the lazy kid. It's the middle of a war and the kid squanders his time and money w/o paying any attention to the environment around him. He abuses his welcome w/ his relatives, is rightfully thrown out and then wonders how he got into the predicament he's in. Overall though my recommendation is to avoid it, unless you just like tearjerkers, or are a sadist and view it as a comedy

I just kept putting myself in the kid's shoes, thinking, "What would I be doing about this?" And even at his age, I think I, or any young kid, would have done more than he did. I think that distanced me from the characters a little and diminished some of the impact.

The brother (Seita) did not die. He survived and went on to write the book, "Grave of the Fireflies" . The difference in the book and his real-life is that since he felt so much guilt for what happened to his sister, he elected to die within the novel. In the book (as well as the film), he fully acknowledges that the decisions he made were, at the time, foolish and unwise. But remember that he felt the same sort of pride about his father and Japan, and it was hard for him to be humbled and endure working during the war and the mistreatment of his aunt. And it was exactly this flaw in his character that eventually led to his enormous guilt about his sister.

During the opening credits, it is ironically appropriate that the stylized Easter Island Bandai logo is shown featuring the stylized word “Emotion”. Grave of the Fireflies is certainly an emotion-evoking film on more than one level.

Director Isao Takahata deftly and continually uses light as a tool in telling the story. The use of contrast, of backlight, and frequent of his ever-present flat lighting not only enhances the moods and visual images of each scene, but also allows the viewer concentrate on the essence of the story. In this way, he has taken advantage of the animated delivery platform to deliver lighting effects that would be difficult for live-action shows to provide.

The director used light to convey both an immediate effect (as an intangible prop) or to signal to the audience a sense of emotion. Without the frequent use of lighting effects, the director would have needed to use other narrative elements such as heavy melodrama or a set of stronger tragedies to convey an emotional impact upon the audience. In this way, the director avoided the use of such cliché items that would have distracted the viewer from the theme of the book by Akiyuki Nosaka.

The use of lighting may be described in chronological order with respect to the film scenes. This approach is particularly relevant since the director’s use of light differs in the 1st third of the movie, the 2nd third of the movie, and the last 3rd of the movie. The director also uses light as a transition between these three sections.

In the 1st third of the movie, much of the tone of the movie is dark and foreboding. The director uses light in the opening mostly to backlight the main character and a small amount of frontal light to allow the facial features to be seen for identification. This serves to focus the eye on the character rather than the expanse of scenery. Regardless of amount of light available in the natural environment of each scene, people (especially the protagonists) will be sufficiently lit. This consistent unnatural use of light gives the movie a certain style and helps to highlight the characters’ presence in each scene. One notable instance of this is where the train station’s cleaning attendant tosses the fruit drop can out into the darkness. The attendant is brightly lit even though it is a dark night. The can sails through the darkness and lands amidst fireflies. There is a certain bit of poetry in this with the return of Setsuko’s ashes to the field of fireflies.

Also in the 1st third, the dark sky makes the falling incendiaries stand out like little flaming meteors. When the camera pulls back, the bright falling incendiaries standing out in the darkness look like falling fireflies. With everything else dark, the viewer is thus given the allegorical view of fireflies.

The 2nd third of the movie otherwise referred to as the “middle part” uses more conventional lighting. It is notable that the 1st third of the movie transitions at the hospital scenes with the bandaged mother lying on the floor. The first few scenes are darkly lit and develop the foreboding mood. As the scene progresses, the lighting is increased, so that by the time Seita leaves the hospital, the lighting level is bright. The remainders of the scenes of the 2nd part are played out this way to develop the narrative story behind the conclusion scenes of the 3rd and last part of the movie.

In the 2nd part, the lighting was fairly flat and poster-like. The depth of field is not emphasized by this lighting style, which is possibly due to the media being animation and not film. I thought that this was significant since, unlike many other anime, this movie uses contrasts between light and dark to a great degree. It is almost like the director or art director was drawing on a vast pool of knowledge from directing B/W films. However, I do not have enough information to make a conclusion about this.

In the middle part, rather than using entirely dark scenes, the director will sometimes set the lighting so that the middle of the screen has the most light and the edges have slightly less light. This may help to focus attention on the center of screen such as the scene with Seita and Setsuko watching the dusk deepen.

In the 3rd part of the movie, the director returns to the prominent use of dim lighting to heighten the contrasts in the dark scenes. In some scenes, the lighting tends to be brightest in the middle of the screen and the lighting will taper off towards the edges of the screen. This focused attention on the emotional scenes between the farmer catching Seita, Seita at the police station, and Seita just as he exits the police station. Without other scenery to distract, the despair and futility evidenced by the situation is more apparent in each scene.