The first time I watched Grave of the Fireflies, I didn't know what to make of it. Even days after watching it, I walked around with a sort of melancholy. That was about two years ago and throughout that whole time, I never really stated my opinion of this film to anyone, because I honestly didn't have one. Watching it again, as a more mature viewer, I can say with absolute certainty, that no other film has affected me in quite the way that Grave of the Fireflies has.

Grave of the Fireflies gets my vote for the most human film I have ever seen in the animation medium. Realism is this film's foundation. It sticks to honesty and never turns to melodrama. Every act is motivated and the characters act like real people. Seita and Setsuko are fleshed out like real human beings; this also adds to the films power. Thinking about these two children in the middle of an abominable situation like war, as if they're as real as you or me, adds to the films effectiveness and power.

Ghibli's master artists always go all out for wonderful, detailed, and almost poetic artwork in all their films, but especially in this one. At the beginning, out of nowhere and for no real reason, Setsuko drops her doll. Seita looks around for a while, not seeing it at first, then finally spots it and it picks it up. It's these little human-like quirks that adds that special spark and sends realism to the next level. All through this film are shots of people doing everyday activities, which is a rarity in almost all films, not just animation. The backgrounds are a wonder. The story goes back and forth between life's joys and miseries and we see lovely backgrounds no matter what the mood presents. A destroyed city or a firefly filled play area; they are always alluring.

And there's the music. The first time I heard that flute score, I knew that every time I would listen to it, thoughts of this film would come rushing back and send chills down my spine all over again. The music is a little scarce during a few scenes, but it's feel kind of calls for that. No music in some scenes gives you that eerie feeling, somewhat like Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds"(1963) did, but not exactly to the same extent. Sometimes all it needs is the gentle sound of rain falling or birds chirping or just the sound of the character's voices. And the more relaxed the film gets, the more the music fills your ears. Pointing out that Grave of the Fireflies isn't the dramatic film that many people probably think it is. It's gentle and can hardly be called violent, despite being a war film.

It's been about 20 years, since this film was released in Japan. Over here in the states, it's ahead of it's time. America still doesn't seem to get it, no matter what. We don't need another formulaic, cutesy film. We don't need another ill-thought out Disney wannabe taking up space on many families' movie shelves. We need more film's like this. A film not afraid to be serious and depressing...and animated all at once. Grave of the Fireflies is revolutionary film making. Maybe in time, this film will lead America to see the medium in a new light.

One of the saddest movies ever made is also one of the best. Perhaps you are feeling particularly upbeat and need to come down, this is the movie for you. Originally released in 1988 as part of a manic depressive double feature with My Neigbor Totoro, this film is about two children's struggle to survive after their mother is killed in the firebombings of Kobe Japan during WWII. The film does not make an enemy out of the American's or any other nation, it simply represents the realities of War, and there are no tanukis or totoros that make everything better in the end. This definitely is NOT a cartoon show for kids. This gloomy backdrop makes the developing relationship between 14-year-old Seita, and his little sister Setsuko all the more touching.

This movie was among the first anime films I ever saw. When it ended, I was stunned with the thought, "that was not a cartoon." Not to knock the Walt Disney Corporation, but Disney has really set in Americans minds expectations for what an animated film should be. Fireflies shatters those expectations and provides a whole new scope of what we should expect. Every film produced by the Japanese Studio Ghibli is worth seeing, but none will move you like Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies. The only negative thing I can say is that this is not the kind of movie you are going to watch over and over. But when you do watch it, it will stay with you for quite a long time. This is a definite A.

Before I saw "Grave of the Fireflies" I had the impression that japanese animation consisted mostly of stupid and cheap TV series and rip-offs of popular western movies ("Lily C.A.T." anyone?). But this movie changed my mind. It's really sad but it has to be, making "Grave of the Fireflies" the most powerful anti-war movie ever made, at least in my opinion. In terms of emotional impact and a strong message this ranks right along with Oliver Stone's "Platoon".
The characters in this movie feel like real people and I'm very greatful that I had to chance to see it at one of it's rare TV airings (this was 9 or 10 years ago and it wasn't aired here since then). "Grave of the Fireflies" showed me that anime isn't always about giant robots and fighting girls with a big bust and skimpy outfits.

