[Prep’s Pick]

Clearly Goblin House has been in an anime mood lately. Prep likes to offer us a vote on which movie he’ll choose every once in a while, and on this night, we were all in for a downer. Thus, bringing us to Grave of the Fireflies. Complete with a can of fruit drops, we settled in for a viewing of this legendary Ghibli movie. For some background: I don’t actually know that much about history. I know a bit of the basics, but since it never struck my interest, I left high school without much knowledge of past world events. This meant that for the first act of the movie, Nerd was kindly lecturing me on some key points of World War II, specifically regarding Japan because I didn’t know exactly what was going on. With a bit more of the necessary information in mind, I was able to digest Grave of the Fireflies much better.

If you’ve heard anything about this movie, you’ll know that it is dark. It is devastating and emotionally draining, but in a way, it is beautiful, and so very important. I’m known to be a bit of a war-movie hater, since I’m not interested in watching soldiers “fight for glory” for their country or whatever. Because of its approach, I really liked this film. The small scale of this story helps to really drive home the atrocities of war. The film brings the audience away from the massive world-encompassing fight and down to earth by following two children as they struggle to survive the devastation of their home.

Instead of following “heroic” soldiers on the battlefield, we are forced to watch regular citizens’ homes be torn apart, their families killed, and their children slowly starving to death. It’s a lot to handle, and while no one is going to consider Grave of the Fireflies to be a good time, we are still blessed with a good amount of happy moments between our main characters (a young teenage boy and his toddler sister). By letting us slow down and enjoy their time together, the film forces us to observe the beauty and value of human life, as well as the consequences of destroying it.

Rating: 💿 I liked this movie.

My former roommates and I (known affectionately as Goblin House) had a regular movie night where we all got together to watch a movie one of us picked out. Many of these reviews came from a Goblin Movie Night, so they’ll be tagged with the nickname of the Goblin who picked the movie.