Greatest animated film ever.

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2015)

I was a geeky teenager in the 90's who loved anime. The thing I liked about anime was that even though I was getting too old to watch cartoons, I could make the claim that in Japan cartoons were made for grown-ups and justify my love for them.
I would go to Tower Records and rent every single anime as they came out and then copy them with two VCR's (90's version of torrenting) and this was released by Central Park Media (one of the three American companies releasing anime back then) so like all the others I rented and copied it. But oh my God this blew all the other stuff I was watching out of the water. IT made me cry, it made me feel. I HAD to show my parents this film to justify my love of anime.
And I did, and my parents who really don't like cartoons both cried. Bawled. My dad says he still remembers it and that it haunted him.
Anyways, fast forward to the present day, I am now an adult approaching my 40's, i have a family of my own, I've outgrown anime (let's be honest the majority of it is garbage) but my dad reminded me about this film, so I decided to watch it again all these years later to see if it would still hold up.
I cried even more. Once you become a parent, as many other reviewers have said here, you put your loved ones faces on the animated characters and it makes it even more powerful. I don't know if this could have been even more powerful or more heart-wrenching if it was live action. You can watch it and because it's animated you can project onto the animated characters and setting even easier than if it was live-action. You can see war torn Kobe as your hometown, you can see it as Iraq, you can see it as Afghanistan, it makes the film all the more powerful.
Being a dad now I watch a lot of cartoons, and all the Disney ones, and Pixar etc with my own little Setsuko...this film blows them all out of the water. This is indeed, the greatest animated film of all time if for nothing else than the fact that it is able to transcend the genre and shows the full unfiltered power of what the media is capable of showing.
If you are a parent, or have little ones in your life this film will hit you harder, but even as a teenager it hit me hard. I think it shaped my views on war, and had a very profound affect on me. I don't understand the people who say they wouldn't watch this again because there is something strangely cathartic and beautiful about being able to bawl your eyes out. I guess people are afraid of their own vulnerability but I have to say, I enjoyed getting back in touch with that empathetic part of myself. It's strangely relaxing. Highly recommended.