Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies opens with a boy sharing his date of death, and, if the title hasn't yet warned you of the mood the movie is taking, then the opening scene surely will.

Grave of the Fireflies revolves around two siblings who have been orphaned and are forced to live off their own meager means. With the constant fear of being bombed and the constant burden of relying only on each other to get through everyday life, the children face a never-ending battle for survival that it's a wonder these two children can still smile. Their fight for survival is even made harder because they are thrust in the world of adults that has no place for two orphans who have nobody else to fall back on but each other, and the saddest thing is that they don't come out as victors.

Set in the grueling days of World War II, the movie narrates the past of the boy, Seita, and his sister, Setsuko, with the boy's ghost narrating in the background and actually revisiting the places they've stayed at and, sadly, reliving every heartrending memory, from learning of their mother's death to the eventual death of the children themselves.

The movie is based on a semi-autobiography of Nosaka Akiyuki, a war survivor whose guilt over his sister's death nudged him to author a book. Both he and Takahata have agreed that the best way to tackle the content of the movie is to use animation. Real live actors would have hampered the depth of the film because of the pressures of special effects, dramatic shots that pan in and out at all the right moments, and pillow shots that depict mundane living but give the movie so much life. There are really just some aspects live action can't accomplish that animation can. The animation actually brings to life the film more so than live action ever could.

Different from animations that spew comedy, jokes, aww moments of cuteness, and bouncy characters that tackle moral, environmental, even political issues, Grave of the Fireflies explores an alley that's more human, that tugs at your heartstrings because you know that something like that actually happened, and that slashes across your reasons that justify war even when you know it victimizes even the innocent. It looks at the other side of the war, the side that is ignored in favor of the glorified experiences of soldiers, the side that makes you see war through the eyes of children whose perception of it is nothing political, or governmental, or worldly; instead, they are made aware of its existence through the horrifying sounds of klaxons that disturb the peace, the angry flashes, the abject sense of loss that overwhelms.