A Close Look at Grave of the Fireflies | Big Joel

I talk about Grave of the Fireflies. RIP Isao Takahata.

[kot]

Honestly, this is my idea of a perfect war movie. It’s not a glorious battle between good and evil, it’s a series of small sad events not caused by any individual force which ultimately ends in a tragedy

[ransm]

I don't know if you knew this but Grave of the Fireflies that was published in 1967 and is a semi-autobiography short story by the author Akiyuki Nosaka and is based on his experiences before, during, and after the firebombing of Kobe during 1945. When his little sister died of malnutrition he blamed himself for her death and wrote this story to come to terms with his grief and loss.

[joshuadeem]

I think another central point of thematic conflict in the film is the struggle between Seita's legitimate love for his sister and his desire to satisfy his own pride. We see consistently throughout the movie in scenes such as Seita's dream of the military parade that he greatly admires his father and wants to be "the big man" for his sister. This desire leads him to try to care for his sister in ways that are often detrimental to her well-being. This is another example of what you brought up- everyone is to blame for Setsuko's death, and most of them do so with no kind of intention or malice. Seita is simply a normal, tragically flawed individual, and it's writing like this that makes the film so excellent. Great job on the video!

[Definitely_not_Andrew_Yoshiaki]

I know I am a bit late, but I wanted to add something to this. I'm Japanese-American, my mother is fully Japanese, and my father is half American-Japanese. Both of my parents were born and raised in Japan and aside from my grandpa on my father's side, everyone else is Japanese. I am heavily invested in both my identities that, for college, I went to Tokyo, to further learn about myself and my parents' homeland, and lived with my grandfather in Saitama (a prefecture outside of Tokyo, and from my location barely an hour away from Tokyo). Judging by the age of the main character, my grandfather was about the same age, as he was high school age working in the factories building parts for a fighter plane. This story is deeply personal to him that he only viewed it once, but that's not a point I want to get. I wanted to point out something interesting that most audiences outside of Japan would get the chance to know. You see, in Japan, this movie is released as 火垂るの墓 or Hotaru no Haka which literally translates to "Fireflies' grave" but mean "Grave of the Fireflies." Now this is nothing to write home about, but I wanted to point out, that that's not how we spell Fireflies today. Hotaru or Firefly in Japanese is spelled 蛍 and this is an update of the original spelling from Edo Period: 螢. Now this is the interesting point that I wanted to make that I believe the director Takahata wanted to emphasize. 火垂る、the way hotaru is spelled for the movie, is spelled as: "Fire which falls", as 火 is the character for Fire, and 垂る is a term used to emphasize something is dropped or fallen. thus, 火垂る gains a new meaning in this way. Another thing which must be emphasized is that the older character of firefly, 螢, is a mix of characters into one, you see Chinese characters are interesting in that, characters with their own meanings are sometimes combined to make something new, and if you look closely, the old character has a pair of 火
or hi (which means fire) atop a カンムリ or Kanmuri(crown) (for visual purpose) atop 虫 or mushi, which translates to bug. Fireflies traditionally has been associated with carrying fire in this way. So this adds a layer of symbolism, of fire being dropped, pertaining maybe to the bombs which were purposefully designed and meant to set the wooden Japanese houses on fire, as well as to the fireflies, to the actual dropping of the firefly carcasses in the grave, and the lost souls during the war ( interesting to note, there are many ways to signify death in Japanese, similar to English, but one of them is 命を落とした、or his/her life "fell" or "dropped"), and finally to the innocence lost during the war. It should be noted that the setting of the film is Kobe, an area which were hit with at least 1000 more tonnes of the fire bombs as compared to Tokyo. I hope this opens up a new avenue of seeing this film, as this is a film, my family, and my surviving Japanese grandfather on my mother's side have hard times to see for reasons I will never truly understand. Thank you for the incredibly interesting take on the film by the way, it made me think of this film in a new light.

[mintsavanna]

I'll recommend this movie to everyone but I'll never watch it a second time. Too sad.

[animecafe]

and the worst part is
this movie is based on a real story

[tsundere]

my mom who's a huge Ghibli fan let my 4 year old ass watch this movie and apparently I cried the whole night.

