Barefoot Gen 1983

The fact that this is auto biographical is terrifying and so sad. This films about a family struggling during the war in Japan, the mother is pregnant and they are having to live off rations. The family have to go in the shelter often whenever a plane flys over, but they’ve never actually been bombed. They live in Hiroshima.  When the bomb hit I said “fuck” out loud like 10 times, I’ve never had a moment during a film that’s hit me that hard, I guess that’s mostly because it’s a true story and feels like an apocalyptic horror. To be honest I cry a lot during films, but it’s mostly stuff like your name when I kinda like that I’m crying, for this film it wasn’t fun crying it was genuinely sad, that kind of thing never gets me but this did. Given that we all know what happened in Hiroshima, there was this looming sense of doom through all the happy family parts at the start. It was terrifying. Hearing the dad talk about how much he hates the war and wished it would end. How he doesn’t care if he’s called a coward or a traitor if people heard him, in fact he would be proud to be called a coward or a traitor. And then days later something unimaginable happens and he gets something that he didn’t at all deserve.  The one thing I don’t like about this film is they kind of replaced a character as they happened to bump into someone who looks exactly the same and has the same personality, I thought that was kind of dumb as in animation it literally feels like they just decided to bring this character back after killing them off. That characters death was probably the saddest moment for me through the entire film given how they were introduced and how they died, replacing the character kind of took away from the death a little. The film is based on a manga by Keiji Nakazawa, I read in another manga called “Bakuman” that barefoot gen is the greatest manga of all time. The film has a few problems, it’s a bit dated, but the story is so real and so personal. The fact that nakazawa wrote about such tragic and sad moments in his life just makes this film feel so real. When the kid has to watch his family die, the fact that’s what the author actually went through is what makes it one of the saddest films I’ve ever watched. I definitely would recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a historical true story that’ll make them kinda hate how fucked up the world is after it’s over.  8.5/10