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Zac wrote:

This review is based on an early screener copy provided by Funimation, not the final disc - as such there are no remarks on the bluray copy, and the review was labeled in error. Sorry about that. I've changed the title of the review to reflect that, and we'll send the Bluray to Mike (which just arrived yesterday) for an additional paragraph about the video quality. We'll update once that goes live, which is common practice for reviews like this.

I very much appreciate the clarification, Zac. Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I hope I didn't come across as too critical, as I did genuinely enjoy Mike's article.

Got it in the mail yesterday looking forward to seing it !!!
Still wondering why Funimation got out out of anyone i can think of ?

En route from Amazon as I write.

When I sit down to watch Momotaro, I think I've found the right frame of mind...sort of a cross between watching D.W. Griffith's monumental but repellent Birth of a Nation and Disney's Snow White--in short, as a historical and cultural artifact, a filmmaking achievement completely welded to its time, place, and purpose.

(Where I'm coming from: I hold degrees in history and political science, my father's WWII victory medal is mounted behind me, and my father-in-law (still with us!) fought two years in the Pacific.)

dragonrider_cody wrote:

I will give you that point. I've seen anime fans go on and on about the fire bombings in Tokyo and Kyoto, the nuclear drops, and everything else, but completely gloss over Japan's transgressions in the war. Though admittedly, the US didn't suffer the worst of those

Correct me if im wrong but Kyoto is know as the only major Japanese city spared from large scale bombing. Is a tourist spot were there are many pre war buildings because only small scale bombing happened.

Tokyo, Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Sendai suffer major fire bombings, but Kyoto was spared.

Kikaioh wrote:

I realize for many on this forum it seems like a long-distant past, but there are still WWII veterans out there today (I guess, who are unfortunately being forgotten), and I would think for a professional review, it would be more appropriate to be conscientious when discussing something as particular as a war propaganda film.

Personally, I think it's somewhat patronizing to imply that men who risked their lives in one of human history's most devastating conflicts would suddenly get their knickers in a twist over some sarcasm, especially when we're talking about a review of a propaganda cartoon. What, you think it never occurred to our soldiers that the Japanese maybe didn't like them?

Then again, I'm not a WW II vet, so I can't really say.

Jonny Mendes wrote:

dragonrider_cody wrote:

I will give you that point. I've seen anime fans go on and on about the fire bombings in Tokyo and Kyoto, the nuclear drops, and everything else, but completely gloss over Japan's transgressions in the war. Though admittedly, the US didn't suffer the worst of those

Correct me if im wrong but Kyoto is know as the only major Japanese city spared from large scale bombing. Is a tourist spot were there are many pre war buildings because only small scale bombing happened.

Tokyo, Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Sendai suffer major fire bombings, but Kyoto was spared.

You're right about Kyoto. It was one of a short list of cities spared bombing so that when the atomic bomb was dropped on any of them, the effects could be clearly seen. Truman took Kyoto off the a-bomb list under the advice of Secretary of War Stimson, who understood Kyoto's cultural importance, and it was replaced by Nagasaki.

dragonrider_cody wrote:

I will give you that point. I've seen anime fans go on and on about the fire bombings in Tokyo and Kyoto, the nuclear drops, and everything else, but completely gloss over Japan's transgressions in the war. Though admittedly, the US didn't suffer the worst of those.

And I really appreciate that you can separate Grave of the Fireflies from propaganda films. It was very clearly a film from a civilian perspective, and could have very easily been told in a European or Chinese setting as well. I see a lot of comments that dismiss it as "proganda" or "ignoring history", but that's not the point.

I can also understand the reaction. My hospital has extensive mental health services, including several inpatient care units. I regularly see Vietnam vets who were drafted despite lengthy mental and physical illnesses. So when I see politicians who got deferrals for "heal spurs" or "flat arches" because of connections, and a certain 70's one hit wonder who faked a mental illness to dodge the draft, I tend to lose my cool much more than you did. Wink

Yes, it sometimes does seem to be a one-sided viewpoint in the anime fandom, and it can bother me at times. Imperial Japan's conquest of the Pacific and their actions in the second Sino-Japanese war and WWII demonstrated a terrible brutality towards humanity. True, the nuclear equation that the US introduced is frightening in its scale and its historic ramifications, but war is always terrible on both sides of the conflict. I guess I just wish some people were a bit more inclined to separate their fandom from affecting their understanding of the full history.

