The Grave of the Fireflies is a story about an orphaned war victim, a ragged teenager, lying on his dying breath in a station where people come and go, slowly approaching the end of his short life at the age of fourteen, a little more than a month after the defeat of the war in Japan.
The air raids began, and his mother died in the bombing. In the face of the sudden shock, all his brother could do was to keep the news of his mother's death from his young sister. In the empty square, the brother smiled strongly and performed the bar for his sister who was crying for her mother, and the two thin figures looked so thin under the setting sun. Perhaps it was at that moment that the older brother tried to carry all the grief and decided to hold up a clear sky for his sister in the chaos of the ruins.
The siblings had to go to their relatives. However, the war has alienated family ties, and material poverty has made people even more indifferent to each other. More and more blank stares and less and less rice in their bowls suggest that they must leave. The brother finally decides to move away with his sister to build a home of his own. But while singing a song and leaving happily, he could not have predicted the irreversible and tragic fate due to that war.
In order to keep his sister from starving, his brother had to risk his life to steal while the airplanes were bombing. Whenever he found some food in an empty house, he was overwhelmed with excitement.
In the darkness of an abandoned cave, his brother caught fireflies into a mosquito net, which danced brightly in the sweltering summer night. The older brother holds his sleeping sister close to him, afraid that if he lets go, he will lose her again.
Expanded:
Character Profiles -
1. Seita
A 14-year-old boy who loses his home and mother after the Great Kobe Air Raid and goes to live with a distant relative with his young sister. Afterward, he and his younger sister leave to live in a bomb shelter near a riverbank because they can't bear to be counted out at the family home.
2. Setsuko
Setsuko
Age 4, Seita's younger sister. After losing her home and mother in the Kobe Air Raid, she went to live with her brother Kiyota at a distant relative's house. After moving away from her brother to live in a bomb shelter, she died of malnutrition.
3. Seita's mother
A woman with a heart condition who died of burns all over her body during the Kobe Air Raid.
4. Jiro Horikoshi
Jiro Horikoshi, who was born in an isolated countryside, had a strong interest in airplanes from a young age and dreamed of "making his own airplane". 24-year-old Jiro Horikoshi graduated from the Department of Aeronautics of the Tokyo Imperial University with the first class honors, and then joined Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
5. Romuska
Ska Paul Uru Laputa. Another descendant of the royal family of Laputa, but also the government's intelligence agency agents, military rank is a colonel, very ambitious and know the secrets of Laputa, pistol shooting technology is quite excellent.