Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
AnimeExplorer21
I’m still sitting here with the lights off and my hands won’t stop shaking.
I thought I was prepared. I’d read the manga years ago when I was in uni, skimmed a couple history documentaries, told myself okay I know what happened in Hiroshima. I did not know. Nothing prepares you for watching it through the eyes of a kid who just wants to eat a proper meal and keep his little brother alive.
The opening is almost normal. Gen running around, arguing with his dad, the whole family trying to scrape by while the war machine keeps demanding more and more. You start caring about these people in the dumbest little ways the way Gen’s mum tries to stretch the rice, the stupid fights over who gets the last sweet potato, the neighbour who keeps saying the war will be over soon. Then the sky turns whit…
Read at the sourceOlorin666
''I am not a patriot, and father is proud of that. A war where people kill each other cannot be right. It is normal to hear that you are not a patriot, it is normal to hear that you are a coward. It is real courage to defend your life and the lives of people. Only the fight for the truth is a real battle.''
''Dad, I'm not going to fight, I'm going to live and live and live until the very end.''
There’s no need to get into politics about who’s bad and who’s good. It was ordinary people who suffered—people who had nothing to do with the war. I don’t know how anyone could remain indifferent to this story. This is a moment that completely changed Japanese culture, turned everything upside down; anime like this is necessary—it should remind us of what truly matters. This is no place for cynicis…
Read at the sourceChuy_diazz
Journey Through Madhouse, Episode 12: A Film That's a Classic.
The film is set at the end of World War II. The story shows the life of a family before, during, and after the first atomic bomb was dropped. You probably don't know this film by its title alone. I'm 100% sure you've seen a clip somewhere of the bomb exploding and burning, melting, and vaporizing the people it hits. That scene is based on this film. Aside from that moment of great impact, the rest of the story isn't as dramatic as one might expect. The film isn't about portraying the victims of the event but rather criticizing the government of the time. It shows how even before the bomb fell, people were already suffering. Jobs were scarce, wealth was unevenly distributed, and food was in short supply. At the same time, the g…
Read at the sourceHaustlaufivindi
What does the "Barefoot Gen" tell us about? About the horrors of war? Yes. About the nuclear nightmare? Also yes. However, it still seems to me that one of the main, if not the core idea of the “Gen” is the need to have your own position and be critical of the dominant social norms and standards, no matter how difficult it is. Therefore, this anime is political not only in the aspect of anti-war pathos, but also in the aspect of critical positioning of a person in relation to the authority and validity of government actions.
It seems that the key words of the film were spoken by Gen's father shortly before the bombing: "Traitor, coward... I'm proud if they want to call me those things... You know, sometimes it takes more courage not to fight than to fight, to don't want to kill when every…
Read at the sourceThatAnimeSnobRE
One of the defining features that molded anime as a medium used to be the raw depictions of violence and death. Unlike western cartoons which were seen as comedy skits or family-friendly adventures, anime could depict a lot more edgy material without restrictions. Even there, though there were still some topics the animators were having a hard time dealing with. Up until this movie the effects of the Hiroshima bombing on the people of Japan was a sort of taboo nobody was allowed to speak about openly because it was causing them big grief, plus the country was trying to recover from WW2 for a long time. They were still showing it indirectly through sci-fi in the form of Godzila, alien invasions, and huge robots leveling cities. They were their idealized fears and dreams, in a childishly und…
Read at the sourceRei_approves
Barefoot Gen opens showing the carefree yet equally tough lives of Japanese children of the 2nd world war. This is from the perspective of Gen and his family where food is scarce and Gen's mother is pregnant with a 4th child. However, most of the audience will be aware of what is lying in wait for Hiroshima which the film tries to remind you of at certain points of this waiting period. This is what perfectly builds the tension as you can guess (or at least I hope you can guess) that their lives will be sent into misery. The anime does not hold back and has one of the most harrowing nuclear bomb scenes that is seemingly realistic with the decay of lives humans and the pure horrors they are feeling shown through a memorable yet extremely disturbing visual sequence. As well as the momentary d…
Read at the sourceCorsairFrosty
*Spoiler warning!*
This movie was pure depression with a small bit of comedy. To start, the plot was really good! It went at a realistic pace, kind of building up relationship between characters, as well as getting us attached to certain characters! I feel like the timing of the bombing was perfect, but I feel like the amount of death we saw was a little much. Don't get me wrong, there was a painfully high number of people that died during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I feel like the amount of characters that were kinda "main" characters that died very early on was a little much. For example, Eiko's death and Daikichi's death wasn't that sad, because I feel like we didn't see much of them, therefore, I wasn't that sad when they died. Shinji's death on the other hand left…
Read at the sourceWazThatTL
"The light at the end of a tunnel"
This was my 2nd time rewatching it cuz I decided to do a review for it. This probably is one of my favorite anime movies of all time. Originally I read the manga on the 7TH VOLUME( I didn't have other volume pieces by the way I picked it up from a garage sale) and then decided to check other media pieces since I liked the manga alot and soon I came across Barefoot Gen the movie.
This movie was truly a rollercoaster. The moments where I was just in shock and dismay. The emotional moments where it saddened me and also put me a smile on my face. It was so well made. The characters felt satisfying and well written, the plot/story was interesting with great pacing. The art and sound didn't bother me that much and it was pretty easy to ignore if you were capt…
Read at the sourceLIQfilms
I’m sure everyone who has had to endure mandatory secondary education has, at one point, been so bored that they entertained the idea of jumping out of the classroom window and to their death to escape their current obligations. For me, that intense level of boredom manifested itself every Thursday afternoon in my religious education class. Three hours of back-to-back religious study with a teacher who would frequently go on unprovoked tangents about her divorced husband and distancing relationship with her children. And the people who I was forced to sit with weren’t much better either. To my left was a girl who had hair so greasy that you could have fried eggs off of it for an entire city and to my right was a boy with such pungent body odor that during Winter I purposely tried to get a…
Read at the sourceMakingAList
Barefoot Gen is one of THE war films to see.
