The best animation I have seen

Rating: Null/10 (25 January 1999)

Hotaru no Haka, Grave of the Fireflies, is one of those films that really makes one weep. Even watching it for the second time, consecutively, and after reading the script, and knowing pretty much everything that happens. This is probably the best done film about war that I have ever seen, the only one that moved me (and I've seen lots of Holocaust films, POW films, etc).
The music is well done, not spectacular, and it reinforces the animation well, particularly in the beautiful scenes with the fireflies. The animation is not technically sophisticated, by which I mean, it does not use computer graphics (I think) or any of the jazzy animation techniques that Disney favours, but the motions used, the poses, angles, and actions--the true meat of the animation, that is--are very difficult to draw, let alone animate.
All in all, I would say that this is the best animated film I have ever seen, and should stand as a benchmark by which all other animation should be measured. That in Japan, they produce films like this, with animation, while we blunder about with "The Black Cauldron" or "The Little Mermaid" or whatever was Disney's 1988 film, really brings home the shallowness of the modern American developments on the art of animation.