Joins a select few as a movie that has brought me tears

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2003)

If you've read some of the other reviews, you already know this is a very sad yet simple story, excellently portrayed, and involves the lives of two Japanese children during the firebombing of Tokyo. The movie is powerful, worth seeing, and one you will hesitate to watch a second time. That said, I'll continue to point out some of the details that made it such a poignant film for me. Some of this is spoiler material, so if you like your movies unspoilt, stop reading and go see it now.
S P O I L E R S
Part of the brilliance of this animation lies in how it can select and emphasize peculiar details of the childrens' world, which are just the sort of imagery that I can recall from my childhood. Take the scene where their mother calls Seita and Setsuko in from playing on the beach, and her umbrella blows away, for example. We linger for a moment watching how the umbrella hits the sand, and spins a bit. My childhood memories are like that.
Or the scene where they are bathing, and playing with the washcloth to make a big bubble underwater.
Or the transition between the falling blossoms and the pouring rice.
Or the maggots falling from the bandages, being trampled underfoot as their mother is carried away on a stretcher for cremation.
All these associative moments bring forth the deep subconscious, which is then exposed to the descent into starvation and sickness that comprises the second half of the film. There are so many sad moments, it is hard to isolate one or two. As Seita first starts looting empty homes during air raids to survive, I felt like I shared his despair. But perhaps the saddest moment of all comes when he's at the bank to withdraw money, and finds out that Japan has lost the war and his father is likely dead. Shock, betrayal, shattered illusions of his invincible country, emperor, father... and then the final tragedies commence, as all hope is lost.
Heartbreakingly relevant. If only our leaders would watch this film before sending forth each wave of bombers, our world would, perhaps, be a gentler place. There are five million people in Baghdad, 2.5 million of them under 15, and the use of everything from cruise missiles to nuclear weapons has been proposed "for their benefit." I think we can find another way.