This is easily one of the best animated movies I’ve ever seen. Period.
And honestly, it might be the saddest. I watched the original Japanese dub with subtitles. And I feel like I made the better choice. Though usually I’m not a dub vs sub purist. But I think the movie does a good job showing the devastation that can come from war. Especially the innocent people that get hurt in the process. And watching this brother and sister trying to survive the only way they know how is just so touching. But also so unbelievably sad.
I think it’s beautifully animated. Especially for the time.
If you haven’t seen it. It is definitely among the very best of Studio Ghibli’s works. I would even recommend it to non-anime fans. But make sure to bring some tissues.
This is one of those films I can only watch once, as great as it is. It’s just so heavy. I think the animated medium was ideal for the story because it adds to the sense of the story being told from a child’s perspective, it deepens the tone of the film’s already sad atmosphere.
It does a really good job of showing the devastation of firebombing, which isn’t something talked about as much as something like the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic attacks are often regarded as creating heretofore unseen levels of human devestation, but the firebombing by the allies in Tokyo resulted in close to the same level of civilian casualities as the bomb, or at least in the same ballpark.
This is the only movie I can think of that I would recommend watching, but I won’t watch with you. I don’t think I could take it a second time either.
Grave of the Fireflies is the second film I’ve ever watched that I don’t want to see again because of the emotional pain. The first was Threads.