I read that the author was expecting people to be angry at the boy, and was surprised when they were more pitying than anything. It’s definitely the boy’s fault, but that really adds to the horror for me; he was guilty of not wanting to be around someone who would treat them like shit (but would have saved their lives), and that’s a reasonable mistake for a 12-year old to make. It’s just that in this fucked up climate, that mistake leads to two long, painful, lingering deaths.
Since this was based on a true story, and in it, the author (boy) survives, you really have to wonder at how much of a weight he’s carried throughout the years. In the fictionalized version, his character dies, and it almost seems to me that he wished he had died as well. It’s hard to see that changing, and I hope that getting the story out there took at least some of it off his shoulders. He wasn’t the ideal brother (apparently in real life, he would eat first, and THEN give to his sister), but he’s probably suffered more than enough.
It’s probably intentional. The film would be unbearable structured chronologically, and the sheer sadness the viewer would feel might just overwhelm the other aspects that they are trying to get across. The inevitability may be part of the point; in a war such as this one, we know that there will be casualties, so we start with one particular one, and then go back to see how he got there. The implication is that all the other bodies lying there have their own tragic stories, ones we’ll never get to see. But I like how, in the beginning, the one whose end we’re looking at is just a random stranger to us. Wars are full of strangers, whether they’re dying by your side or dying across the battlefield. I think it’s an effective set-up.
I agree. Actually, I think the true story that you related:
is actually a lot sadder then the movie version. I can imagine that I would’ve been immature enough as a child to make some of the same bad choices that the protagonist makes, but of course I grew up in an environment far more forgiving of mistakes then orphans in WWII Japan do. The guilt of not being able to save ones sister because one simply lacked the necessary maturity and knowledge of the world at that age would be a tough burden to live with.
GotF was a pretty sad movie. I mean, I’ve definitely seen sadder, but then I’ve been known to go out of my way to find thoroughly depressing movies on occasion. I really don’t get the people who are saying they “don’t have the courage” to watch it - or to watch it a second time. It’s just a movie, guys! A cartoon, even!
It may be considered anime, but I don’t think of it as such, since anime, as a rule, is downright awful and GotF was fantastic.
Moderator note: Yeah, we’re not so picky about reviving old threads in Cafe Society as elsewhere. Just a reminder, though: if you’re responding to something someone said earlier, check the date of their post. They may no longer be around to reply to your response.
Also, I started to go through and add spoiler tags, but then I realized that the ending of the movie is known early on, it’s just the working out of how it happens. Hence, I stopped trying to spoiler tag and just changed the thread title.
:rolleyes:
No, it’s not “considered” anime, it IS anime: It’s animation, created in Japan, by Japanese artists and writers, in one of the more realistic forms of the typical styles of modern Japanese comics art.
That’s like saying you don’t consider (All in the Family/Roots/Twilight Zone/Hill St. Blues/whatever) to have been Network TV because as a rule, Network TV is awful.
The great thing about anime is that it’s not limited in tone or subject, even though people might think so if they’ve only been exposed to some of the moronic hyperkinetic kiddy fare. Japanese filmmakers see no reason not to use animation to tell a serious story.
It’s easy to put a lot of sad elements in a movie, but Grave of the Fireflies went much deeper; everything rang true (at least to my half-educated American eyes; I can’t imagine what it’s like for a Japanese who remembers the post-war period). The last scene really gets to me:as the ghosts of the brother and sister look at the vast, busy, brightly-lit nighttime Tokyo of the modern world; a new Japan but with a lot of ghosts.
I highly recommend Millennium Actress, another movie using anime to show what would have cost a fortune to film live-action.
There’s an aphorism from SF that you might want to consider, it’s known as Sturgeon’s Law, and it says, “90% of everything is shit.”
You could make the same argument about GotF that it’s not a movie about children, since movies about children are downright awful. Or that it’s not a war movie, since war movies are downright awful. Or any other category that you don’t care to like.
