So I finally watched Grave of the Fireflies (I also forgot who told me to watch this :P), I have to say that it's one of the most touching movies that I have ever seen. I don't really know what to say about it. But this time I'm going to write the full story about the film because it really touched me and I want everyone that hasn't watched it to know the story. But if you plan on either reading the book (yes, there is a book) or watching the anime be warned that this will contain spoilers.
Ok, the movie starts out that a boy is in some place but he looks like is about to die. Then the story jumps to the past when he was with his sister and his mom. The boy is named Seita and his little sister is Setsuko. The village that he lived in was about to get raided and he and his family had to get out of the house before the air planes got there and burned down everything. His father is part of Navy so that is why he wasn't there, he had been called to report for duty. Seita and his sister managed to get out of there just in time, they went to a bomb shelter and nothing bad happened to them.
Later, a soldier started going around the city announcing that anyone that needed medical help could go to the nearby school and that they would be able to help everyone there. Seita and Setsuko decided to go there and find their mother since it was the most logical place to go. When they get there, a friend of their family sees them and tells Seita that he needs to go looking for his mom in the school since she was being treated for really severe burns. When Seita saw his mom, she was covered in bandages and there was no way that they could give her proper treatment at the school. Next morning she was dead. They took her body along with other bodies and they burned them. From here Seita start to carry a little wooden box which I'm guessing has the ashes of his mom, but I'm not sure.
They didn't have a home anymore and they couldn't live on the school, so they decided to go to a distant aunt's house. She greeted them with a warm welcome and the now had a place to sleep and food to eat. Seita had written a letter to his dad before the attack (they don't she the scene, but it happened) and he still hadn't received any answer back from his dad. Seita just thought that it was because his dad was really busy in the Navy and all. In his Aunt's house they needed more food and they had some of her Kimonos so Seita decided to pawn them for rice. But something happened to the Aunt, she started to be mean with the kids and was always telling the boy that he needed to help out around the house, but Seita would never respond or do anything to help out. (In this I don't really blame the Aunt for getting angry at Seita, he was old enough to start working and to help out around the house. I guess that it's just the way that I was raised, I always have to help out in what ever way I can no matter where I am. I would like to hear your opinions on this.)
Then he found out that before his mom died, she left 7,000 Yen in a bank. So after this Seita and Setsuko decide to leave their Aunt's house and live by themselves in an abandoned bomb shelter. They bring with them a stove and some stuff that they had. The first night that they where there, it was really dark in the shelter and they couldn't see anything inside. So they catch fireflies and put them inside the shelter so that they could have some light. The thing is that they died over night and next they there was a lot of dead fireflies in the shelter. So Setsuko make a grave for the fireflies and I think that this is where the title of the movie comes from, she says: "how come they have to dies so young?" I'll come back to this in a little while.
So after w while, Setsuko starts to get some weird red dots all over her body and she starts to have diarrhea. Seita takes her to a doctor and this scene was bone chilling to me. You could see her ribs and it seamed like she was almost all bone. The doctor said that all Setsuko needed was food, which he might as well have said that she was going to die because they couldn't get anymore food. Everything was being rationed and some people didn't get anything at all (Seita and Setsuko). So what Seita started to do was that every time that there was an air raid and everyone left their homes and went to the shelters, Seita would go into peoples houses and steal what ever he could as long as it had some sort of value so that he could trade it for food.
One time after he was finished raiding homes, he went back to the place that they where staying and he found Setsuko on the floor, she passed out. She was really hungry and he tried to look for food and since he couldn't find any place where he could buy it he had to go to a framers land at night and steal some. Unfortunately the farmer found him and stopped him. The farmer took beat hit up and took him to the police, but fortunately the cop didn't do anything to the Seita. After this, Seita decides to go to the bank and withdraw some money so that he can buy food for Setsuko and himself. He withdraws 3,000 Yen and then that's when he finds out that the war is over, Japan lost. He was shocked and this, he couldn't belief it. He asked what had happened to the Navy and a guy told him that every last ship had been destroyed and that no one from the Navy had been left alive. So now he knew that both his parents where dead.
