That candy box. Sakuma drops. By the end, it becomes a funerary urn. You will never look at a tin of hard candy the same way again.

The film opens with a gut-punch of honesty. We see Seita’s ghost, starving and covered in sores, waiting for death in a Sannomiya train station. We know how it ends before the story even begins. The rest of the movie is a slow, agonizing walk toward that inevitability.

Most war films give you a clear villain. Grave of the Fireflies refuses. The American B-29 bombers are faceless; the wartime government is absent. The true antagonist is pride.