Grave of the Firefles: A different side of War

 

“Grave of the Fireflies” is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation. A devastating meditation on the human cost of war, this animated tale follows Seita (Tsutomu Tatsumi), a teenager charged with the care of his younger sister, Setsuko (Ayano Shiraishi), after an American firebombing during World War II separates the two children from their parents. Their tale of survival is as heartbreaking as it is true to life. The siblings rely completely on each other and struggle against all odds to stay together and stay alive.

“Grave of the Fireflies” (1988) is an animated film telling the story of two children from a port city of Japan, made homeless by the bombs. Seita is a young teenager, and his bloved sister Setsuko is about 5. Their father is serving in the navy, and their mother is a bomb victim; Seita kneels beside her body, covered with burns, in an emergency hospital. Their home, neighbors, schools are all gone. For a time, an aunt takes them in, but she’s cruel about the need to feed them, and eventually Seita finds a hillside bomb shelter cave where they can live. And the story of survival begins.

The film was directed by Isao Takahata, who is associated with the famous Ghibli Studio, source of the greatest Japanese animation. It is based on a true story. Novelist Akiyuki Nosaka lost his little sister during the war to malnutrition and blamed himself for her death. He wrote his famous novel "Hotaru no haka" ("A Grave of Fireflies") in 1967 to come to terms with the loss. 

The film is set largely in a small rural village, Grave of the Fireflies offers a deft abstraction of memory. The film’s source material is the novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka, remembrances of his sister’s death due to malnutrition after the Kobe firebombing in 1945.  It’s a story meant for children. And if Takahata’s framing device of Seita and Setsuko roaming the afterlife together, the script renders the scenes more warm and solemn than sentimental and religious.

As the bombing continues, food and resources diminish, so does the small community become less giving and forgiving to the siblings. A strident corrective to any war film where glory is won without any sense of overwhelming, genuine loss, Grave of the Fireflies depicts the physical and mental disintegration of Setsuko with convincing realism and a firm grasp on the importance of routine.

The daily tasks the siblings set up for themselves give the characters a sense of purpose and discovery, and the film benefits greatly from the balance struck between this understanding of normal, quotidian existence and how the aftermath of war disrupts that normality.

 

The film’s title comes from a scene late in the film that speaks directly to the human indifference that Takahata is obviously raging against. After the siblings’ first night in the cave, they find that the fireflies they caught have died and Setsuko buries them in a tiny hole. At that moment, Takahata cuts back to the mass grave that Setsuko and Seita’s mother was tossed in after the firebombing.

 

After That Day Setsuko Never Woke Up

On Reddit, one anime fan focused on the symbolism of fireflies: "The firefly becomes a haunting symbol of the film as it represents both the deadly fire bombs that wrecked the children's city but as well as an icon of hope and perseverance".