Fireflies are seen as interesting insects because of their ability to glow up at night. Even though they seem like pretty cool bugs, its sad to say that they only live for a short period of time. In the anime Graves of the Fireflies, the two main characters are symbolic to the insects. Seita and Setsuko are brother and sister that are caught up in World War II. Although things were bad in Japan, like random air raids, they were able to handle themselves along with their mother. However, this only lasted until the mother of the two children past away. In the mist of all of this chaos, Seita immediately realized that he had to step up and become a little more mature for his sister. He does this by trying to provide what he can for her while staying with their aunt. Even though an aunt is not an immediate relative, they should show compassion and love towards their nephews and nieces, just like all other family members should. This has to be true especially if the aunt is the only family member available to take care of them. However in the anime, that wasn’t the case. The two children’s aunt was okay with looking after them at first, but when she found out her sister died, her behavior changed. She started feeding them less food and verbally abuses them. For example, she would call them lazy. After getting fed up with her, the Seita decides to move out. He and Setsuko moves into a cave like shelter. Living by themselves, this gave them the aspect of immortality. They had it mad for awhile, until getting food was hard to do. They tried to make due of what they had and became creative. In one scene, Seita actually tried to steal food from a farmer. He failed miserably, but just the fact that he tried, showed how badly they needed food. Food definitely became a must once Setsuko became ill. Seita did everything he could for her, but in the end she died. Unlike their mother’s death, the two children death was unique because they resembled the fireflies because they didn’t live long either.
I like the relationship between the fireflies and the siblings. Their lives were also very beautiful from what we saw in the film, but not in a physical way. Their lives before death was actually very grotesque and hectic in the physical sense, but their love for each other and the way they convey it was very beautiful in an abstract way. The hardships they endured for each other in the short time of their life was amazing. For such small children to take up the responsibility of "life", this truly demonstrated "mono no aware".
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