Heart-wrenching and educational

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2000)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** In a time when practically everyone is worried about the education of Americans youth, it is a wonderful refresher that a movie of such caliber exists, so much in the fact that it should be shown in history classes nationwide. "Hotaru no Haka", a longtime favourite novel in Japan, transfers beautifully to film, following two young lives' survivals and demise in Kobe during late-WWII: a 13 year-old boy Seita, and his 3 year-old sister Setsuko.

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After a violent fire-bombing by Allied troops, Seita does everything in his power to hide the status of their mother's condition from the delicate Setsuko. They travel to a distant aunt's home, who is kind to them at first, but soon becomes verbally abusive and begins hoarding the food for herself, her daughter, and a lodger, barely giving any to the growing children. She constantly badgers Sieta, telling him to go to school, get a job, or, even more absurd, to help the men during the air raids, although she will possibly not care for Setsuko if Sieta dies during a raid. Finally, Sieta has enough of his sharp-tongued aunt and takes himself and his sister to a live in an abandoned shelter near a lake. But soon, money becomes thin, food is scarce, and Setsuko grows weaker and weaker.
(End Spoiler info)
I bought this on DVD the other night, along with all my other Powerpuff Girls fluff. The DVD contains background information about the time period and some historical notes. My boyfriend, who is big on German war movies and Kurosawa epics, read the info and just sighed "Oh, no, Kobe." He knew exactly what he was in for and by the end of the film, was grasping me for dear life. I find this WWII anime to be more emotionally stirring than "Barefoot Gen", which covers Hiroshima and is much more graphic violence-wise. The story is also semi-autobiographical, the author's way of coming to terms to with what happened to him and his family all those years ago. It also shows the harshness that the Japanese felt towards their own kind in times of war. It was definitely Survival of the Fitness, without a doubt. And for the orphaned children of WWII Japan, survival was all they knew, up until the bitter end.