I've watched this anime for the first time yesterday night, and holy shit.
I expected to cry during the movie, and I did, but what I didn't expect was how much hatred I would feel for humans after I did. Especially after reading the opinions of people about it.
Now if you haven't watched it, the rest of this post, or rather rant, will be spoilers, but I won't use the spoiler tags for readability.
Forget this anime even exists, you will just become an emotional mess like me or out yourself as a fascist after seeing it. It's not worth it.
———
Alright.
I fucking hate the aunt. That's the one thing I didn't expect.
She is an heartless bastard. She sees kids who lost their mom, their home, their dad is on the front line, she brings them into her home, and immediately starts verbally abusing them.
She forces them to sell the kimono of their mom, take half of the rice they got from it, and she still doesn't have one ounce of empathy, and start bitching again.
When they leave, she basically says "okay" and seems relieved by it.
I couldn't help but shout "KILL THAT BITCH" to the protagonist every time I saw her face. I hope I would see her house getting burned down by American bombs, I only wanted to see this.
I went to sleep after watching it, and as soon as I woke up, I looked for the opinions of other people, mainly on reddit and the /a/ archive on desuarchive, and I was appalled by most of them.
Most people blame the boy for wanting to make his little sister happy. "He should have gotten a job and stayed with the aunt, it's wartime" they say. Absolutely heartless bastards.
If he would have stayed with the aunt, he would have inevitably strangled her in her sleep. It's wartime. People can take abuse for so long, until they snap.
It's crazy how people can see such an emotional story, where obviously the bad guys are the Japanese imperialist government who started the war in the first place, in the background, and this bunch of civilian kids have to deal with it, seeing everything getting destroyed around them, and still think "he deserved it".
It's like people desire to be abused. Would you stay with the aunt, be realistic, "shallow your pride" as they say, and get a job so she can stop verbally abusing you? The truth is people like the aunt are never satisfied, never. You will move heaven and earth, turn over every stone for them, and they will still treat you like shit. People who don't get this never had to deal with "respectable" but unpleasant family members or bosses.
I don't think (later-stage) communism is possible with people like this around. They deserve the bombs and the wars, they need to be drafted.
They will pretend to care for one second, then tell you to go defend "the nation", "freedom", "democracy", if not outright "the emperor", while they stay behind the front-line, at home, abusing the people around them.
That's why I find the ideology of Newgene dangerous, all this talk about kids maturing fast and having to work, but that's another story for another time.The only solace I have found in this is that the aunt is 3rd most hated character in anime according to a poll conducted with Japanese otakus:
https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2012/5/10/poll-japanese-fans-name-animes-most-unforgivable-charactersIt seems that it's mostly Westerners and especially Americans who believe in the just-world fallacy in this case. But the game was rigged from the start.
I've heard children laughing and having fun in the streets this morning, and I wanted to cry. This anime fucked me up.
Someone on /a/ recommended to watch 5 Centimeters per Second immediately after it, it's apparently about love, love despite distance, and I badly need something like this today.
If you made it this far, thank you for your patience, and I'm curious about your opinion as well. Cheers.