[eleanoramner]

I remember when I was around 10 or 11 my dad gave me a flash stick with movies on it for me to watch with my friends and Grave of the Fireflies was on there. So one afternoon my best friend and I put the movie on with no expectations or any idea of what it would be about. It was the original Japanese version with subtitles and we almost didn't watch it because neither of us could read very fast. But we did end up watching it. I remember entering this kind of surreal space as we watched the film. We were both talkative kids usually but neither of us said a single word throughout the movie. I think the fact that we had no idea what we were getting into kind of made the movie just a little bit more horrific. I remember when it was over I just switched it off and we sat for about a full minute in silence. There was this strange quality to the silence, like it was full of something heavy and strange. It was one of those weird shared experiences that you hardly ever come across. It's hard to forget.

[NiDeCo]

Fun fact: this movie was shown back-to-back with My Neighbor Totoro and kind of marketed towards small children. Guess who got emotionally scarred by the droves when this movie came out in theaters in Japan.

[pssurvivor]

Even thinking about this movie makes me cry

[raveneskridge]

Seita's ghost acting as the framing device really feels like we're watching the movie through his guilt. even though he was just a boy he could only do what he thought was right and it ended his sister's life and then eventually his. if Setsuko's childlike wonder is eternal in death, Seita's guilt seems to be eternal in his.

[SgtPepper]

I watched this movie with my boyfriend at the theaters during a Ghibli special this summer, knowing very well that I would cry. My boyfriend is American, and a very pragmatic and logical engineer and he watched the film with the same amount of detachment that you did. I'm Venezuelan and graduating from medical school next year, I have seen too many malnourished children, mistreated by their family members, or children die from dehydration because of their family's ignorance. I cried and cried until my eyes hurt. It hit very close to home for me. I came out of the movie theater crying and my bf kept trying to console me saying that it was just a movie, I kept telling him, it isn't the movie that bothers me, it's the fact that there are still children living in similar conditions and I can't stand feeling so powerless.
I feel like that's the beauty of this film, its original audience would have felt the same way I did because they may have been survivors or may have seen children in the streets during the war and could have explained that to their children. So their reaction was surely more visceral. If you see it as an outsider, without having witnessed similar situations, it makes you uncomfortable, powerless and sad but you don't feel the true severity of it. You know from the start that they die, so you just watch it unfold without being able to do anything. But you know it is in the end, just a film.

[anthonytitone]

Seta’s pride is represented as his form of innocence rather then the mean spirited notion of pride we usually associate, every kid believes they can be a hero and protect the weakest of society, just as Setsuko’s loss of innocence is portrayed through the comprehension of death, Seta’s loss of innocence is portrayed by the understanding that there is nothing he can do to be a hero and save his sister no matter how much he truly loves her

[forestgrump]

Personally I think this movie is all about pride. Pride is what fueled the foolish war that took away their mother. Pride is what drove the aunt to treat the children poorly, because she felt she was working harder than them and they should be doing their part. Pride is what prompted the children to leave. Pride is what made the made beat Seita almost to death. Pride even kept Seita from burning his sisters body at a church as he was instructed. If the woman hadn't been so self proud about taking in kids that weren't hers she might have seen that she was making them unhappy. If Seita weren't so self proud he would have taken his sister back as soon as the doctor said she just needs food. This movie is mostly about the danger of being too proud in my eyes.

[lilyfinch]

My favorite thing about being single is that my emotional constipation isn't ruining a relationship.

[PavarottiAardvark]

So something I noticed in GotF (and something present in a lot of Ghibli) is how impersonal the machines of war are - we see no humans in the planes and boats. Their warfare is just an inhuman thing that happens.

[HebaruSan]

Grave of the Fireflies says 'No'

[khwaga]

“Grave of the fireflies says no, sometimes we need to stay in broken systems. Sometimes we have two choices: remain in a bad place, or die trying to escape it” this reminded me of The Giver.

[mmgshsh]

I think you missed a big theme. Seito's decision to leave his aunt was due to pride and that is what eventually led to his sister's death. This was a commentary on Japanese culture at the time, as Pride is a big, if not the main, reason why Japan didn't want to surrender in WWII.

[hobihope]

Love this movie, but I flinched when I heard the dub

I usually don’t care about dub vs sub stuff, but the authenticity of this film is only preserved in the sub version. Watching the dub of Grave of the Fireflies is like watching a dubbed version of Life is Beautiful. There’s a better understanding of historical and cultural woes when you hear the stories like these in their own native language. I know it’s hard to read subtitles through teary eyes, but it’s worth it to experience the film and the Japanese historical perspective of WWII in it’s purest form.

Aside from that, thank you so much for discussing this movie. It’s so underrated and gives us a perspective on something that’s rarely ever discussed, how citizens of countries that start wars are actually affected by the horrors of war, regardless of which side they’re on.