RIGHT]
It’s about two war orphans who starve to death. One of the saddest scenes is right at the beginning. A teenaged boy dies in a train station as pedestrians walk by. When the guards find his body he’s carrying a candy tin filled with ashes. The guards throw the tin out in a field and when it comes open and the ashes scatter the ghost of the boy’s little sister appears. She meets the ghost of her brother and you see them both as they looked before their lives fell apart when they were happy and loved. The rest of the movie is a flashback that shows how they came to die.
Another overlooked Ghibli masterpiece is a little movie called Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba). It’s about a young girl learning to listen to her own inner voice and become a writer. It’s not the emotional rollercoast that Grave of the Fireflies is, but it’s powerful and touching.
Also, I meant to say that my former boss loaned me her copy of the film last year and I really liked it despite not being a fan of anime overall or even of the other Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen. It’s a fantastic movie.
It’s one of my favorite films of all time.
It’s a great, sad movie. I think it gets a little overhyped, but it is really great; I love sad endings. I’ve never gotten anyone to watch it with me, though. So I always have to cry alone. 
I’ve never seen it. I’m afraid to see it. Given what I’ve heard. That it’s the most heartbreaking movie ever made.
But I just finished All Quiet on the Western Front, something else all who consider war should be exposed to.
Thanks to TCM, I now have DVDs of both of these movies. Uh. Stonishing. Both movies should be required viewing for any human being.
This is one of those films I have put on my “someday” list…meaning, probably never.
I still have nightmares from the first time I saw Bambi…and I was probably 5 years old when I saw it (my parents thought they were taking us to a happy little Disney film…needless to say, kids crying like banshees was not what they expected.)
Still…maybe I will work up the courage to see it, though - well - I can’t think of any time I have ever said, “Hey, I want to watch a really depressing film that will make me cry.”
So…back on my “someday” list it goes…
Well the REALLY sad scene is where the little girl digs a little grave for the hundreds of dead fireflies that magically lit their cave the night before, saying how, hopefully, someone did the same thing for their mommy (who, like the fireflies, was shoveled into a mass grave).