It doesn’t change that it remains an example of all those categories.
I’ll admit I find your statement annoying because I have had to try to convince people that animation, and anime in particular, can be used to tell stories as interesting, complex and mature as any other medium. And if you’re going to redefine something you like as not being anime, because you liked it, it smacks of changing the definitions just so you wouldn’t have to admit the point. Which is more than a little dishonest, IMNSHO.
Another non-anime-like anime, by the same director (Satoshi Kon), that I would recommend is Tokyo Godfathers. It could have been done in live action, though a couple of scenes (An ambulance crashing into a convenience store, and a character danging from the side of a building with a baby in his/her arms) would just have looked like stunts in live action. Although it’s about a trio of homeless people trying to make it through a Tokyo winter, with an abandoned baby, it’s very upbeat.
I’ll just retract that statement then, since I can think of few things more excruciating than getting into an argument about anime. I will say that what I liked about it, and what sets it apart from all of the anime that enthusiasts have talked me into watching, and all of the anime I’ve seen descriptions of, is that it’s more down-to-earth, more believable. I dislike most anime in the same way that I dislike most American films that fall under the science fiction and fantasy genres.
It’s a bit different when your eating first actually denies someone else a full share, in a time of famine. It’s like, you may always be used to saying please and thank you and so forth, but if you’re making an emergency call off of your spare change and might get cut off at any second, you’re gonna dispense with the niceties.
Seconded, it’s a wonderful bittersweet movie, scary and funny at turns. The only drawback to Tokyo Godfathers is that they only subtitle the Japanese - there’s a fair bit of Spanish in it that isn’t subtitled. I understood it fine, but I took 4 1/2 years of Spanish in high school/college.
That’s an interesting issue. Of course, the average member of the original audience in Japan would know no Spanish at all, and the Spanish is not subtitled for them – so some might think it’s some odd dialect of English that’s being spoken there. And of course, the Japanese teenage girl Miyuki, who does most of the interaction with the Spanish-speakers, knows no Spanish, and tries to talk to them with the English she’s learnt at school. So, not knowing any Spanish isn’t a great hindrance to undertanding what’s going on.
My recollection of the movie was just that he was out trying to gather food, and was so hungry that he ended up eating most of it himself. I remember watching it and wanting to think that I wouldn’t do that, but I’m just not convinced.
Offtopic, and not to pick on the early posters ('specially since it’s been a year), but I have a hard time respecting the opinions of anyone who “won’t” watch anime. I tried so hard to get my Dad to go see Princess Mononoke/Mononoke Hime when it came out in the local artsy-cinema years back, and he just wouldn’t. Then Ebert gave it great reviews, he said he wished he’d seen it, and I had to go :rolleyes: I told you that! :smack:
Other really good movies that have been mentioned; Millennium Actress, and yes pretty much anything by Studio Ghibli generally. I’ll add Wings of Honneamise (still the most thrilling movie climax I’ve seen), and Fushigi Yuugi, which was the only soap-opera-style TV series I ever enjoyed watching, rather than ran screaming from. Yes I know it’s shoujo… leave me alone.
I do understand neutron star’s reluctance; the large majority of self-described anime fans seem to be willing to watch any damn thing so long as it’s anime, which is ludicrously far in the opposite direction. (Not liking sci-fi and fantasy certainly doesn’t help things either)
I watched Grave of The Fireflies after hearing about it here. Someone was trying to remember what turned out to be the Valse Triste segment of the animated film Allegro Non Troppo. That piece being, IMO, the single saddest piece of film ever, made others mention similar ones, including Grave of The Fireflies.
I also don’t think its as devastatingly sad as some. Overall yes, but no one scene in it moved me to tears like say Schindler’s List, or the animated short I mentioned above (warning: click on it at your own risk, it will haunt you forever… )
It’s amazing how resilient stereotypes can be. By saving us from challenging our minds, they are as addictive as not exercising, and about as good for us as well.
)