He goes and buys Setsuko rice, eggs, and a water melon so that Setsuko could get better. But when Seita got to the shelter Setsuko was half asleep chewing on something. When Seita checked what it was, Setsuko was chewing on a coin thinking that it was a fruit drop (it's a candy that they had at the beginning of the film). Then to cheer Setsuko up, Seita tells her that he has a surprise for her and then Setsuko tells him something that really made me sad. She said something like this: "Seita, I made rice balls for you. Don't you want them?" She was delusional, she taught that she had made food for Seita. Seita almost cried, but then he took out the melon and gave her a piece of the melon. Seita then tells Setsuko that he is going to cook for them and Setsuko falls to sleep... and never wakes up. Setsuko had died.
And that is pretty much the whole movie, and now I want to comment on all the things that I feel about the movie. First off, I don't really know what to call this anymore. At first I thought that this was like an anti war film but as the story went along it didn't really have to do with anti war. I heard that there is a book in which this film was based off. First I want to go back to the scene where they have to leave the house. I don't know what happened to the Aunt because she used to be so loving and then after a while she became... different. I can't really say that she was evil because I can kind of understand some of her frustration on Seita. Like I said before, he was old enough to help out in something and yet he didn't. I also get frustrated when I see someone that isn't doing anything or when someone is a free loader. But the thing that I didn't like was that she was giving the best food to her family, and her excuse for doing that was that her family was "working hard for the nation" and that "they didn't deserve the same treatment as her family". I can't understand why she would do that, I mean, if you take someone into your home and agree to take care of them it should be in the same way that you treat you family.
Also, when Setsuko buries the fireflies I don't really know what to make of that. I'm pretty sure that the title of the film came from there. But I think that it has a deeper meaning. When Setsuko was putting the fireflies in the grave she said: "why do they have to die so young?" (I think that it was something like that, but I'm not really sure if those where the exact words). I think that it was also because both of them died really young, kind of like a comparison to what happened to them. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this :P, what do you guys think?
One last thing that didn't make sense to me was that their mom had left them 7,000 Yen in the bank, I don't understand why he didn't withdrawal the money in the first place. If Seita would have done that, they would have had food to eat and they wouldn't have died. I think that it was pointless for them to die when they had that much money or maybe I missed something that made them unable to get the money.
I think that I've said all that I want to about Grave of the Fireflies, but on to another Anime now. Over the weekend I also finished watching Read or Die the TV Series. I have to say that it wasn't as good as the film that was just about Yomiko (spelling?) and the other guys. This one was to... girly for my taste(I can't find another way to describe it) and I finished it because I don't like to watch something and then leave it at half ways. At the beginning it was to boring and it didn't really catch my attention, but I liked the end much more. I still don't understand who this Gentleman was. From what I understood he was really wise since he had lived a really long time, but he also sounds kind of wicked since he was going to be able to get into peoples heads and control their thoughts and stuff like that. So if someone could fill me in on this, it would be great.
Also, on Saturday I finally went to see transformers and I have to say that the movie was AWESOME!!!!!!!! I really liked all the special effect that they did when the robots transformed and all that stuff. I think that it was the greatest movie this year (up until now that is, maybe the Simpson's movie might be better :P) I remember watching the Transformers when I was a little kid but I don't remember much of it so I can't say that it wasn't with the story or anything like that, The bottom line is that I loved the movie, I just wish that I could have gotten better seats in the theater.
Also, yesterday I went to my Orientation for the University of Utah. I was kind of nervous because I went all by my self since my parents where working. The university of Utah is a really big campus and every time that I go there I always get lost so I was nervous that I wasn't going to find the place or that I was going to get there late. The orientation started at 8 in the morning so I left my house at 7 to make sure that I had time to get there and look for the place incase that I got lost :P. Well, I got to my orientation 20 minutes early LOL :lol: I liked visiting the school, but what I really hated was that the orientation was 8 hours long. I don't see why they have to do it that big. After lunch I was ready to go, but I couldn't. Then when it was 3:30 in the afternoon I decided that I had seen enough and I checked out early. The bright side to this was that I have all my clases now, the bad part is that didn't get to choose my clas$es. I have a scholarship that I got and the director of the program chooses all of yourclas$es (for some reason you can't write down the word cla$$ )for you, which means that you can't take any easyclas$es because they want you to challenge yourself and not just take the easy way out. Also, we can't make any changes in the schedule with without first letting her know and she has to approve it. Well, for the time being I'm stuck with the schedule that she gave me, but I think that I can make things work with my schedule and work.
Well, I think that this is definitely the longest blog that I have ever written, sorry for all of this. Thanks for reading.
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