A beautiful story that is aimed more at adults than seven-year-olds. From the first few minutes, the audience's attention is grabbed immediately with the knowledge that the protagonist Seita is dying, if not already dead. This is emphasised with shots throughout the movie of Seita watching himself through flashbacks.

This is a war movie but it isn't your conventional violent film about honour and justice. Though GoF is quite graphic compared to other animated movies, it's more about survival through the eyes of kids such as Setsuko, Seita's little sister. Setsuko is one of the most adorable four-year-olds in animation I have seen so far and GoF brings you to the point that you can cry when you see what the war has done to her. This movie alone is enough to make us wonder why we even have war.

The sad music suits the movie well but it is also light and happy during moments when Seita and Setsuko are having fun.

A must-see for all Studio Ghibli fans and those who love a good cry.

When I watched this movie, I steeled myself for a traumatic experience, based on every review I'd ever read of it, which usually include phrases like "don't watch this if you're suicidal." Instead, if I had to pick a single word to sum up the movie I saw, it would probably be 'beautiful' (edit: this would seem to be borne out by my 71 year-old mother's near identical reaction to it when I loaned it to her last night, without a word of what it was about.)

Certainly it was sad, and arguably depressing, but I've read this movie compared with 'Saving Private Ryan'. That's ridiculous. 'Grave of the Fireflies' is gentle and poetic more often than it's violent, and it's remarkably restrained in its anti-war message. It simply tells a story : there's very little at all in the way of moralising or polemics. Why would a story like this need such heavy-handed tactics?

I would also make the point that, in my view anyway, 'Grave of the Fireflies' is one of the very, very, very few animated movies made for adults. Western animated features are aimed at kids. Anime is 99% aimed at teenagers. Ralph Bakshi's 70's experiments were arguably aimed at adults, but not much above college age. Even amongst the other Ghibli/Miyazaki films I've seen (which is to say 7 at the time of writing) this is the only one which seems to me to be aimed first and foremost at an adult audience.

The previous review argues that the movie is robbed of any suspense or impact when it's revealed in the opening scene that the main characters are dead. I have a quite different view of that device.

Firstly. the beginning of 'Fireflies' is, for all intents and purposes, a 'happy ending'. The moment where the ghostly Seita takes the ghostly Setsuko's hand and nods to her signifies that the suffering - which is yet to come, as far as the viewer is concerned - is over, and they are together again. As for a character revealing that he is dead in the first line of the movie, this is a device which has been used in centuries if not millenia. The crucial thing here is that 'Fireflies' isn't _about_ tension. It tells a story whose ultimate conclusion you already know (a legitimate narrative approach), and everything which happens during that story is emotionally infused with a foreknowledge of its ending. You find yourself hoping that things will go right now for Setsuko and Seita, and then the knowledge that ultimately it won't undercuts you with real emotional power. You know the characters are going to die, but you hope things won't be so bad in the meantime. It doesn't take much of an effort to make that an analogy for our own lives, which makes us all fireflies.

Perhaps what might make someone feel disappointed or cheated by this film is simply that it's so damn honest. I mean that: it's one of the most honest, artifice-free movies I've ever seen. It doesn't even really try to ram an anti-war message down your throat there is very little overt violence, and if there are some scenes of corpses and suffering, it's never gratuitous, and it's over quickly. Compare this with 'Private Ryan', where you have to suffer through 40 minutes of the most horrific blood and guts, only to reach a conclusion which, after much blood and thunder, signifies very little.

'Fireflies', OTOH, has far more beauty than gore. This is what really suprrised me about it. Probably two thirds of the movie takes place in gorgeously drawn, tranquil rural or urban settings, with an almost pleasant dreamlike quality, and there are plenty of moments of happiness to offset the undeniably sadness and frustration of other scenes.

