Anime Impact. Chris Stuckmann
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it’s these Eden-like passages that give Grave its few moments of tenderness. Takahata’s world, for all its brutality, remains soft around the edges—just like in his other films, Only Yesterday and Princess Kaguya. For this film, he employed a new technique, switching out the normal black outlines for brown. This gives the universe a nostalgic, nearly sepia tone feel. It’s warm. Dreamlike. Strangely spiritual. Like a memory.
It’s a memory etched into the Japanese consciousness. Perhaps best reflected in the final moments, which see their spirits walking into the modern skyline of Kobe. And yet, though clearly aimed at the Japanese, it plays just as well overseas. Many critics hail it as one of the best anti-war films ever made. Ironic, since Takahata insists it is not an anti-war movie, and he didn’t intend it as such. Whoops.
To a certain degree, I understand where he’s coming from. None of the characters share an anti-war sentiment. Seita’s father serves in the Navy. He has a vested interest in Japan “winning.” The cognitive dissonance on display perhaps reflects the station in his life. Still just a boy, the idea that his father lies at the bottom of the ocean is probably more than he can bear. Better to hope for the best.
And perhaps that’s why it plays so well as an anti-war film. The best anti-war movies don’t pick sides. Indeed, the Americans are barely shown at all. And yet, for all the nonexistent amount of screen time they receive, every American owes it to themselves to see this film. Stripped of the sort of jingoistic demonization prevalent in most war films, Grave of the Fireflies simply shows the after-effects. It invites Americans to empathize with “the other” by looking directly into their eyes. No lectures or speechifying. Just experience. The message is universal because war is universal. It’s a sad part of the human condition. And Takahata, whether he intended it or not, understands that it’s those who have the least say in wartime that suffer the most. Nations break down. Society breaks down. People break down. It’s the ultimate failure in imagination.
Like the fireflies Seita uses to light his bomb shelter, the lives of the children are equally bright and short. All too quickly they’re snuffed out—used up and forgotten by an all too indifferent world. It’s enough to make a grown man cry. And trust me, it has.
Because of its emotional weight, some argue that the film is overly sentimental—a well-intentioned, but very deliberately crafted tearjerker. I’d argue that if you’re watching children starve, you’d damn well better be made to cry. Or at least suppress some tears. And Grave of the Fireflies avoids the tropes of so many other lesser films that use kids as props. The two children aren’t plot devices shoehorned in with some inexplicable cancer or accident or malady designed as a last, desperate attempt to milk some eleventh-hour waterworks. It’s literally the centerpiece of the whole picture. Grave shows its hand in the first minute, telling the viewer in no uncertain terms exactly what they’re getting into. And that something is a sucker punch to the soul.
As a movie, I can’t recommend Grave of the Fireflies in the same way I would other anime. You’re not going to have a “good time.” For that, I’d say go watch Takahata’s other film: the nostalgic, coming-of-age reminisce, Only Yesterday. But don’t expect the same cultural significance. That this film garnered a reputation abroad as the “Japanese Schindler’s List” speaks to its power. And like Schindler’s List, it comes not recommended—but required.
Beautiful, brutal, heart-wrenching, and transcendent, it achieves a catharsis that few live-action films can compete with. As a testament to the supreme mystical quality of animation, it dispels the ludicrous notion that animated films are only for kids. This movie belongs right next to the likes of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the various other entries by Spielberg, Kubrick, and Eastwood.
Not bad for ink and paint.
Robert Walker is the co-writer for the hit web series The Nostalgia Critic. As a child of the ’80s, he’s been watching anime imports since before he even knew what anime was. Altogether, he has watched over 300 anime series and films. Not necessarily for his job, but because he has a problem.
Tonari no Totoro
— Adelle Drover —
A giant magical panda-rabbit is the leader of Japan’s most beloved animation house, Studio Ghibli. Adorning the company logo since 1990, Totoro—a character from My Neighbor Totoro—is both awe-inspiring in presence and cute enough to enthuse hordes of children to buy the plushy doll. So, how did this fluffy make-believe-monster-spirit become the face of an internationally renowned film studio?
Studio Ghibli is a name synonymous with animation. It’s right up there behind the powerhouse American studios of Walt Disney and Pixar. Yet the approach and tone for telling children’s stories—and I do mean “children’s stories” though not necessarily stories explicitly for children—is a cultural world apart. Ghibli’s animations turn away from the glossy sheen of singing princesses and chiseled-looking princes, yet they are still tales of transformation and wonder—just of a different nature. Being grounded in the reality of time and place makes their power all the more magical. As such, they are touches of the supernatural intertwined among the real-world tough lessons of growing up. Even when the world setting is entirely fictional, the foundations of these films grow heavily from the traditions of Japanese culture, religion, and folklore. The influential father of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, birthed a genre through the 1980s and subsequent decades of animated storytelling, the likes of which the world had never seen.
While Miyazaki’s debut feature Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an action adventure on the environmental human impact, his second directed film My Neighbor Totoro takes a much lighter approach to similar themes. First released in cinemas as a double feature behind the more somber Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro—while not the most financially popular of his filmography—is still hailed as one of his most notable works primarily because of the lovable toothy-grinned Totoro character. A character who adds magic and lightheartedness into more mundane subject matter not commonly aimed at children. It’s these fantastic elements set amongst a coming-of-age sisterhood which makes My Neighbor Totoro such an understated success.
Set in postwar Japan, Satsuki and her younger sister Mei arrive at their new home in the countryside, ready to play and explore as much as their hearts desire. Summer days stretch infinitely and every loose acorn in the garden is a treasure worth collecting. Their father, Tatsuo, commutes regularly to his job in Tokyo and it’s revealed slightly later in the film that their mother, Yasuko, is in the hospital for an extended time. While exploring their new surroundings, the sisters discover some sneaky soot sprites hiding in the dark corners of the old house, upon which their father encourages their excited investigation. A neighbor informs the girls that she too could see the soot sprites when she was a child, alluding to the power of childhood intuition.
Later on, Mei discovers a hidden path which leads her to the lair of a giant cuddly creature she dubs “Totoro.” Her father again encourages his daughters’ exploration into the supernatural and tells them of the spirits who supposedly live in the forest. Totoro himself makes only a few but memorable appearances throughout the film. His presence is incidental to the story of the sisters trying to settle into a new life and come to terms with their mother’s precarious situation in the hospital.
The charm of My Neighbor Totoro comes from its story simplicity. Characters go about their lives with everyday ups and downs, adventures and tantrums, and without any kind of plan—other than to be kids. It’s this paired back narrative that leaves the audience open to follow the whims and childlike spontaneity of each sister. It is for the duration of the first two acts that the story is propelled entirely by the inquisitiveness of the girls and their interest in their new surroundings.
When Mei first spies a Mini-Totoro in its natural activities (much to its dismay at being spotted), the film follows along as Mei’s resolve changes from surprise at the fluffy creature, to curiosity at what it’s doing, and finally to utter determination to follow it and find out where it’s going in such