A masterpiece on the atrocities of war on helpless children

Rating: 10/10 (14 May 2020)

Grave of the Fireflies(1988) shows the bitter atrocities of war especially on the lives of orphans who have to fend for themselves in the already destroyed economy. The movie beautifully depicts how far reaching are the effects of war, and every dying person thinks "why do they have to die so soon?" like the fireflies.
This movie opens on an evening in 1945, in a train station where Seita dies of starvation. Seita is then reunited with his dead younger sister, Setsuko, the two of them now wandering as spirits. The rest of the movie tells us, in flashback, how things have come to this. Seita and Setsuko are two young Japanese children growing up in the waning days of World War II. Separated from their mother after an American bombing raid on Kobe, the pair spend their last days fending for themselves in a wasteland where no adult help is forthcoming. However life becomes too difficult for them with food and compassion scarce. They spend days battling hunger but eventually their body surrenders.