A Great Japanese Anime Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2012)

It is a Japanese animated anti-war tragedy film written and directed by Isao Takahata. This is the first film produced by Shinchosha, who hired Studio Ghibli to do the animation production work. It is a film adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka, intended as a personal apology to the author's own sister who died from malnutrition during the Second World War that features Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara and Akemi Yamaguchi.
The film opens on an evening in 1945, after Japan's surrender at the end of World War II; and in a train station, the young Seita dies alone. 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. Much to Seita's pride, their father is in the Japanese navy, and they live fairly content lives in Kobe despite rationing and the other privations of war. When their mother dies from burns suffered during an American fire-bombing raid, a distant aunt takes them in and conflict eventually forces the children to try to survive on their own. At first,Seita and his little sister enjoy their idyllic lives in the country, but harsh reality eventually settles in as Seita begins to understand the difficulties of taking care of a young child when both food and compassion are scarce.
Isao Takahata's powerful antiwar film has been praised by critics wherever it has been screened around the world. The writer-director who happens to be a frequent collaborator of Miyazaki's at Studio Ghibli, adapted a partly autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, and his handling of the tragic story is masterfully understated.Added to that,it is an achingly sad anti-war film that is one of Studio Ghibli's most profoundly beautiful, haunting works that it gives the viewer an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation.Overall,it is a wonderful example of the beauty of anime film making.