Therapist Reacts to GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (Studio Ghibli)

How do you make meaning out of your life and find joy when things are not getting better?

Licensed therapist Jonathan Decker and filmmaker Alan Seawright are watching a movie you dared us to watch, Grave of the Fireflies. In Jono’s words, this movie is inspiring, wholesome, and devastating all at the same time. They talk about the themes of hoping for a better tomorrow and the cost of war, particularly for civilians. They also compare the Disney/U.S. perspective of animation being for children and staying innocent vs. the Studio Ghibli perspective of the wonders of childhood that result in us growing up. This movie captures the best and worst of humanity, and while it’s a vegetables movie (important to watch), it’s still engaging and beautiful… and we’ll probably never watch it again because it wrecked us.

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Cinema Therapy is:
Written by: Megan Seawright, Jonathan Decker, and Alan Seawright
Produced by: Jonathan Decker, Megan Seawright, Alan Seawright, and Corinne Demyanovich
Director of Photography: Bradley Olsen
English Transcription by: Anna Preis

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[RummerChan]

If you want some extra feels, this film was based based on a true story, with the only major difference being that Seta didn't die in the end. He lived on, never forgiving himself for his sister's death, and he wrote the book as a way to come to terms with it.

[emeraldsea]

This film gutted me when I was younger. I had grown up being told “we won, Japan was the bad guy and we won.” And it wasn’t until this movie that I started considering the people that suffered. There isn’t just black and white in the world and we aren’t the heroes I thought we were. I carry this movie with me.

[brittanyhoward]

Grave of the Fireflies really is one of those films where you watch it once, and never again.

[nowandaround]

They seemed to brush over something important: Seita is a child too. They say it was beautiful that he found joy in becoming a parent but I found it incredibly heartbreaking that a 14 year old boy had to grow up so quickly and take on the role of raising and providing for his younger sister, something which he fails to do because he made the foolish decision to take his sister away from the one place where they had some amount of protection. However, he's a kid who's been traumatized by war so I can't blame him too much for what happened.

[jasmyngonzalez]

In my friends' ethics class, they were doing the obvious "is a man who steals food to feed his starving family wrong?" And the professor also asked, "if he is, is the man with enough food to give wrong for not giving to those who are starving?"

[Riku-zvdk]

The worst part of this movie is that it is based off a real person, Akiyuki Nosaka, who wrote the short story 'Grave of the Fireflies', of the same name as the movie. It was a semi-biography of his experiences in the war, while he didn't die like Seita did, he actually passed in 2015, he felt such a strong guilt and regret in watching his sisters and adoptive father die from the firebombing and malnutrition that he wished he had died as well and write Grace of the Fireflies as a partial apology to them. Reading about the relation between Seita and the author is interesting in itself.

[Lucailey]

This movie shows how much we underestimate small children. The little sister wanted to take care of her brother as much as he wanted to take care of her. She was willing to give up food for him. find a doctor for him and just generally caring for him. Children of her age do have empathy. They do understand that sometimes we need help.

[strcilin]

Just a little note: this movie must be watched in the original Japanese version with subtitles, because of the phenomenal performance of five-year-old Ayano Shiraishi, who speaks a dialect right from Kobe. No dubbing can reproduce this.

[reina_harhar]

What hits me is that the promotional poster of this movie has the siblings standing off a field surrounded by fireflies. But if you brighten it, you can see that those "fireflies" are actually firebombs being dropped from a plane behind them. Another metaphor to the movie. And since in Japan the fire "fireflies" and "drops of fire" are almost the same, it hits different.

[mh]

My mom was 12 years old when she survived the firebombing of Yokohama and Tokyo. She has vivid memories of running from her house, jumping over dead bodies, hiding around a tree as they were strafed by fighter planes and just being terrified. She remembered the horror of seeing those little fire balls that were dropped all over her neighborhood and if one landed on you it would burn you to death because they were made with a sticky oily substance that would cling to skin. She saw a burned man walking naked like a zombie calling for his wife. That stuck with her and she tells me about it all the time. That’s why they wore those heavy hoodies and made them wet if possible to protect themselves.
After the firebombing raid, my mom and her family built a tiny shelter using whatever scraps they could find. Soon they were covered in snow as winter set in. But the worst part of it for her was the starvation. They had nothing to eat for months. She remembers going to the countryside and digging up potatoes from farmers fields when they weren’t looking.
As the country started to pick up again my mom had to work from the time she was 14 because her grandparents who were raising her were too old.
She’s 90 years old this year- she has always been cheerful no matter what happened- guess having seen the worst nothing phases her anymore. She is a food hoarder though. And she says if politicians want war then we should stick them on a deserted island and let them duke it out themselves!
She cried a lot watching this anime. Said it was just like that.

