Grave of the Fireflies (1988): Film Review & Break Down

Synopsis

A boy is seen close to death and he ends up dying at the train station he has taken shelter in. A
cleaning janitor throws away a candy tin he has found with the boy’s body into a field, and the
spirit of a little girl appears. She reunites with the deceased boy’s spirit. The boy, revealed to be
Seito, begins to narrate the events prior to this. Seito is established as the main character, and his
overall want is survival for him and his younger sister. He is denied when their mother dies from
her injuries in the recent air raid, but is given a second opportunity when the two are taken in by
a distant aunt. However, as food increasingly becomes scarce, the aunt begins to resent Seito and
Setsuko for taking up space and not earning their share of the food that she makes. As result,
Seito begins to make their own meals for him and Setsuko, but it proves not enough to placate
the aunt. Seito and Setsuko leave the aunt’s house to live in a bomb shelter. All goes well – Seito
is able to find food and the two find fireflies in the fields, capturing and releasing them in the
shelter for light. However, the next day Setsuko is horrified to find the fireflies dead and
proceeds to bury them in a grave, asking Seito why did they have to die. All falls apart when
they begin to run out of food; Seito resorts to stealing and looting houses during air raids for food
and supplies. Crisis occurs when Setsuko becomes ill, and Seito steals sugar for her. He gets
caught doing so, and is beaten and taken to the police station. Noticing an increasingly sick
Setsuko, Seito takes her to the doctor’s, only to be informed that she is suffering from
malnutrition with no other aid for help. In desperation, Seito withdraws all the money from their
mother’s bank account and buys food. The climax occurs when Setsuko dies; Seito cremates her
body and puts her ashes in the candy tin, carrying it with him to the train station where he would
eventually die from starvation. The resolution ends with Seito and Setsuko’s spirits sitting on a
bench atop a hill among fireflies as they look down on a modern Japan.

Notes

Grave of the Fireflies (1988) is an animated war drama film written and directed by Isao
Takahata based on the semi-autobiographical short story of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka.
It tells the story of a young boy named Seito and his little sister Setsuko as they struggle to
survive in the final months of World War II. Nosaka had refused live-action adaptation offers of
his work since he was convinced child actors would not be able to convincingly play war-ridden
characters or accurately depict the hardships of war. However, he expressed his content with an
animated film when the option was offered. The film is critically-acclaimed and won multiple
awards, including the Japan Catholic Film Award in 1989 and the Animation Jury and Rights of
the Child Awards in the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival in 1994. It ranked #12
both on Time Out’s magazine list of Top 50 animated movies and on Total Film’s list of greatest
animated movies, and #10 on Time Out’s list of greatest World War II movies.

Character Breakdowns

Both Seito and Setsuko stayed consistent characters throughout the entirety of the film. Seito
remained resilient in the face of the difficulties of their situation, always putting Setsuko’s needs
before his own. He had refused to tell her about the truth of their mother to protect her and cried
for her loss of innocence when he discovered their aunt had already told her. Setsuko maintains
her childlike nature and does not fully understand the war but knows enough. Seito and Setsuko
represent the loss of innocence and the true cost of the war. A minor character that did went
through change was their distant aunt; in the beginning she willingly took them in from the
goodness of her heart. They were family, so she voluntarily accepts responsibility for the two
since their mother has died. However, as the war proves to be more difficult and the food rations
limited, the aunt becomes resentful of Seito and Setsuko for being two more mouths to feed. She
openly remarks on how ungrateful and lazy they are until they finally leave. The aunt’s change
of character depicts the theme that war brings out the worst in humanity, changing even the best
of people into monsters.

Thematic Elements

Themes of hope, family, and war are heavy in Grave of the Fireflies. The film emphasizes war
can bring out the worst in people and turn us into monsters through the adult characters like the
aunt and the doctor. Adults are naturally obligated to help children, but the adults in this film are
unsympathetic and too ravaged by the hardships of the war to care for others besides themselves.
The fireflies in the film may represent humanity, or more specifically the individuals whose lives
are taken as casualties of the war. Setsuko’s inquiry why fireflies had to die can be interpreted
that she is also talking about their deceased mother and all those who have died because of the
war. Fireflies suffer death despite being innocent just like soldiers and civilians in the face of
war. In contrast, the fireflies may also represent hope in this film. We see the fireflies in the
beginning of the film with Seito and Setsuko as their spirits reunite.

Grave of the Fireflies also provide commentary on the war: it wasn’t solely a defeat of Germany
on the United States’ side; it also brought devastation upon civilians and affected countless
individuals just like Seito and Setsuko. Part of why the response to this movie was so positive is
because it effectively shows us the true cost of the war through two essentially helpless children.
We are emotionally involved in Seito and Setsuko in their struggle to survive because we can
picture ourselves or our loved ones in their situation. The film takes place in a real place during a
real event, so the audience feels empathy for these characters because there were real people who
what Seito and Setsuko experienced and worse. There are countless poverty stories similar to
theirs, and to see Grave of the Fireflies end the way it does hits us with the reality of the
devastation of World War II beyond the history textbooks.