What's heard is more important than what's said.

How dare you say that about my hair!!?!?!?

/I did a thing.

Zarban wrote:

Boys.... you're scaring the straights....    Grave of the Fireflies is the feel-good movie of the year! 

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What's strange to me is the choice of letting the kids die. If they had lived, the audience would think "Gosh, Japanese people who lived thru WW2 had it hard," which I think is what the film maker wants. Instead, it sort of sets up the audience to think, "Gosh, only the complete bastards survived WW2, and they let helpless orphans starve!" And then they would go beat up an old person.

That's a good point, Zarban.  It does undercut the intended message a bit.  Everyone go watch Empire of the Sun instead.

What we have here is the difference between what the audience thinks the message will be going in, and what it actually is. You can't fault a movie for doing X badly when it wasn't trying to do X...

That's a good point, Zarban.  It does undercut the intended message a bit.  Everyone go watch Empire of the Sun instead.

  ...JUST to see Christian Bale get the shit slapped out of him.

Boys.... you're scaring the straights....    Grave of the Fireflies is the feel-good movie of the year! 

  Show

What's strange to me is the choice of letting the kids die. If they had lived, the audience would think "Gosh, Japanese people who lived thru WW2 had it hard," which I think is what the film maker wants. Instead, it sort of sets up the audience to think, "Gosh, only the complete bastards survived WW2, and they let helpless orphans starve!" And then they would go beat up an old person.

That's a good point, Zarban.  It does undercut the intended message a bit.  Everyone go watch Empire of the Sun instead.

Weirdly powerful film. A definite must see.

For a different treatment on the subject, go watch Barefoot Gen, an autobiographical cartoon about surviving the atomic bomb. More uplifting than Grave of the Fireflies, to a very surprising degree.

I can certainly see the "You kids today don't know how good you've got it!" slant though.

We often laughed about having a film fest with Grave of the Fireflies, House of Sand and Fog, Au Hasard Balthazar, and Requiem for a Dream...but it was nervous laughter.

But I still think it's an amazing film. It got me into anime for a long time, until I realized that I started out at the top of the anime pile and was slowly working my way down into the endless layers of demon porn and abstract nonsense.