Grave of the Fireflies: A Tragedy That No Words Can Describe

This is the movie that perhaps has taken away so many tears of me and everyone else who ever watched. We don’t need to begin the movie to know what this movie is about. Just listen to the title “Grave of the Fireflies”, the audience can know this will not be an easy movie to watch. With every animated movie, they usually have fun, joy, colorful scene, catchy songs, and a lesson. The target is children. But with “Grave of the Fireflies”, there is nothing but the dark color covered the movie.

Source: IMDb

Setting in WWII in Japan, the story followed a brother, Seita, and his sister, Setsuko, who struggled to survive this war after they lost everything. Throughout the movie, we can see that character Seita is growing up every moment and he must be strong and firm to take care of her sister. Unlike Seita, Setsuko is still a kid. She is still to young to understand what is happening. Because of her naive, it somehow makes the movie less heavy in emotional and less uncomfortable to watch. But what this movie did the best is exploiting the tragedy of war. Like I said there is no bright color in this movie. Dark color with bombs, death, blood has taken over this movie. And just like that, both Seita and Setsuko died. From that, we can see the horror of war, and there is nothing good about that.

The symbol of fireflies in the movie is a metaphor. We saw Setsuko playing happily with fireflies, which represents even though in the dark time, in the mind of children, they can still have positive thoughts and stay with their innocence of that age. With adults, fireflies are the fire of weapons, a fire of bombs dropping from the sky and killing everyone. In the end, Seita can meet Setsuko in the other world, where there is no war, no pain, and no separation. Perhaps, that is the hope. Hope for a better future with only peace.

Wow, I cannot say how much I love this movie and how many times I cry.