Sorry, but I didn't like it...

Rating: 5/10 (16 June 2011)

Alright, so before everyone starts flaming and wishing a pox on me and my progeny, hear me out...
I just rented Grave of the Fireflies on DVD from Netflix and watched it for the first time tonight. Let me preface things by saying I love Miyazaki movies and some other anime - Steamboy, etc. And also that I understand that quite a bit of anime is about the emotional impact or inner conflict more than cohesion.
Throughout the film, we see a lot of legitimate drama with the mother dying of severe burns and injury, with some implied lack of sanitation and proper medical facilities being to blame, and later the father is revealed to be dead at sea, which does a good job setting the tone of death and heartbreak that will be felt throughout the movie.
Arguably the most major thread (that's supposed to have the greatest impact) in the movie was the hardship brought on by war and the eventual tragedy of Setsuko slowly dying from hunger and malnutrition - and then as we see in the beginning, Seita losing his grip on sanity and eventually life.
But where I start having major problems with the story to the point of ruining the drama entirely is when Setsuko and Seita leave their extended family's home to live on their own. We see their hardship and struggle getting enough to eat to the point that Seita begins stealing food and goods to trade for food... when we JUST heard earlier in story that they have enough money in the bank to "live off of".
So, the film had some very interesting scenes, it was very artsy and thought provoking, but the real tragedy seemed to me to be Seita forgetting he had assets at hand with which to prevent Setsuko from being hungry in the first place - even if they would have eventually been exhausted.
So it's basic logic is what holds the drama in this film back more than anything else. There's no due tragedy. It's tragic, yes, but not in the same way that say a film like "Life is Beautiful" is tragic - all the hardship in that film was undue, unearned, and the characters did everything reasonable in their power to avoid it, which is where the drama comes from.
TL;DR I am daring to disagree with the anime fan community, that a movie MUST be great because a little girl gets sick and dies when it would have had some weight and meaning if it weren't for the abundant and obvious relief available to the characters in the last arc of the film.
Am I wrong?