Saddest movie ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (22 April 2018)

This is much more than a story about civilian life in the war ravaged japan of 1944. This is a rough, emotional, gut wrenching tear jerking movie about pride, innocence, nationalism, and the nature of mankind.
You will see a realistic depiction of what life was like in japan in the climax of WW2, but more importantly, you will see something in this movie that you never get in your standard war movies, a genre of cinema usually full of action packed films with stories of glorious heroism, good prevailing against evil etc.. In this movie you get to see what war time is really like, not from the eyes of soldiers who bravely fight and die to defend their homelands and their ideals, but from the viewpoint of helpless civilians, specifically two innocent children, caught in the middle of one of the worst situations of human history, in a cruel, cold, hopeless reality where countless innocent, defenseless women and children are left to fend for themselves, brutally massacred by Napalm bombardments (by the good guys mind you) in a world where nobody cares about them and nobody ever comes to their aid. And this is why this movie is so important- because it depicts war as what it truly is - a true hell, in all its tragic horror and twisted pointlessness.
You will be overwhelmed by the unbelievably sad story line, you WILL cry your eyes out like a child, you will never want to see this movie ever again afterwards, but you will take to heart an extremely important lesson about war that you will never ever forget for as long as you live.
If somehow every person on the planet saw this film our world would have been a much better place to live in.
Honest 10 stars.