A gem in every right, and one of the best things ever put to film, animated or not

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2005)

This is one of the movies that is as stunning and brilliant as a cartoon as it could halfway be if it was a live-action movie. This is because, as an anime in itself, it gains so much more than it would in any other medium. The layers upon layers of hidden details in the art and symbolism used time and again in so many ways that just aren't possible in live-action movies are showcased in such subtlety in this movie that its mind-blowing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I rated this a 10 and I haven't even gone past how great the art is yet.
This movie is about two children who live during World War II. The main point of the movie is that their town has been bombed and their mother is seriously injured and eventually dies. From there, the horrors of the war and its effect on Japan are just one of the many backdrops that the two siblings must endure as they try to live on through harsh conditions. The whole world is against them. There is no light-heartedness in this movie. You would be hard-pressed to find even a funny moment in the show. This movie is as rough and vibrant as you can get. In one scene in particular is this fact shown. The two kids have just sold one of their mother's most precious possessions in order to get some white rice in order to eat. They have since been living at their aunt's house and been taken care of by her family since they have nowhere else to go. When they arrive back with the rice, the aunt takes a good chunk of it and tells them that her family needs it more than them, that they work and make it so they have a house to leech of them from, in a sense. And, of course, there is the infamous scene in which the movie gets its name, in which the two are living in a cave on the outskirts of a town and are hiding under a little netting to sleep. She is watching the butterflies and watching them create pictures in the netting. The older brother recalls how his father, a naval commander, had been on large ships from his childhood. The next morning, he finds his little sister burying the fireflies in the dirt in front of the cave, muttering to him "Why do fireflies die so quickly?" This is just an example of the strong symbolism used in the movie, but the scene in particular rings so strongly that you will probably watch it more than once in order to take it all in. This movie is incredibly depressing, as I have been saying. It goes beyond the tear-jerking finale, because you will know it's coming since the opening of the movie tells you that both of the siblings die. Rather, its the wholesome emotions being displayed, the raw humanity that is being displayed in every cell, in every scene of this classic that make it just that, a classic.
The animation, even for a movie made all the way back in 1988, is still as fantastic as it was back then. This is just icing on the cake for an already wonderful movie. The voice acting on both fronts, Japanese and American, are fine in their own right, but I would recommend all who would be willing to take a chance on this gem to try the original soundtrack with the subtitles. Granted, there isn't a ton of dialogue to be had in this movie (not that it needed much to begin with), but the Japanese one just adds so much more authenticity to it that it is hard to recommend the American one over it.
But enough of my rambling, I'll end by just saying that it is highly recommended that you watch this movie. It doesn't matter an inch that it is animated or not, because the movie is so engrossing that soon you will forget that your watching something dubbed anime. It is art at its finest, one of the best works of cinema production, animated or not, ever created. And be sure to watch it more than once. Multiple screenings are practically a must in order to truly appreciate everything this film has to offer.