This a Japanese movie and it is a MUST WATCH. Just a reminder, I highly recommend the 2005 live-action version of this movie. This movie had first started off as an animated film and there are now two versions of this in which people acted in it. One was produced in 2005 and one was produced in 2008. The 2005 version can be found online and it was beautiful. The girl from Hana Yori Dango, the one that acted as Makino, was also in this movie. This brought a lot of tears but it was such a good movie that I strongly recommend it. It is a story about a brother and his little sister trying to survive during the war. It also talks about what they went through and how they became the way they are. This was a really sweet movie. I strongly recommend it, people.
You can probably find it online if you type in Grave of the Fireflies Live Action.
FULL synopsis:
This movie starts in 2005 (which is kind of like modern day at that time). This was 60 years after the war and it starts off at a crematorium. It starts off with the aunt of our two main characters who had passed away at age 95. Her children had come to send her off. The two character's cousin, who is now also a grandmother, tells her granddaughter about what had happened during World War II. She finds a picture of when she was a teenager and with this, she begins to tell the story of this movie to her granddaughter.
This story starts at the end of WWII. It shows a woman and her daughter running over to a station. They were here trying to find the boy, Seita, when they heard that he was still alive. She talks about the damages the war had done to them.The war had already ended and the city was pretty much in ruins. They look for the boy at the station but couldn't find him and quickly asks a janitor there if they had seen a boy who wears a military school uniform. That is when they find out that the boy had already died from starvation and it shows the scene where the two janitors found a dead boy in a military school uniform. They then removed his body and went through his possessions. The found a candy tin box and they threw it into the nearby field. Then it comes back to the scene and the woman goes to the field and finds the tin box. Inside that candy box were cremated bones of the boy's younger sister who had already passed away of starvation also. The two people finding out about their relatives ending like this because of them, felt extremely guilty and sad. The aunt sees two fireflies fly away and she smiles as it recalls good memories. Then the movie begins when our two main characters were alive.
Setsuko is the little girl who is always cheerful and kind. Seita is the older brother who attends military school and is extremely proud of the fact that his father commands the naval army and is confident that Japan would win. The father is getting ready to go to war and tells Seita that he is in charge of the family until he comes back and Seita says that he will do whatever is in his power to be the man of the house for the time being. They also meet their aunt and her four children. The aunt had just sent her husband away also to war. The family had a happy time together and Setsuko received a candy tin box from their aunt. Setsuko cherished that little box of candy and carried it around all the time. However, at a time of war, tragedy was surely going to occur.
One day there were bombings, because their mother's heart was poor, Seita sends his mother to the bomb shelter first as he and Setsuko grabbed needed belongings. When they reached outside, there were already bombings and it scared the two and they ran around frantically in the streets. However, they managed to stay alive through the bombings. Afterwards, they go to the hospital to find their mother because they found out that a bomb had fallen into the bomb shelter that their mother was staying out. Their mother had passed away and Seita took the ring off his mother's finger as a memory. He did not tell Setsuko that their mother died and just said that she had went away. Their aunt came and took them in.
She took care of them well. However, their food was rationalized and she had to feed herself, her four children, Setsuko and Seita, and also her husband's brother who has a crippled leg. She constantly ate less and was hungry as she gave the food to the rest of her family. However, upon hearing the news of her husband passing away, she decided that she will only make sure that her family remains alive. She starts giving Setsuko and Seita less food and acts as if she had done nothing wrong. Setsuko was often crying at night because she was hungry. In the end, Seita had enough of it and decided that they will go away. He had found an abandoned house in the woods and he was going to live there with his sister.
They were happy for a little while and even enjoyed the fireflies in that area. However, they slowly began to starve as they had little money. He even made an attempt to steal but failed. Setsuko began to get sick from malnutrition and they were both starving. Towards the end, as he goes to get Setsuko food because she was close to dying, he finds out that his father's naval fleet had long sunk. His father was also dead. He makes food for his sister but she died before she could eat it. He cremated her body and put her bones into the tin box and carried it with him and he later on died also (as it showed in the beginning). The war was over by now and the aunt came to find the two children to find out what had happened. This story was truly heartbreaking but it was such a good storyline.
