The movie, released theatrically in Japan in 1988, previously made it to DVD in 1998 in movie-only, non-anamorphic form. The following is a review of the 2002 Collector's Series two-disk edition.
The Movie
Grave of the Fireflies is as much an anti-war movie as it is a touching drama about human nature and what happens when society stops paying attention to its children. After their mother is injured in allied fire bombings, 14-year-old, Seita, and his four-year-old sister, Setsuko, try to make it on their own in harsh post-war Japan. The film chronicles the children's stay with relatives and their struggles to find food and cope with the impact the war has had on the Japanese public's morale. It quickly becomes clear that Seita is far too young to deal with the task of taking care of both himself and his sister -- and far too proud to seek the help of others.
Takahata tells this story masterfully and with plenty of pathos, without drowning the plot in too many tear jerking moments. But make no mistake about it; this is a sad, sad movie. I remember lending the first English version to one of my coworkers, who returned the movie to me the next day with the words: "Couldn't finish it. You bastard made my girlfriend cry."
Grave of the Fireflies is deeply moving, with vivid and realistic characters and poetic images (like the juxtaposition of the fireflies and the firebomb raids on Japan). Setsuko's mannerisms in particular show off Takahata's and Kondo's attention to detail.
Although the animation, as in most anime films, isn't nearly as fluid as what you'd see in big-budget animated features from the US), the characters, through their actions and expressions, are amazingly lifelike. Which raises the eternal question: why wasn't this movie done as a live-action film? It almost seems that Grave of the Fireflies was an experiment to see if this type of storytelling would work as an animated movie. The answer is of course a resounding "yes" -- although the movie would have probably found a larger audience outside of Japan as a life-action movie when it first came out. Ironically, renewed interest in Studio Ghibli's new and classic masterpieces may finally open the movie up to a larger audience on DVD. From its powerful opening line (I won't spoil it here. Go watch it!) to the very end, Grave of the Fireflies is an important film that will prove to even the most stubborn naysayer that animated films can move you just like the "real stuff".
9 out of 10
The Video
The new 2002 transfer is a marked improvement over the 1998 release, but there are still flaws. Apart from light artifacts and noise on large single-colored surfaces, you'll also notice a generally soft look to the whole film that wasn't present in the Japanese LD release.
On the upside, the color definition is great, making the all-red opening sequences all the more impressive and really bringing out the beauty of the lavish background paintings.
6 out of 10
The Audio
Like the previous edition, the Collector's Series Grave of the Fireflies falls flat in the audio department if you listen to the English language track. The two-channel Dolby Digital dub lacks much of the stereo separation present in the Japanese original (compare the sequences where the cat runs over the burning roof during the first firebombing and you'll notice how flat the English version sounds). It's almost as if the sound effects were mixed in mono and the English voice actors added as stereo tracks on top. The Japanese language track is far superior. Although it's also only in Dolby Digital 2.0, the original actors are much more convincing and there is R/L separation on sound effects, music, and voices. So be sure to watch the movie in its original language with subtitles to get the full impact.
7 out of 10 (Japanese version)
The Extras
The two disk set contains a set of interesting interviews with director Isao Takahata and author Akiyuki Nosaka, biographies, historical perspective interviews with Theodore and Haruko Taya Cook (authors of Japan at War), a short piece comparing locations in the movie to the real-world places and what they look like today, storyboards of sequences not included in the movie, a DVNR restoration featurette, the US and Japanese trailers, and an interview with Roger Ebert. While some of the extras are a bit on the amateurish side (the camera operator in the historical perspective pieces hasn't figured out how to white-balance, for example), the interviews are actually all very interesting. The Japanese interviews offer insight into the creation of the movie and its unfortunate pairing with Ghibli's equally excellent (but much more lighthearted) Tonari no Totoro as a double-feature when it opened in Japanese theaters, and Roger Ebert's intelligent commentary on the film almost makes me forget about his thumbs-up for Tomb Raider: The Movie.
But the coolest feature for animation fans is the inclusion of all of Isao Takahata's original storyboards. You can view the entire movie in animated storyboard form and switch to the finished scene at any time via the angle button. DVD-ROM owners will also find the English script for the movie.
Overall, it's a great package for a relatively "small" film. I would have appreciated a documentary on the late Yoshifumi Kondo (he passed away in 1998), but the included supplemental features are all worth watching.
8 out of 10