Perhaps best of all, Setsuko is one of the very, very few (if not the only) animated 4 year-old I've ever seen who actually _behaves_ like a four year old. I'm so sick of seeing preternaturally smart, sassy, sophisticated and precocious children in Hollywood movies. Setsuko's emotion and behaviours are _exactly_ right for a completely normal four year-old, and recognising this lends many scenes incredible poignancy. Similarly, Seita is a teenage boy (one of the relatively few male leads in a Ghibli film) who behaves with the sort of mixture of pride, compassion and hubris which you'd expect of someone his age. He still believes that Japan will win the war he thinks it's up to him to take care of his sister with their mother gone and father who knos where. This leads him to make mistakes: possibly the most obvious one being where he fails to take the farmer's advice, swallow his pride and ask his nasty aunt to take them back in again. You would probably have to say his decision not to even try - to go it alone instead, was a very bad one, but - hello, people - here is a character who makes mistakes because he's actually human: a believable teenage boy in an extraordinary situation, who doesn't miraculously save the day, because his best judgement just isn't good enough.

Of course, his aunt may well have knocked them back anyway. Who knows?

Don't go into the film expecting tension, drama or even a tirade against war. It's a movie about the beauty and fragiliy of life and youth. If you think Japanese animation is all giant robots and superhuman schoolgirls, this could be the film which changes your mind. It's slow, poetic, beautiful and sad, and extraordinarily honest.

I must be the only person who didn't cry during this film (and I mean, I get choked up during 'The Fox and the Hound'). Yes, it is sad, but its beauty and honesty is what I'll remember.

NB: this review refers to the subtitled, Japanese-language version of the film.

Often rabidly declared to be the best and most heart-rending animated movie ever created. So then you'll forgive me if I found this movie to be overwrought and overrated. The animation is certainly very beautiful and wonderfully detailed, perhaps moreso than most other animes with their weird design aesthetics. The characters here, at least, look like individuals and move like human beings. The movie's flaws begin right at the opening with its Memento style way of showing you the ending and having the dead characters tell you the story. Right there not only did I know that the main characters were going to die, effectively killing any suspense or impact, but I also found this technique to be rather silly. The movie's very broad and poetic strokes in its unfolding of the narrative doesn't do it justice. Japanese ways of thinking may be different from American ways of thinking, but when it's not burying you in symbolistic imagery or visions of houses on fire, it's giving you the movie with "a day in the life of" approach. Even though there's a war going on in the movie and this movie is supposed to be anti-war, the only direct result of this war, which is also ironically the most dramatic scene in the movie, was where the two main characters spotted their badly burned and dying mother. The rest is just using the war as window dressing and the movie being as heavy handed and melodramatic as possible. Somewhere a backstory about the kids' father was struggling to get out, but this went nowhere and had no substance.

Ultimately, I derived no joy out of the characters' deaths or the entire movie but nor did I derive any guilt or pain or emotional connection. Perhaps there was a little sympathy, anger, and confusion over why they, especially the innocent little girl who did not need or deserve this fate, had to suffer over stupidity and pride.

Or perhaps I just don't get it and I need to give it a second look, something which I dare not afford. I love an emotional movie as much as the next, but I prefer my movies to give me gentle escapism rather than outright depress me.

This is a beautiful but tragic story which is likely to make you cry your eyes out. It's the story of two war orphans in Japan, trying to survive on their own after the death of their mother. Seita copes as best he can with the loss of his parents, while attempting to take care of his baby sister and himself. Living with increasingly resentful relatives, soon Seita and his sister are reduced to living in an abandoned air-raid shelter, stealing and looting for food. Scenes of horror and darkness are interspersed with moments of joy, love and beauty.

It might have been even more heart-rending with a actual childrens' voices for the English dub....Seita is voiced by the very, very typical, generic, earnest, twenty-something tenor sort of voice they stick on all these dubbed cartoon heroes, and Setsuki is voiced by what sounds like an adult doing a high-pitched, whiny, Snow White kind of voice. But you get used to the voices, and it's still a fine and well-crafted film, though certainly not something you'd want to take the kids to for a fun night out...