Animated reality

Rating: Null/10 (7 September 2004)

To reiterate what another reviewer said, the film is haunting. From the opening frame to the last (especially the last), that is indeed the best way to describe this excellent film. I have no idea how to explain how an animated film about orphaned, starving children in war-time Japan can be watchable, but this one is. Probably the fact that it's animated has something to do with it (and consideration of that possibility brings to mind comparisons to Art Spiegelman's comic book Maus, which employs cartoon animals to depict people in a biographical account - Spiegelman's father's - of Nazi death camps). In any event, a live action film would not be possible (or very difficult) for, I think, somewhat obvious reasons (the most obvious being the fact that it would be very difficult to effect the appearance of malnourished children). However, the fact that it's animated does not make the story any less sobering (just as the cartoon animals in Maus didn't soften the brutal reality of the situation).