Japanese Anime: Exploring the Impact and Significance

This article delves into the world of Japanese anime movies, specifically those influenced by technology and the events of World War II. It explores the stories of Grave of Fireflies, Landmarks, Barefoot Gen, and In This Corner of the World, highlighting their impact and significance. The article also provides insights into Japanese culture and the use of animation to convey emotions and scenes that cannot be captured through traditional filming.

Japanese Anime
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Author Note

We are at the beginning of a new era where technology is becoming a mandatory
aspect for living as important as water and food. Technology development throughout the last
20 or 30 years impacts our whole environment around us as we are able to lessen the work
effort of the daily works. Not only that, technology also bringing new experience, design and
most importantly reinvention of numerous aspects. For instance, the typical hand to hand
goods exchange has been reinvented by e-commerce approaches. However, we are not going
to focus on such technology advancement in this paper. I am going to focus on the creation of
new genre of movies, influenced by technology, even though I am not sure whether I should
addressed it by category or a type of movies. Nowadays, most of the movies uses technology
in the form of CGI. I will be more focused on the films which are mainly focused on the
technology widely known as anime movies. A short search on Google shows that anime is a
style of hand drawn and computer animation organization which are mainly associated with
Japan. It is a poor definition as anime making process involves with many more critical
aspects which I will address letter. However, the definition shown by the Google was right
about one aspect which is ‘associated with japan’.
Japan is sovereign island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off
the eastern coast of the Asian mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to
the East China Sea and China in the southwest. Japan is well known for their technology
advancement comparing to the other countries. They also invented a new way to interact with
the viewers through movies. The idea was to embed thousands of images in sequence to
provide visual movements. Even though it sounds simple, it includes many critical process
which takes years of work and dedication to complete. Animation was created to showcase
such emotions, scenes and visuals which cannot be done by typical shooting on some sets.
However, the adoption of anime is extended further.

Feature Films
The three chosen movies are directly associated with the WW2, more deeply the impacts of
nuclear bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This movies shoes the struggle of the Japanese
people at the time of World war 2. It is a known factor that japan was most effected country
in the war as they take hit of two nuclear bombs named little and fat boy. the movies were
focused on some specific character and their struggles throughout the war. They struggles for
gaining basic needs for living.
Grave of Fireflies:
This movie had a profound effect because of the rare depth and emotion shown trough
siblings named Seita and Setsuko. The movie is based on the semi-autobiographical short
story of Akiyuki Nosaka. The story unfolds the struggle of a boy and his four years old sister
in the time ww2. The film was narrated by the Seita who died in the year of 1945. The
starting scene shows him in a train station with a candy drop bottle at the stage of dying. The
next scene shows him and his sister with the same bottle playing around thousands of
fireflies. It all makes sense at the end of the movie. During world war 2, America frequently
uses air missiles to win over the japan. In order to survive from such bombing people rushes
to shelter and one day after hearing the alarms of bombing, setai’s family started to rush to
the shelter. Seita was carrying Setsuko and their mother goes separately and accidently she
caught up in the bombing which eventually kills her. Then the movie was totally focused on
the two fireflies and their struggle to find shelter and food. It was all alone setia’s
responsibility to take of his little sister which he did until the heart-breaking end. The
character Setia is very strong and did not break his backbone throughout the movie. I was
floored to discover Setsuko was played by a five-year-old actress, her only ever voice role, in
Japanese. The performance lends such credibility to the character, such emotion that if I
didn’t know better, I would say came from real recordings of a war orphan. The film was

directed by Isao Takahata, who is associated with the famous Ghibli Studio, source of the
greatest Japanese animation. The main value shown throughout the film is the endorsement of
family, illustrated through the ever-growing relationship of Seita and Setsuko. The film
provides an insight into Japanese culture, by showing the battle between those who subvert
traditional roles in families.
Landmarks:
This movie shows some epic moments, especially the shelters where they need to stay
in the time of bombing. The shelters are hot and dark which making Setsiko uncomfortable as
she want get out of shelter. While Seita is comforting her.
After leaving from their aunt house, they started living in a dam. This place is in front of a
river where they set a camp and tried live on their own. They also manage to set a bed and a
kitchen.

They were living very happily on their own until they run out of money and food. Even
though the place is not very homely to live, they spend their lives happily without any
disturbance from outsider.

