Harsh to watch

Rating: 7/10 (3 March 2011)

This is one of those movies which I only heard of (and got to see) after looking at IMDb's recommendations. That is something I always do: to see the recommendations on the IMDb page of the films that I like. Then I do research on them and decide if they interest me or not.
This anime Japanese film is probably better than the average anime stuff that plagues TV nowadays. At least the anime here is less crude and the story is sentimental. Nevertheless, this movie is harsh, with a lot of heavy stuff for an animated motion picture: starvation, war, dropped firebombs, burned corpses/human remains (which is very gruesome), badly injured people, two kids who lose their mother, dead fireflies, the little girl who suffers from malnutrition (it's horrible to see her physical condition like that) and is cremated by her older brother after dying...
Basically, this movie tells the tale of two poor children (the older brother Seita and his younger sister Setsuko) and their struggle for survival during the World War II in Japan. The film's language is Japanese either.
Like animation historian Ernest Rister says, this is one of - if not the most - profoundly human animated film of all time.