grave of the fireflies full movie english dub youtube

The central pair is exquisitely-voiced and animated. What begins as a youthful burst of rebellion graduates into disaster as Seita proves not quite able to keep both of them fed and healthy. His pride wounded, Seita takes Setsuko to live at an abandoned bomb shelter near the lake with the fireflies. This is not to last as their aunt becomes increasingly disgruntled with their presence in her home and scolds Seita for not working for his keep. Seita and Setsuko had lost their home and their mother in the firebombing of Kobe, and had to go live with their distant aunt (their father was with the navy at sea.) They are at relative peace there, and Seita treats Setsuko to a secret stash of fruit drops and every night they go to the lake to play among the fireflies.

Setsuko too has passed away, but the siblings are reunited in death, and the story is told through flashbacks with sparse narration by Seita's spirit. The film opens in 1945 with Seita dying alone of malnutrition in a railway station shortly after the Japanese surrender. The plot follows the 14 year-old Seita and his sister, a toddler named Setsuko, as they attempt to survive the final year of World War II. (Not only is it a 'cartoon', it is a Japanese cartoon.) The Grave of the Fireflies is no secret to anime aficionados and lovers of film, but to mainstream audiences it remains largely unknown. Ironic, then, that the ideal medium for the expression of this poignant drama of war and survival should be one whose cultural connotations prevent so many from ever hearing of it. But it would merely be a shade of what Isao Takahata and the rightly-lauded Studio Ghibli have achieved.

The Grave of the Fireflies is a story that could not have been adapted to film outside the medium of Japanese animation certainly the plot of Akiyuki Nosaka's novel could have been adapted to live action, and possibly that would have been a perfectly good film in its own right.

Grave of the fireflies full movie english dub youtube