comments

Make us cry by showing little kids suffer and making one of them die

Beautiful, Affecting Anime from Japan
27 July 2014 | by Alison (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) –

Junpei and his little brother Kanta are growing up on a small, far- northerly island of Japan, near the east coast of Russia, during and after World War II. After the Japanese are defeated, Soviet soldiers and their families take over the island, forcing the Japanese inhabitants to live in barns and to get by on small rations of rice smuggled to them from their former military posts. At first, Junpei and his family resent the Russians, but then he and Kanta meet Tanya, the daughter of the Soviet commander who is living in what was once their home. Children being children, they soon are playing together, learning each other's language and maybe, just maybe, falling a little bit in love. But when Junpei's father is betrayed to the Soviets, Junpei blames Tanya, believing that she told her father a secret with which he had entrusted her. There are other possible suspects, but by the time Junpei learns the truth, he and all the other Japanese are being moved off the island into internment camps, far away from Tanya....

This is a really beautiful animated film, filled with both humour and loss, all told on a human scale where nobody is all-good and nobody is all-bad. One of the most affecting scenes involves the Japanese schoolchildren singing a folk song (in Japanese, of course) while in the next school room, Russian children are singing a Russian folk song; by the end of the scene, the Japanese kids are singing the Russian song and vice versa. Just one example of how this film shows the resilience of youth and the common humanity of everybody in the world. Perhaps my favourite film at Montreal's Fantasia Festival this year; a real gem.

Although it refrains from drastic standpoints and never dives into Japanese revisionism, it nevertheless does focus on the Japanese as people experiencing violence and shows only the Allies as carrying out these acts. While this is true in the setting of the story, they could at least have mentioned as the cause of all the mess the preceding Japanese war of aggression and its atrocities, even if only in a short remark.

Children just play. They dont care about skin color, race, religion. They are pure and loving. So tells the movie. Its about love, friendship, but also about loss and dreams...