Grave of the Fireflies
is a 1988 Japanese animated war film written and directed by Isao Takahata. It stars the voices of Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, , and . Based on Akiyuki Nosaka's 1967 semi-autobiographical short story of the same name, the film is set in Kobe shortly after its bombing by the U.S. Army Air Forces, and follows two orphaned siblings who desperately struggle to survive during the final months of the Pacific War.
Plot
In March 1945, American bombers destroy most of Kobe during the waning days of the Pacific War. Seita and his sister Setsuko, children of an Imperial Japanese Navy captain, survive, but their mother dies. She is cremated in a mass grave outside and Seita is seen carrying a small wooden box containing her ashes. Seita conceals their mother's death from Setsuko. The siblings move in with an aunt. He hides his mother's box of ashes in the garden. Seita retrieves a supply cache he buried before the bombing and gives everything to his aunt, save for a tin of Sakuma drops, which he gives to Setsuko. The aunt convinces Seita to sell his mother's silk kimonos for rice, which devastates Setsuko.