One night in the shelter, setsicko was afraid to get in the bed as it was too dark. Seito capture
some fireflies and leaves them inside the mosquito net. The place was full of fireflies which
helps setsiko to sleep.
Barefoot Gen
Keiji Nakazawa was six years old when the bomb dropped, as he was on his way to school in
the centre of Hiroshima. A split-second quirk of fate saved his life. In an instant, everything
around him changed. The city was levelled, there were very few buildings with foundations
of steel and stone. Anyone who wasn't instantly vaporised had been hit by the explosive blast
and then a firestorm. The survivors could then die from the effects of radiation in the next
few minutes, months or years... Keiji stayed on the outskirts of Hiroshima as it started to
rebuild itself. He became a manga writer, but wasn't able to publish the first volume of his
most famous work until 1973 when Japan started to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki
again. The stories of Barefoot Gen are dramatised versions of reality, but were "70 percent"
(his words) based on Keiji's actual childhood experiences. Immediately popular, they soon
inspired three live-action films at the end of the decade. But the manga proved a better way to
spread the story overseas, being translated into many languages. An anime adaption was a
logical extension. In the days following the attack, Gen and his mother witness the horrors
wrought by the bomb. Hiroshima lies in ruins, and the city is full of people dead and dying
from severe burns and radiation sickness. Gen meets a girl named Natsue, whose face has
been severely burned; she attempts to commit suicide, but Gen convinces her to continue
living. Gen and his mother adopt an orphan named Ryuta, who by sheer coincidence looks
identical to Gen's deceased younger brother Shinji. After Gen returns to their burnt-out home
and retrieves the remains of his father and siblings, he and his family go to live with Kime's
friend Kiyo. However, Kiyo's crotchety Mother-In-Law conspires with her grandchildren to
drive the Nakaokas out.

Gen looks for work to pay the family's rent. A man hires Gen to look after his brother Seiji,
who has been burnt from head to toe and lives in squalor. Though Seiji is recalcitrant at first,
he warms up to Gen over time, and the boy learns Seiji is an artist who has lost the will to
live because his burns have left him unable to hold a brush. With Gen's help, Seiji learns to
paint with his teeth, but eventually, he dies of his wounds. On August 14, Emperor Hirohito
announces Japan's surrender over the radio, ending the war.
This image is showing many people standing inform of lines for getting a small amount of
ration which signifies the poor situation. The even start fighting to get some food as it was
about to finish.

This is the home of Gen, where he lives with his family. Even though Americans are
frequently dropping bomb in many cities in japan. They never drops a bomb in Hiroshima
that’s the reason their home was not ruined.

After the nuclear bombing, their house ruined as gen’s father, sister and brother traps there
and eventually died because of suffocation and fire. The impact of the nuclear bombing is
clearly visible by the image.
In this corner of the world
At its heart is Suzu (Non), a creative girl who has big dreams and a colourful imagination,
living in a small town working with her family's seaweed business during the late 1930s and
early 40s. In the first thirty minutes we witness her growth to adulthood, to eighteen, to when
she marries and joins a new family, that of Shusaku (Yoshimasa Hosoya), a young navy clerk
who lives in Kure City, near Hiroshima. Here, naval vessels and artillery dot the crowded bay
and she works to keep the family in food and clean clothes, learning her place in the small
home. Time passes and her routines are her life, the war every present in the distant but
crowding closer as dates on the screen tick ever nearer to one fateful day. Most of the story
takes place in the year leading up to August 1945 as we see the country succumb to ever-
increasingly rigid rations and the steps they took to make due with less and less. Suzu is an
ingenue, so young and naive to much of the ways of the her new world and it takes much
effort to become part of the family as the darkness of war looms. She is sheltered by the
homestead she cares for, stealing moments whenever she can to doodle and sketch the life
surrounding her. The film captures in breath-taking detail the Japanese way of life at this time
from architecture and landscapes to the social and communal interactions of the people. Suzu
is the innocence, representing so many who knew little of what was happening behind the
high hills beyond their homes. When the war does come, it comes with ferocity and Suzu
lives amid constant air raids and yet even this becomes routine with Suzo seeing new colors
and art in the horror. The film blends her artistry with the chaos, blotching the smoke filled

skies with her color soaked paintbrush. Tragedy strikes in these flurries and takes much from
Suzu, challenging her beyond what she seems capable to suffer. And all the while, the screen
ticks down to August 6th and there is a frightening urgency in the pace as we know what's
coming and wonder for her fate.
In This Corner of the World is a deeply-human story that evolves from its inspiring first half
to one of harrowing heartbreak in the second. Suzu shifts from a symbol of innocence to a
metaphor for Japan itself and there's great dignity in Suzu as she endures. The message is
clear of course, even before we reach the end and it's one that is all too often lost on those
who turn their backs to history. In This Corner of the World is a remarkably engrossing and
earnest story, one that will stay with you long after it's over.
The beautiful city, Hiroshima as shown in the picture, this photo resemble the city before the
nuclear bombs hits the city.

Image of a bomb crater which kills a little girl in the scene. Such crates contains an unfused
bomb which blasts later after some time.
A Japanese destroyed battle ship floating in the ocean after end of the war.
Wix website: https://ngocchucn2205.wixsite.com/mysite

References:
Goldberg, W. (2009). Transcending the victim's history: Takahata Isao's Grave of the
Fireflies. Mechademia, 4(1), 39-52.
Keiji, N. (2010). Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen. Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers.
Nakazawa, K., & Spiegelman, A. (2004). Barefoot Gen: The Day After (Vol. 2). Last Gasp.
Napier, S. J. (2005). World War II as trauma, memory and fantasy in Japanese animation.
Japan Focus.
Nosaka, A. (1978). A Grave of Fireflies. Japan Quarterly, 25(4), 445.
Sabin, R. (2006). Barefoot Gen in the US and UK: Activist Comic, Graphic Novel, Manga
(pp. 39-57). University of Leipzig Press.