barefoot gen

  The never-fall option is to open a critique with a compliment – barefoot gen

If you want to make others feel a sense of relief, you need to depict a nervous and suffocating scene. If you want to make others sad and desperate, you need to depict a very beautiful scene. 

So it is for this animation. In the previous 30 minutes, it tries its best to present war which makes the people at the back side starve and hard to survive, but it also presents the gloriousness of life by the depiction of a family with optimistic view towards life in the hard time. However, when the viewers have established a 100% good feeling for those optimistic and strong willed people and wish they could happily live on; the director arranged the launch of that lethal atomic bomb. 

The helplessness and desperation for the death of a family before the eyes is hurtful for the viewers. However, this animation conceals the strong emotion in the soft narration, the excessively direct propaganda will make people bored, the family and home of the author were destructed by the explosion of the nuclear bomb, he must be resentful to the atomic bomb. However, the author did not present this idea directly to the viewers; instead, he just depicted the normal life, the true history for the viewers to seek for the answer from the destruction of normal life. 

The most impressive dialogue in the last section. 

“Dad, when can we be full for food?” 

“After the end of the war.” 

“When will the war be ended?” 

“The war should already be ended, Japan failed already.” 

“Then why are we still fighting?”

“Because our government is sick.”