Good Morning Everyone!
For Pat and Frank.
Coming to you live from Koganei. Studio Ghigli was founded by Hayao Miyazaki (director), Isao Takahata (director) and Toshio Suzuki (producer). Though the studio has mainly produced Miyazaki’s films, Takahata has had his share of success, being considered on of the greatest directors of anime who ever lived. Grave of the Fireflies helps prove that distinction. Utterly gripping, sad and human, Grave of the Fireflies captures human agony through animation.
Inside lookin’ out my window
I don’t see nothin’ but rain
Sun up in the sky just a shinin’
Still I’m lost in my shadow of pain
Like an innocent man that’s on death row
I don’t understand what made u go
And wanna leave me baby
Leave me in the dark
Can u tell me, tell me?
Tonight, we continue our journey through Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki Collection 32.
Disc 7: Grave of the Fireflies, Hotaru no Haka, 火垂るの墓
Writer and Director: Isao Takahata,
Release date: April 16, 1988
Grave of the Fireflies is an animated war drama set at the end of World War II inJapan. 
This movie is by far the most heartbreaking animated movie that I have seen. The movie opens with Seita, malnourished, destitute and dying, sitting hunched on a post. As he keels over, a janitor takes his possessions and finds a candy tin filled with ashes and bones. The janitor throws it out and the spirit of Setsuko, Seita and fireflies fill the screen (a beautiful red screen), thus, beginning the story of their lives.
Ah, my mind’s such a sweet thing
I want to do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover
Over and over
With bombs soon approaching, Seita and his little sister, Setsuko, are left to secure the families belongings as their mother goes to the bomb shelter. 
After running through bombs, brother and sister reach the bomb shelter to find that their mother was caught in an air raid and severely wounded. She is transported to a hospital and later dies. With their father fighting in the war, Setsuko and Seita move in with their aunt. The food supply is low. So while living with the aunt, Seita retrieves leftover supplies he buried in the ground before the bombing. To get more rice, the aunt convinces the two to sell their mother’s kimonos. As the food begins to run out, the aunt begins to show her resent to the siblings, saying that they have done nothing to earn the food. Setsuko buys supplies for his sister and himself and decide to cook their own food. But the resent is continual forcing Setsuko and Seita to leave.
Kicked outta my home at 17
A real family, now what does that mean?
Don’t nobody know the trouble I’ve seen
How can I live 4 love?
The siblings decide to live in an abandoned bomb shelter near a marsh. 
The first night they fill the shelter with fireflies for light. The next morning, Setsuko is upset that all of the fireflies are dead. Again we have a child having to deal with issues of death, as she digs a grave for the fireflies, buries them and asks why they and her mother had to die. Having little supplies, they soon run out of rice, causing both to steal food from the nearby farms and Seita looting homes during air raids. One night, Seita is caught stealing, beaten and taken to jail where he is released. The next day, Seita sees his malnourished sister passed out , and decides to take Setsuko to a doctor. The doctor does not provide any help.
Your father said it was pnemonia
Your mother said it was strep
But the doctor said u were dead
And I, I say its senseless
Wanting to help his increasingly ill sister, Seita withdraws all of the money in his mother’s bank account. 
While at the bank Seita learns that Japan surrendered to the Allies and that his father may have died. Still distraught, Seita returns to the shelter with food but finds Setsuko hallucinating. Seita gives her a piece of watermelon and begins cooking, but Setsuko passes. Seita cremates his sister and puts the ashes in the fruit tin. We are left with Seita dying, but the spirit of Seita and Setsuko, healthy, look down at Kobe from a bench.
Nothing on TV I ain’t seen before
Another murder on the news, I can’t take no more
Evil Incorporated, blowing up bombs and thangs
I have a child, huh, I have a lot 2 explain
I could write a letter, but who would I send it 2?
It was Sunday night, instead of doing what I usually do I..
I scan my computer looking 4 a site
Somebody 2 talk 2, funny and bright
I scan my computer looking 4 a site
Make believe it’s a better world, a better life
This was a very sad, emotionally-driven movie but a very good one. We are immediately introduced to the close bond between Seita and Setsuko and the movie chronicles this bond and the strengthening of the bond with every disparaging event. This film is not war film, it is a film that showcases what happens to the communities that are not fighting the war but those that are living through it: showing the collapse of civilization and community as a product of war.
oflittleimportance 