[mikokennoob]

When my son was 4 years old, I used to watch a lot of the ghibli movies alone before I watch them with my son so I can translate them for him. I watched this one alone when he was at the daycare, and it ended around 2 pm, and I just sat there until 4 pm after it ended, I did not move. I did not show him, he is 14 now and I am gonna watch it with him soon. Its so important to watch.

The reason I was just sitting there for 2 hours, was I remember being so hungry when I was little around 5. My family struggled a lot. My mom used to pick berries when we fell asleep in the winter, digging snow. Sometimes all we had were crowberries for lunch and thats all we ate for a day. Sometimes dry bread because they were saving it to last til payday. Sometimes they did not eat for days.

Then years later after my dad and mom worked for years, my father was laid off, and I had to go through that. I was 16, my little brother and sister had to eat, I did not eat for 3 days at a time. I survived on strong coffee and bread with no toppings.
I remember on my payday, I was so hungry when I bought food and had to bring 2 bags a short road to my house, I could barily hold the bags, I was so weak. They felt so heavy and every step I felt like falling. Just taking one step at a time. Reminding myself my family has to eat. I did not eat until everyone had their shares. I never stopped working ever since. I worked while studying. My son 14 and daughter 6 will never know what that hunger feels like. So hungry you are nauseated. So hungry you are shaking and barily can stay up.
I still have to remember to feed myself to this day. After that much hunger, eating everyday sometimes makes me grateful that I have food. I still forget to eat sometimes 1 whole day.
I am 32 now. Appreciating every food I get.

[davy]

What makes “Grave of the Fireflies” such an important anti-war that the movie does not let you forget the fact that it’s children who suffer the most during. It’s children who have the highest death count, highest amount of civilian injuries, the highest amount of displacement from their homes, highest rate for malnutrition, starvation, and diseases! With both Seita and Setsuko being children, it’s non an anomaly, but a hard reality of so many children who were unfortunately caught in the middle of a war that was no fault of their own!

[st.anselmsfire]

My younger daughter was really fond of Sakura drops, so when Satsuko started putting rocks in her tin to pretend she wasn't starving, I basically broke. I hardly ever cry in movies. This one broke me.

[GaijinBangya]

When you learn this is based on a autobiography written by someone who was a trainstation child it hits harder.
Note: Trainstation children were homeless WW2 children who had nowhere to hide so they had to try and wait out the war in the trainstation, but were imprisoned or driven out because they were getting in the way of war efforts. Many of them were killed just to get them out of the way. Children were the BIGGEST victims of WW2 and that's why this movie was made.

[erihashimoto]

Alan and Jonathan described this film perfectly; Grave of the Fireflies is the vegetable of films. You won't be entertained, your heart will be ripped out, but it's _such_ an important film.
Thank you Cinema Therapy for covering this movie.

[PeaPod]

What's beyond devastating is that children innocent men and women are going through this right now in Gaza, Congo, and Sudan. Starvation, amputation without anesthesia, abduction and abuse. feeling hopeless but knowing we have to do whatever we can.

[sjordan]

The fireflies are both a metaphor for childhood in general, and for Her childhood especially, but then they're also a visual metaphor for the falling ashes and cinders from the burning.

[beyondviolet]

Not only is this based on real history, it’s based on true events that happened to the creator Akiyuki Nosaka himself. He wrote this story as an homage to his family who died, and Seita was a stand-in for him. He’s said that Seita was a better brother than him because he often wouldn’t share food with his own sister and was generally more selfish, and also the reason Seita died is because Nosaka believed he should’ve died with his own family back then. So yeah, depressing as hell

[ariwl]

This movie is in a very select group for me. It sits alongside Schindler's List as one of the very best movies I am NEVER. WATCHING. AGAIN. I knew this movie was going to destroy me emotionally going in to it. I picked a bright sunny day where I had nothing else going on, and even then after it was over I just wanted to crawl into bed and not leave it for a week. It's a magnificent film and I'm sure if I did watch it again I'd get even more out of it...but oh man do I need to be in a place of emotional fortitude to do so.

[Maikigai]

22:09 What got me at this part is how alone she was. Yes, she had her brother, but he was often off trying to provide for them while she was just alone.