“The Grave Of The Fireflies” is a very old animation from 1988 which contains strong emotion and story. It is a story of survival where Seita(the main character) and his sister loses their mother and house in the bombing of the American Navy. The boy tries to contact his father who is in the Japanese Navy fighting Americans but gets no response. The boy and his sister must find a place to stay, and food to eat. In wartime, their relatives are not kind or generous, and after their aunt sells their mother’s kimonos for rice, she keeps a lot of the rice for herself. Eventually, Seita realizes it is time to leave. He has some money and can buy food–but soon there is no food to buy. His sister grows weaker due to hunger. Eventually, she dies from hunger and Seita has no one by his side.
There are individual moments of great beauty that require great understanding. One involves a night when the children catch fireflies and use them to illuminate their cave. The next day, Seita finds his little sister carefully burying the dead insects–as she imagines her mother was buried. Seita steals from the neighbor’s field to feed his sister and gets beaten. There is another sequence in which the girl prepares “dinner” for her brother by using mud to make “rice balls” and other imaginary delicacies. And note the timing and the use of silence in a sequence where they find a dead body on the beach, and then more bombers appear far away in the sky. Their story is told not as melodrama, but simply, directly, in the realistic war tradition. And there is time for silence in it. One of the film’s greatest gifts is its patience; shots are held so we can think about them, characters are glimpsed in private moments, and atmosphere and nature are given time to establish themselves.
The animation is more than the animation as it portrays the real story of the struggle and survival of orphans in times of war. “The Grave Of The fireflies” can be a heart-wrenching experience as it portrays a struggle for survival and death in easy manners and there are tons of things that we can learn from this animation.
- No matter what life goes on: Seita loses his mother and his house, and he has no contact with his father and a sister to take care of, on top of all, the whole nation is in the phase of the war, yet he tries to survive.
- War is a bad idea: Seita is one example that experienced the effects of war. This anime is realizing how badly the war affects the people.
- Pain doesn’t last: Seita experiences a lot of pain in the anime, yet he smiles when he gets back the food that he preserved, and he enjoys time with his sister on the beach and among fireflies. No matter how much pain you experience you will smile soon.
- Everything shouldn’t be taken for granted: We seem to take everything we have for granted and aren’t too happy with the things we have. Anime teaches how people should struggle just to have even the basic things that they have for survival.
- Happiness is found in the little things: Seita enjoys those little things, which suddenly became big things. The box of fruit loops, a little cold water to drink, some pickles, good quality rice, and a swim on the beach. Little things, became big things, the only form of happiness in times of awful aftermath of the war.