Grave of the Fireflies is a terrible tragedy. The reality of war is that civilians and soldiers, regardless of country, often become the victims of political circumstance. That's part of what can make war so difficult for soldiers, that realization of the human-ness of the opposition, and the senselessness of conflict in the first place.

The way Vietnam was handled, both politically and culturally, was awful. There's a reason so many of our veterans live homeless on the streets, and it's disheartening how many Americans don't care about the hardships our vets are experiencing.

BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:

Personally, I think it's somewhat patronizing to imply that men who risked their lives in one of human history's most devastating conflicts would suddenly get their knickers in a twist over some sarcasm, especially when we're talking about a review of a propaganda cartoon. What, you think it never occurred to our soldiers that the Japanese maybe didn't like them?

You might be surprised that vets can be emotionally fragile people. My father was tough as nails, on the surface at least, and wouldn't think twice about slicing someone's throat (even mine) in an instant. But a lot of times, there's intense emotional scarring at the root of it, and because of society's "man up" culture, many times it never heals. They used to call it shell-shock, and then PTSD, but I prefer the "wounded soul" terminology that some have been using. Many vets have seen the distinction between life and death blurred in ways that regular civilians aren't often able to comprehend. They know what it's like to be so frightened, that they swear they felt their souls fleeing from their own body to escape the hell around them. I've seen a man in tears, recounting in slow-motion the moment he stabbed an enemy combatant out in the field. Those experiences are more emotionally traumatic than you might offhand think.

And I think part of the problem for vets, oftentimes, is a feeling that the society they're sworn to serve, doesn't try to empathize or understand their experience, or help them to recover from it. For some soldiers, offhand sarcastic criticism might just be another numbing reminder of that disconnect between military and civilian life.

Jonny Mendes wrote:

dragonrider_cody wrote:

I will give you that point. I've seen anime fans go on and on about the fire bombings in Tokyo and Kyoto, the nuclear drops, and everything else, but completely gloss over Japan's transgressions in the war. Though admittedly, the US didn't suffer the worst of those

Correct me if im wrong but Kyoto is know as the only major Japanese city spared from large scale bombing. Is a tourist spot were there are many pre war buildings because only small scale bombing happened.

Tokyo, Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Sendai suffer major fire bombings, but Kyoto was spared.

You're correct, I believe. I'm a bit under the weather this week, so I blame
The cold medicine. Wink

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mr Toole for this! I have been wanting to see this for years and if not for this, I might have missed it's release. About the Bear, following the naming of Saru(monkey)-kichi, Kiji(Japanese Pheasant)-kichi and Wan(bark)-kichi I'll vote Kuma(bear)-kichi. I liked the article and am not offended in the least about the "sounds like the good old USA" remark as people are entitled to their opinions, though I hope Mike isn't among revisionist historians who spread the ridiculous concept that the US forced Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor so the US would have an excuse to fight a war. If so, I haven't noticed in his other reviews.

dragonrider_cody wrote:

Jonny Mendes wrote:

dragonrider_cody wrote:

I will give you that point. I've seen anime fans go on and on about the fire bombings in Tokyo and Kyoto, the nuclear drops, and everything else, but completely gloss over Japan's transgressions in the war. Though admittedly, the US didn't suffer the worst of those

Correct me if im wrong but Kyoto is know as the only major Japanese city spared from large scale bombing. Is a tourist spot were there are many pre war buildings because only small scale bombing happened.

Tokyo, Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Sendai suffer major fire bombings, but Kyoto was spared.

You're correct, I believe. I'm a bit under the weather this week, so I blame
The cold medicine. Wink

Sorry to hear that. Hope you get better soon.

