Grave of the Fireflies

In his review, Roger Ebert expressed surprise that animated films, barring a recent few (he cites Lion King (?! which is still cutesy by any benchmark - I mean, hell, it's Disney), Princess Mononoke and The Iron Giant, all of which I still have my doubts) could be anything but cutesy, fluffy, mindless candy floss. On which he, as is usually the case with Ebert vis-á-vis the Oriental stuff (one day I will start on his idiotic review of Hero, as well as his "robotic fighting machines" of Matrix Revolutions, completely missing the anime inspirations of the Matrix trilogy), is so wrong. Japanese anime, for example, have never spared any punches - everything goes, from pornography to apocalyptic science fiction to hard-edged drama. Just cos you have been used to other people who insisted on being cute doesn't mean everybody was so.

But, as is also the case with Ebert, picky issues of cultural (un)familiarity aside he is also generally correct in making his point, and he is certainly right for this one: Grave of the Fireflies stands in a class of his own. War movies always leave me cold, except for one: Empire of the Rising Sun, which totally terrified me (but then I was seven at that time). Today, Empire on my list has gotten company in Grave (which is supremely ironical but does in its own way have an interesting touch which I appreciate (to my Movie God: nice work!) - namely, one about the Japanese Empire at its height, with Westerner POWs; the other about it at its defeat, with the Japanese bombed into surrender by American fire storms). Unlike Ebert, I have always respected the power and dramatic potential of anime - just cos it is 2-D doesn't denote it can't pack a mean story. And is GotF mean. When the flashbacks/ghostly scenes of the little sister started to the music of "Home Sweet Home" just after she died, I sobbed openly. And then I laughed when, as part of that sequence, I saw her bending over the river and realized she was playing "scissors paper stone" with her reflection. I had tears streaming down my face, and then I was chuckling, all simultaneously. It is difficult enough to make something genuinely sad (without melodrama or tragedy), or to make something genuinely funny (without cheap devices or snarky humour). To make something both genuinely funny and sad - that crosses the line from good craftsmanship to something else much closer to the human soul.