I've seen this film once before, so rocked by it that even as the memory of it faded from my mind, the emotional punch of it never left me.

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2020)

I've been meaning to rewatch it with my partner who, being half Japanese, regards this idea as a form of unintended punishment or emotional torture. So with the death of its director and the fact that my partner is away, I chose to rewatch it for the first time, this time alone.
American and British war movies generally concentrate on heroism, even if they regard war as evil in their message, they seemingly justify war as a necessary evil and the Allies as victims that choose to be begrudging saviours. Most movies, war or otherwise, don't start literally with the death of a child. Grave of the Fireflies does. In its scant running time it manages to show the camaraderie and community of a people suffering, it shows the unflinching boots on the ground of the affected and the afflicted, it is very possibly the greatest unglorifying anti-war film ever made.
Being animated allows not just for more beauty; the stillness and movement drawing you in so much more delicately, but it allows for more of the hideousness, revealing the tacit horror and ugliness without grossing you out; the animation cutting to the bone of the realism in a transcendent way.
There are moments of sheer brilliance; the fact that the kids reunite in the afterlife (portrayed in a plain and unsentimental way) makes their respective deaths tinged with relief rather than grief. Privately remembering the young child's frivolity after her death, ushering memories that couldn't concern the older child whilst in the midst of protecting her, but that he allows himself to remember when the responsibility has left him is superbly simple and common to anyone who has experienced looking after a loved one who has passed. A brief beat where she repairs the shirt and pricks her finger speaks volumes enough in one simple moment for an essays worth of complexity.
I first watched this film a long time ago, upon only beginning to start to understand the potential depth and complexity of Japanese animation. As a young man, I watched it in the dark with a room full of Eastern European men that probably expected, as I did, that I might have brought something light for us to all watch, considering it was animated. By the end there wasn't a dry eye in the house as be lights came on and not one of us was ashamed because of it.
Grave of the Fireflies is refreshingly and appropriately unsentimental. It's not political, it's human. It's deeply sad, very telling of a nation when they see war through these eyes, which makes it personal, raw and very, very important.