All around depressing yet it's well executed

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2014)

The story opens up strongly having the ending shown first, and letting the main character to tell the rest of the story. All around we see people trying to be strong, to be tough in the middle of the harsh environment of war torn civilians. We also see every scope of human nature manifested in this kind of environment, in which people tend to seek their own survival, whatever the means may be. Those can also include how the aunt cheated on the kids about the food and that the aunt's daughter eventually did nothing to help them. What I like from the movie is that there's no depiction of depressed desperation as to leading to suicide. This convey the message to be strong. I watched the Japanese version with English subtitling; the voice acting is very nice. Setsuko's voice are very much the standard cute Japanese little girl, While Seita's voice can really make the character relate to how brothers defend for their kid brother/sister.