Grave of the Fireflies is Studio Ghibli’s soberest story, yet it harbors a dedicated fanbase, and I have just found their watchlists’ newest addition: Barefoot Gen. Aside from the fantastically-captivating action, romance, and horror genres of anime, the humbling realities of war and international conflict are also tackled in Japanese media. Some series are outwardly aimed towards anti-war or pro-Japanese themes. However, others are more subtle, masking a clear agenda within a fluffy exterior.

For example, my favorite Studio Ghibli film, Howl's Moving Castle, contains inspiration and reflections from both its director and the source material's author. The film’s release date was in 2004, following the invasion of Iraq by the United States. The film depicts director Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on pacifism and further issues surrounding the previous year's events.

While this project from Miyazaki attempts to tackle a more serious topic, coupled with a heart-fluttering romance, other anime are much more direct. Fans of Studio Ghibli’s Grave of the Fireflies will no doubt appreciate Madhouse’s little-known feature film: Barefoot Gen.

Madhouse Studio’s Historical Masterpiece is the Perfect Addition to Any Grave of the Fireflies Fans’ Watchlist

Barefoot Gen is a Haunting Autobiographical of the Events of World War II

Grave of the Fireflies is known as Studio Ghibli’s most devastating project. Even though the film is set during World War II, its themes of human destruction still ring true today. Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of Seita and Setsuko following the American firebombing during the Second World War, which separated them from their parents. Driven by nothing more than a desperation for survival, Miyazaki’s most sorrowful tale follows their struggles to stay together and stay alive.

It is rare for Studio Ghibli’s films to end on anything other than a happy note, but Grave of the Fireflies is one of them. In the end, Seita and Setsuko die of starvation. Alone at a train station, the two children are made victims of one of the world’s most horrific conflicts. While some Studio Ghibli fans may think that Miyazaki’s films are nothing more than lighthearted escapist tales of grandeur, the director proves through his perceptions of the real world that this is far from the truth.

Barefoot Gen: A Chilling Glimpse into the Bombing of Hiroshima

Madhouse’s Little-Known Feature Film is a Must-Watch for Any Anime History Fan

Barefoot Gen, a project released by Madhouse Studio in 1983, is loosely based on the manga author’s experiences as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Keiji Nakazawa first released an eyewitness of the Hiroshima events for Monthly Shonen Jump back in 1972 titled, I Saw It. However, it began to run internationally soon after its success, released in the United States by Educomics in 1982.

In 1973, just a year after the original series’ release, Barefoot Gen (an extended version of I Saw It) ran in Shonen Jump for the first time on June 4, 1973, but it did not find immediate success. Barefoot Gen was canceled after a year and a half. As a result, the series was forced to move to three smaller, less widely distributed magazines: Shimin (Citizen), Bunka Hyōron (Cultural Criticism), and Kyōiku Hyōron (Educational Criticism). More recently, following Christopher Nolan's film, Oppenheimer, the interest in Barefoot Gen rose almost immediately.

Barefoot Gen is an animated adaptation of Keiji Nakazawa's manga. The story is based on some of his personal experiences of the wartime devastation in Hiroshima around 1945. In the 1983 feature film, produced by Madhouse (Death Note, HunterxHunter, One Punch Man), the main character, Gen, along with other protagonists, struggle to survive after losing their friends and family during the war and its horrific aftermath.

The Controversy Surrounding Anime’s Most Popular War Dramas

Two Primary Critiques Have Affected the Popularity of These Breath-Taking Projects

Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies are animated war dramas depicting the bombing of Hiroshima and the effects of World War II from a child’s perspective. The first controversy surrounding these projects concerned Barefoot Gen's release in schools. In December 2012, access to Barefoot Gen became restricted in elementary and junior high schools in Matsue, Japan, on the grounds that its depictions were much too graphic for young children. However, the ban was lifted after a more recent review of the restrictions in August 2013. In response, the series author stated:

"War is brutal. It expresses that in pictures, and I want people to keep reading it." – Keiji Nakazawa

Secondly, some fans believe that Grave of the Fireflies, Barefoot Gen, and perhaps even Howl’s Moving Castle, are all subtle attempts at incorporating Japanese propaganda into larger-scale media projects. Extreme nationalism, in the case of these films, is utilized by writers, filmmakers, and even politicians to sway viewers into favoring Japan over other countries.

While the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the world’s most horrific events, some shocking acts of human cruelty were committed by Japan during World War II. However, these anti-war films do not discuss this matter. Instead, they focus on an innocent demographic of people who were far removed from the events of the war, left only to be victims of others' choices.

It's interesting to note that the same movies can be criticized, or even banned, for two opposite reasons. It's also important to keep in mind that stories, and movies in particular, have to necessarily be focused. Crafting a harrowing tale about the suffering of Japanese children during the war doesn't necessarily mean that their authors wanted to hide, or justify, the actions of the Japanese army during the conflict. It all ties in with the complex cultural and political shift that happened in Japan after World War II, the effects of which are still felt today.

However, to say that Japanese media was the only content utilized to push a particular agenda would be completely and utterly false. In addition to Eastern media, such as anime, Western media too is guilty of telling stories from calculated perspectives to train their audiences to think a certain way. Nevertheless, perhaps it is stories like these that force viewers to consider a perspective outside their own.

By understanding films such as Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen, Westerners can begin to comprehend a small fraction of the Japanese people's experience of the war, while at the same time understanding that each side has a unique perspective that we may never fully grasp. Barefoot Gen is a necessary, uncomfortably real look into the horrors many children experienced during World War II, in the same vein as Grave of the Fireflies from Studio Ghibli.