The most important animated film ever made?

Rating: 10/10 (6 September 2010)

I ordered this movie from Amazon expecting a shameless exploitation of the destruction and death wrought upon a defeated Japan near the end of World War II. What I did not expect, but indeed found, was a shockingly personal story with some grounding in real events, one that focused much less on the wider war being fought (and not at all on the politics behind the war, thankfully) than on the battle of a teenage boy to simply keep his young sister and himself alive.
Consider this the antidote to the typical American war film, particularly those set in the Pacific theater of World War II. This story is one that lays bare the real consequences of war in the modern age. Nobody is spared, not even the youngest children. The film's heavily sobering nature is, however, intermingled with scenes of a happy brother and sister, striving to live their lives together in the face of the worst possible occurrences. This is likely what makes the film all that more difficult to watch; it is beautifully portrayed through its backgrounds, simple musical score and detailed animation, which are alone enough to set this apart from the average anime feature.
I might have been flirting with pacifism before I watched this film, but it certainly pushed me over the cliff; one knows before seeing it that most of the casualties of war are the truly innocent, the civilians in their own homes, but such a fact is much easier to ignore when it's not visible in such a concrete portrayal.
To put it simply, Grave of the Fireflies ought to be shown to every American social studies student, as it strips the glory of war away to reveal the true suffering it brings, not through a callous and gory festival of horrors, but through the love of two siblings for each other in the face of their earthly demise. I can barely make it through this film without crying, any time I watch it. Politics and national enmities have no place here, just pure love.