@Kikaioh, I don't think he's being disrespectful so much as flippant. Yes, the servicemen who served in the Pacific deserve respect. They fought well and hard, but the character og the Pacific theater was less liberation and more mass destruction. The war in Europe was, for the most part, conducted nobly on the US side. Considerations were made for avoiding civilian casualties when possible. German and Italian soldiers were, aside from a few incidents, shown mercy and treated as equals and defeated warriors...more importantly, as humans.

The war in Asia was treated by the US like pest control. Japanese were dehuannized. After Guadalcanal, trophy taking as in human teeth and skulls striopped from corpses, became a widespread army problem. Little thought was paid to how the Island Hopping campaign and war against Japanese merchant ships would affect the non-military islanders also being isolated. And the air raids were almost never under a military pretext. At least US daylight raids over Europe could claim military intentions. Their were no significant military resources in the firebombed or nuked Japanese cities. The goal of the B29 raids were to kill Japanese civilians in horrific ways--true terror bombing, as Hitler practiced against the UK--not warfare. They may have SERVED honorably, but even as someone who had a grandfather serve in the Pacific, it's hard to call men who burned 88,000 civilians to death in one night heroes.

On another note, as an American history teacher, the trend towards military hero worship scares me. There are a great many American heroes, men who fought with honor in the name of democracy. But that doesn't mean every military action is or should be seen as heroic. There are plenty of bad men and bad intentions in any war, and US soldiers aren't exempt.

Kikaioh wrote:

Quote:

...just wrecking the shit out of everything, all while insisting, “This is just our culture.” Yep, sounds like the good old USA, alright

...it just comes across as disrespectful, or at least, insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are still alive today that fought in the war. I mean, maybe Mike doesn't realize it, but his statement implies that US soldiers went to the Pacific, wrecking "the shit out of everything" under the pretense of "this is just our culture".

I think by leaving out the context, you're misinterpreting what he was being flippant (or more accurately, darkly humorous) about. Read in context, "The film tells us so, courtesy of an engrossing, shadowy depiction of crafty, conniving western traders bellying up to friendly island countries, promising trade and prosperity, and then just wrecking the shit out of everything, all while insisting, 'This is just our culture.' Yep, sounds like the good old USA, alright," points the finger at US business interests rather than the military war effort, and it's hard to deny that the US had and still has a pretty atrocious record of ignoring the welfare of the locals when moving in on some resource it wants.

That turned out to be possibly the longest sentence I've ever written. Smile

@SpartanSlayer64: LOL actually, one of the first definitions for "flippant" is "frivolously disrespectful", so maybe that's not quite the word you were looking for.

I certainly can see how the US could have been more brazen in their confrontation with Japan in the Pacific than they were on the European front. I would imagine that long-standing politics, economics, familial heritage and even race, played a part in US discretion when it came to their wartime strategies in Europe compared to Japan.

But I do think there's a larger context to the US approach to the Pacific theater than just "pest control", which maybe sounds a bit too reductionist, and makes it seem like the US perception of Japan during the war was trivial. After all, the war started with Japan's imperialist expansion in the Pacific along with their war against China. Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 also led to Germany and Italy declaring war on the United States, which had previously been trying to hold back from becoming directly involved in WWII. So there's an element of retribution against Japan that wasn't quite there when it came to the US involvement in Europe.

But not just that --- only a few years prior, Japan had committed the Nanking Massacre, an event of mass looting, rape and murder of civilians and POWs in the capital of China, with death tolls estimated at upwards of 300,000 lives lost. The Emperor even approved the scorched-earth policy known as "Three Alls" in China, to "burn all, kill all and loot all." Some estimates suggest that several million Chinese citizens were killed by Japan in the war, and other events such as the Manila and Kalagong massacres, as well as the Bataan Death March, paint a very dark picture of Japan's military aggression in the Pacific. I can imagine the fact that Japan didn't ratify (or faithfully follow) the Geneva Convention likely didn't garner them as much mercy in the war either.

