Grave of the Fireflies

The second gap this pair fills is the animated feature: until now the archive held only Spirited Away, yet animation can carry far more than wonder and adventure. Grave of the Fireflies opened in Japan on 16 April 1988 as a double bill with My Neighbor Totoro, one ticket showing both faces of Studio Ghibli. Adapted from Akiyuki Nosaka's 1967 semi-autobiographical short story, it hands the months after the March 1945 firebombing of Kobe to two children, fourteen-year-old Seita and his four-year-old sister Setsuko. It sits beside The Wizard of Oz today because both view the adult world from a child's height, except that one believes there is a road home while the other has had even the place to return to burned away. As winter shortens the days, fireflies are visible only in the dark, and that is exactly where this film's force lies.

1945 年 3 月，美军轰炸机几乎烧尽神户。一对海军军官的儿女——14 岁的清太与 4 岁的节子——在空袭中活了下来，母亲却没能救回来，遗体在城外集体火化；清太把这件事瞒着妹妹。两人先寄住在亲戚家，配给越来越少，屋檐下的语气也越来越冷。清太于是带着节子搬进河边的防空洞，用一只装水果糖的铁皮罐、一点口粮和夜里捉来的萤火虫，试着把日子撑起来。影片从这里往后如何走，不宜提前说破。

It was Isao Takahata's first feature for Studio Ghibli, released by Toho on 16 April 1988 and adapted from Akiyuki Nosaka's 1967 semi-autobiographical short story. It reached cinemas as a double bill with Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, the two produced simultaneously; it is said that even Toei Doga had rarely handled two feature-length films at once. Marketed at children and their parents, its starkly tragic tone turned away many viewers and its Japanese box office was modest. Its standing rose steadily afterwards: Rotten Tomatoes records a 100 percent approval rating from 46 reviews, with an average of 9.3 out of 10. Several critics read it as an anti-war film, a label Takahata himself rejected; the camera hardly looks at the battlefield, staying instead with what the siblings eat, where they sleep, how they quarrel and how they fall silent. The fireflies of the title are made to illuminate and to burn at once, their light at night answering the incendiary bombs. The film redrew the boundary of what animation was thought able to carry.