Grave of the Fireflies (MUST SEE!!!) [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Kam
07-18-2007, 01:10 PM
alrighty friends! here is my latest high high high high high reccomendation! this japanese cartoon won the Best Animated Feature at the 1994 Chicago International Children's Film Festival. it is amazing. if you liked Pan's Labyrinth and enjoy just a wonderful, beautifully told, heartbreaking story... this will kick you in the nuts and knock you over the head with a two by four. it is VERY powerful and just so beautifully told.

i do tend to have oddball recommendations, and this one might not hit with everyone, but... i absolutely loved this movie and it has jumped up to one of my alltime favs it was that beautiful and powerful.

so, in my normal method of non-review, the basic storyline is a brother and his very young sister are orphaned in world war two japan and try and make their way after losing everything in the bombings. the anime is more in the miyazaki style of drawing than the manga stuff but the visuals are also very beautiful. i watched the english dubbed version and it was still just... wow.

and here's the final recommendation on viewing, after experiencing this, go back and immediately watch the first 2 or 3 minutes again.... you'll see why.

K2

Gerald Cooperberg
07-20-2007, 05:20 PM
There's a reason why the animation is reminiscent of Miyazaki... Grave of the Fireflies was made by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki's partner and Studio Ghibli co-founder. I read once that this movie was originally released in Japan as a double-bill with Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. The studio evidently feared that Japanese audiences would find the subject matter of Grave of the Fireflies so difficult & depressing that they wanted to couple it with something light & popular to draw people into theaters. Supposedly the films were produced at the same time by the same team, with the grunt-work animators often not even sure which movie they were creating cells for.

It is a wonderful film and one of my absolute favorites. I feel that it also ranks among the greatest war (or anti-war) films. The special features on the DVD include a featurette with Roger Ebert that is fairly illuminating... he talks about his feelings about the picture and compares it with some of the work of Yazujiro Ozu.

-Coop