Barfuß Gen

You'll be surprised, this is testimony to the power of 'old style' animation, you need more than Computer Generated images to make a great film. Even with it's basic arrangements barefoot gen managed to shock me by its ability to capture all the horror, confusion and devastation delivered by the atomic bomb.

I found this movie informative but disturbing. I have heard it being described as a tragicomedy. I think this is a fitting description but just be prepared because it really does make giant leaps from the genuinely tragic and sad to light heartedness. You won't know whether to laugh or cry. Actually, you will. A little cry would be totally justified so have a hanky at the ready and don't watch it with your mates from down the pub.

I've basically pasted this from wikipedia, but since the autobiographical element to this story wasn't mentioned I thought I should post it. There is an interesting article with the artist here http://www.tcj.com/256/i_nakazawa.html (中沢 啓治, Keiji Nakazawa, born 1939) is a Japanese manga artist and writer.

He was born in Hiroshima, and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing.

In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist, and produced short pieces for manga anthologies such as Shonen Gaho, Shonen King, and Bokura.

In 1966, following the death of his mother, Nakazawa returned to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in his stories. Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain), the first of a series of five books, was a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the postwar black market. In 1972, Nakazawa chose to portray his own experience directly in the story "Ore wa Mita" ("I Saw It"), published in Monthly Shonen Jump (In 1982, the story was translated into English and published as a one-shot comic book by Educomics as "I Saw It").

Immediately after finishing "I Saw It", Nakazawa began his major work, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). This series, which eventually filled ten volumes (six volumes in English translation), was based on the same events as "I Saw It" but fictionalized, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the author. Barefoot Gen depicted the bombing and its aftermath in graphic detail, but also turned a critical eye on the militarization of Japanese society in the World War II years, and on the sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Barefoot Gen was made into an animated film, released in 1983. It was followed three years later by a sequel.

The story is excellent, the animation effective, but the lack of in-between frames is intrusive in spots. For the full story, read the graphic novels. They provide an even more effective tale.

As with Nosaka's "Grave of the Fireflies," Gen deals with a Japanese youth in the waning days of WW II. The first 30 minutes shows him to be typical for his stage of life, swinging between a self-centered boy and an adult. He is suddenly thrust into the position of head of the family after the Hiroshima bomb kills his father, brother, and sister, and destroys the city. The remainder of the movie deals with his transformation into an adult, with adult sensibilities and adult responsibilities.

Gen is clearly a Japanese story - the author, Nakazawa, lived through the event as a child. But the story could have taken place in Dresden or London just as easily. Although the atomic bomb is the event the movie revolves around, the story is really about the people - the children - and the effect the event has on their lives.

It's too bad that so much of the books had to be sacrificed to the time limits of a film. The novels delve much more deeply into the cruel society that Japan was in the 1940s. For example, much more was made of the neighbor's Korean background in the book; in the movie, you wouldn't realize the ethnicity if you didn't think about the name.

As a conventional film, Gen would probably be too honest to find real appeal in the U.S. Worse, the animation format will probably dissuade those who would otherwise see and appreciate it. Like most Japanese anime, this is not a "cartoon." It is a serious film in an unconventional - for the U.S. - medium.

The DVD transfer is excellent and belongs in your collection. This is a movie that continues to educate and enlighten with each viewing.

I have to admit it. I cried, I cried a lot while watching this masterpiece of animation. The horror of the war and the apocalypse of the atomic bomb, engulfed my eyes and my soul so deep inside. It always should be remembered: the first casualty of war is innocence. Hadashi no Gen is a masterpiece, a legacy for the whole humanity. I have read many stories and talked to some survivors from the atomic bombs and I have to say that this movie is the first one that get so poignantly close to what happened on that August, 1945. The only thing I wanted to say at the end of the movie was:"I am sorry, I am sorry that I am human and that I can be so limited...I am sorry..."

This is the sort of movie that I would rate up there with Schindler's list. Its haunting and powerful. This is also the sort of movie that I feel that every history teacher who teaches American History should show their students at some point in time. While some of the scenes do get a bit annoying, it still brings home the horrors of what occurred at the end of World War II. The other thing is the point of view, which was not "anti American" and doesn't try and place blame, which makes this all the more powerful.