That isn't to say the United States didn't commit atrocities either. Oftentimes it's the case that "the winner writes the history books", and the transgressions of our military forces in the Pacific have almost certainly been downplayed in comparison. But my overall point is that the Japanese involvement in the war can't be painted with simple brush strokes, or made to seem like they were one-sidedly the victims of US aggression.

And I agree, the military shouldn't be worshiped. There's nothing divine about war. Many vets will be the first to tell you that they aren't heroes, and there's often a greyness to the patriotism and morality of combat that exists on both sides of almost any conflict. That said, in the US at least, the military is at the country's service, which is inherently expressed by the President (a civilian) being the Commander in Chief. Whether US citizens like it or not, we all have some responsibility for what our country involves our military in, and we should have a certain degree of gratitude towards our young men and women for willingly putting their lives on the line to face hell-on-earth on our behalf. Certainly that doesn't excuse them their transgressions, but we should at least be conscientious of their sacrifices.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

I think by leaving out the context, you're misinterpreting what he was being flippant (or more accurately, darkly humorous) about. Read in context, "The film tells us so, courtesy of an engrossing, shadowy depiction of crafty, conniving western traders bellying up to friendly island countries, promising trade and prosperity, and then just wrecking the shit out of everything, all while insisting, 'This is just our culture.' Yep, sounds like the good old USA, alright," points the finger at US business interests rather than the military war effort, and it's hard to deny that the US had and still has a pretty atrocious record of ignoring the welfare of the locals when moving in on some resource it wants.

I didn't exactly interpret it the way you're suggesting, since in the context of the real war, it wouldn't seem like "western traders" would be the ones "wrecking the shit out of everything", in-so-much as their respective militaries. Maybe the way it's showcased in the movie is more simplified (?) and reduces the western traders to be both businesses and combatants at the same time, in which case that might help ease the impact of Mike's phrasing a bit. I guess it's just hard to parse his meaning at times --- after all, Japan started the war in the Pacific (years before even US military involvement) largely to increase their access to natural resources, so maybe it comes across as a bit odd to single out the US as "wrecking the shit out of everything".

Kikaioh wrote:

it comes across as a bit odd to single out the US as "wrecking the shit out of everything".

I think the reviewer didn't understood what he was seeing at all. Aside of last couple of seconds this movie has no anti-American message whatsoever.

In the 3rd part of the movie we are introduced to island of Celebes which was colonized by greedy Dutch until Momotarō comes to liberate the place (this happened in real world in 1942 when Japanese invaded Indonesia). This was justified in the 2nd part of the movie when gang is in some tropical island and we can see the benevolent Japanese troops providing the natives the necessities of life and education reflecting how Japanese are the better masters to Asian folks who otherwise would be unable to take care of themselves. First part of the movie was a promise to Japanese at home who were suffering and dying under firebombings that peaceful and beautiful future lies ahead of them and the message was so strong that it is said that certain 17-year-old boy named Osamu Tezuka was moved to tears when watching the movie.

So the movie was about the greatness of Japan and compassion of its people, and it is testament to the skills of Mitsuyo Seo how he managed to hide under the cover of a propaganda film some actual human feelings. If you want to see Seo at his non-propaganda best I would suggest watching Ari-chan which you will conveniently find in the National Film Center collection here.

Those interested in truly blatant propaganda can watch e.g. Omocha Bako Series Dai 3 Wa: Ehon 1936-nen and if you are interested in colonial views you would find Bōken Dankichi -anime adaptations rather interesting.

I think a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that portrays or comments on WWII as something other than, for lack of a better term, The Worst Thing Ever. I'm not going to argue whether or not they are justified, but letting that view dominate can narrow the scope of the stories than can be told. I thought the anger surrounding The Wind Rises was needless because the actual movie's view on the war was somewhere between Anti-War and Neutral.

I'll admit Mike's less-than-academic tone isn't for everyone, but I'm not going to dig further for perceived slights.

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