This is one of those movies that your heart cannot endure seeing twice. The story of Seita and his little sister Setsuko is one of those that you see once and could never forget for your entire life... I know that this is only an animated movie, but it is not so difficult for me to think that something similar has indeed happened. The story itself is semi-autobiographical, since the author, i.e. Akiyuki Nosaka, lost his little sister during the war due to malnutrition and has suffered since then from the survivor's guilt.

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Plot

The story starts with our main character, Seita, a teenage lad who dies of starvation in the depths of Kobe's Sannomiya Station shortly after WWII ends. After his spirit leaves his body, he is reunited with the soul of his little sister, Setsuko (making us understand that she is also dead).
After this, a flashback starts and the story of the two siblings is narrated by Seita.

Japan has already lost the war, but they continue to fight. Seita and Setsuko are orphans when their mother is slain during one of the allied bombing attacks on Kobe. (Their father, a Naval officer, is lost at sea and, as we learn later, is most likely dead.) They reside with a distant aunt for a while, but her initial kindness evolves to bitterness, and the siblings depart, feeling that they can establish a better life for themselves. They appear to have a chance at first. They discover a hillside cave and convert it into a makeshift shelter, leading to a brief time of joy. However, the lack of food starts to become a great problem for them. This leads to malnutrition and the conditions of Setsuko start to become really bad and there's really little that Seita can do for her.

Why should you watch it?

This is not the classical animated movie (and it clearly doesn't even try to be one), everything is realized by hand, and the overall quality is not memorable as one would expect, but this is my opinion part of his beauty. The animation is "good enough" and some of the scenes have the quality of a painting.

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There is no exaggeration, the film tries to be as direct as possible even in the animation itself. In the scene below, a detail that probably someone hasn't noticed is that the fireflies that are actually surrounding the two siblings are in reality incendiary bombs from a B-25 bomber. This is something that can be noticed only by brightening the image.

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This is a movie that makes you reflect on war, and that shows us a perspective that is not always the first one that comes to our minds, that of the collateral damages that war always brings. The film doesn't try to condemn or praise war, it simply tries to show that there will be always innocent people that will be involved on both sides. One can try to justify war as something necessary, performed for a "greater good" and in the interest of everyone, but I am not so sure that this is the reality. War is something that is decided unilaterally by a ruling minority and that the common people only should accept. Probably war is not always inevitable, I don't want to be too naive, but what I know is that every war was started because one side or the other was trying to make their proper interests (and not always noble ones).

By watching the Grave of the Fireflies, you will become so attached to the two protagonists that the ending, even though it was foreshadowed at the beginning of the film (probably to reduce the impact of the scene itself), will break your heart.
When children are involved I am always emotional since they usually don't have any fault, they are defenseless and most of the time they aren't even aware of what is happening.

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Seita and Setsuko are two innocent victims of the war.
Some might say that they were unlucky to be born during the war, but in my opinion, instead of bad luck, we should talk about injustice, because regardless of the war, children should always be protected and helped, also because if they do not survive, what was the point of the war itself (if wars ever had a meaning)?

Conclusion

This is one of those movies that everyone should watch at least once in his life because it will leave an indelible mark in your memory that you will never be able to forget.
There are a lot of other aspects that I didn't touch in this post, like the amazing soundtrack or the really unbearable secondary characters (you will want to punch them really hard)... but probably is better if you "feel" all these details on your skin.

So, concluding, this is one of the greatest (probably the greatest) animated movies of all time.

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