Review by Josh

Warning: This review contains unmarked spoilers.

For years, I’ve been reading reviews on Grave of the Fireflies and listening to people talk about how depressingly well this movie is. How it paved a path through for the anime industry to go mainstream. I had always been a bit skeptic since it was only 88 minutes long. How could the writers possibly pack enough character development in such a short movie that was already bound to have long useless flashbacks that attempt to be dark and depressive to draw the viewer in? Grabbing a box of tissues just in case, I finally sat down to watch this movie and get my answers.

I’ll tell you right now, I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was all the hype that let me down. No, I’ve always looked at things from a neutral view, and I was still greatly disappointed. The story and plot behind this anime had great potential that frankly went to waste. A tragic movie needs to make the viewers feel for the characters, Grave of the Fireflies sadly did not have enough character development to do so. It relied too much on the viewer’s imagination and the film’s setting (WWII).

When Seita and Setsuko’s house was destroyed and their city was engulfed in fire, they were still in good spirits. When Seita learned that his mother died, he was virtually unaffected by it. Nobody does that good of a job hiding their emotions. I did not feel like Seita and Setsuko were depressed and trying to stay upbeat about everything for the sake of each other, this is to blame on the voice acting. When the most innocent character dies, I felt sad for a moment and then anger took over, knowing that the death could have easily been prevented. If the filmmakers wanted to create a powerful and moving story, they shouldn’t have provided many suitable ways for the children to survive. It was the character’s choice to suffer, they had multiple options. I do not have pity for those who do not value their life, and especially not for someone that doesn’t value the life of his four year old sister.

When their house is destroyed and their mother dies, Seita and Setsuko must move in with their distant aunt, whom quickly becomes testy and annoyed with the children. Many will call her a ‘bitch,’ but she had every right to be increasingly annoyed with the spoiled children. They didn’t thank her or even apologize for their burden. You can’t blame Setsuko, she was just too young to comprehend everything; Seita on the other hand was old enough to help out around town or even do some chores for his aunt. He did not. Sure he wanted to protect his sister and stay with her, but his ignorance just further destroyed his already broken family.

When the children got tired of living with their generous aunt, they moved out and into an unused bomb shelter. Although this worked out at first, it ended in tragedy. They ran out of food and Seita was forced to become a thief, easily letting it go to his head, as we see with his overly sadistic laugh after stealing kimonos that ended up being worthless anyway. Due to the lack of food and proper care, Setsuko became extremely sick from malnutrition. I’d say that the main sign Seita should have heeded was when his sister lost her stomach and had multiple inches of visible ribs poking through her swollen skin. Did he run back to his aunt, drop on his knees, and beg for forgiveness, trying to save his sister’s life? No. Setsuko suffered a painful death that could have been prevented. Seita’s pride killed his little sister. Yet in the end, he still couldn’t admit to himself that he was wrong, and will soon join his family in death.

This anime aimed for depression but left me filled with rage. Rage toward a character that I should be feeling sorry for. Many will say that this movie is a stepping stone for anime, animating real life. That is true, but it stops there. Grave of the Fireflies didn’t even come close to mainstreaming anime. Filled with “please feel sorry for these children” flashbacks, gloomy airbrushing (attempting to make the viewer depressed), bad voice acting (don’t even give the English audio a chance), the story of two children that suffered despite having help readily available for them, and lack of music (silence does not provoke the imagination into depression); this anime would be far below average if it did not have beautiful animation. If this review were on the movie alone, it’d be hard to give it more than a subpar rating, but let’s look at the DVD features.

The Grave of the Fireflies [Collector’s Addition] DVD offers perfectly remastered animation and audio. English and Japanese (w/subtitles) tracks, both Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, and Widescreen Anamorphic (1.85:1). The extras on the main disc include interactive menus, minimal lag time, and its best feature: Complete set of Storyboards with audio from the movie. There are a couple of reported glitches though; when I switched from Japanese to English audio, the DVD skipped the first scene and went straight to the second. Although nothing big, it was still annoying. Others have reported some random scene skipping, but it seems to be pretty rare. There is also a bonus disk which includes filmmaker and critic interviews, cast and crew credits, video restoration documentary, original theatre trailer, an art gallery, and historical commentary.

Negatives: Horrible character development, bad writing, low frames-per-second, wasted potential.
Positives: Beautiful animation (excluding fire), enough extra features to put you to sleep.