If you thought Grave of the Fireflies was brutal, watch this. Don't let it's "cute" artstyle fool you. It contains gross, graphic, heart-wrenching scenes throughout the film. Scenes that show the true horrors and hardships of the Japanese people after the bombing of Hiroshima, written from the personal experiences of a survivor himself. The part where the bomb is actually dropped on the city is my favorite depiction of the bombing from any film. (However, I'll admit I haven't seen too many war films.) It isn't for the faint of heart. And that's one of the reasons I love it. There's not much it's afraid to say or show, even about the different ways in which Japan mishandled the whole situation. This movie shows you how it really was and drives ho…
Read at the sourceOptigisa
This movie talks about, shows and documents to the viewer the harsh reality of the Japanese people living in Hiroshima during the year of 1945. Now where have I seen this concept done before? That's right. This movie was so influential to the point where it influenced Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies. When you influence a studio as illustrious as Ghibli, you must be doing something right at the very least. Barefoot Gen did many things right to say the least.
The movie opens up on a bright note, beginning with a father and his two boys, Gen, the protagonist of the movie, and Shinji, his younger brother. The opening of this movie is so positive to the point where I was bobbing my head to the catchy opening song, and thinking "Yup, this is definitely going downhill from here."
It beg…
Read at the sourceinfinite_Fiend
I hate non fiction. I think when people make non fiction works it is usually because the staff is too scared to take a risk with something creative and just fall back on a script that can’t be bad because it actually happened in real life. I mean let's all go watch Lincoln (2012)! It can’t be bad since it actually happened, am I right? Nevermind the fact that the film was boring AF. Or let’s watch Goodfellas! It might be boring slice of life with Gangsters, but it ends with text on screen proving that it’s true so easily 10/10. What I am getting at is non-fiction tend to be uncreative, boring time wasters--either will little thematic depth to keep engagement or too much and comes off as preachy. And as a self-proclaimed film analyzer, what I value most in works are its concepts, creativity…
Read at the sourceSidewinder51
Rate an 8
English Dubbed
Plot
The main character's dad said it best when he referenced any war is a foolish one. We all have our reasons to fight. Each reason can lead to a truly evil result. In the end we just want want the others want. To be able to live and be happy. Sadly, given overpopulation and a world filled with tons of past mistakes since there is no reset button in reality it will never be easy. So, why is it we celebrate those who wish to bare arms to protect us? When all they really are doing are protecting themselves and hurting others. Something to think about that came to mind during that crucial moment in this anime movie.
In terms of the introduction i was happy. Not only did one get proper education of the current scenario but an idea of what is to come.
Same could a…
Read at the sourceVaenny
War reaps benefit to no one. It does not prove who's right, only who's left. And i understood these sayings even more when I watched this film. Barefoot Gen was an eye-opener, especially to the young generation who had never experienced war.
Now, I understand that this is a very old film (as proven by the art on the cover), but if you look past that, you'll see that the story, characters and emotions emitted by each of them are timeless and undying. Not only did it serve as the message that war brings hell on earth, but also showed the reality of history: that these events did happen and that people suffered greatly.
But underneath that darkness and despair laid a small ray of hope: that being Gen himself. He emitted so much hope despite living in a relentless environment. When everyone…
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Overview:
Barefoot Gen is in my opinion one of the most underrated anime on this site. In the West, it is completely overshadowed by Grave of the Firefly, which is unfortunate because in many ways Gen is actually the superior film! In this review I will be not only looking at Gen, but comparing it to its much more famous and critically lauded brother Grave of the Firefly (Hotaru no Haka).
SPOILERS!
Pacing and characters:
Barefoot Gen opens by showing the main character, a little boy named Gen, along with his family. Gen has a little brother named Shinji, an elder sister Eiko, a father, and a mother who is currently in the late stages of pregnancy. Barefoot Gen shows the family trying to keep their chins up and appreciate the small joys left in life despite the food shortages and the l…
Read at the sourceDr_Spade
Gen is a little boy who lives in Hiroshima in Japan along with his father,little brother,Shinji,elder sister,Eiko,and mother,Kimie,who is pregnant and about to give birth soon.The backdrop is the ongoing Second World War and the year is 1945,the year the world came to a still.The city of Hiroshima is suffering from severe scarcity of even basic food like rice and also medicines and other such necessary commodities of life.Even then,Gen and Shinji are two boys with magnanimous spirits who live life king-size even in the face of adversity.They were a happy family with every one taking care of the others and working hard together to make ends meet.The common goal of the other members of the family was to look after Kimie,Gen's mother,so that she could painlessly give birth to a healthy baby.…
Read at the sourceSporadicToast
The problem with textbooks when they talk about the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that they lack description of what really happened. Usually it just says the "bombing which ended the Second World War" but doesn't get more in-depth than that. What I love about Hadashi no Gen is that it shows the bombings to the perspective of a person living there. So you could correlate and feel empathy to each other.
Basically, this movie makes it feel like your own hometown was bombed the atomic blast, what would you feel of that?
From the disastrous air raids before the bombing, to the lone bomber that dropped the bomb which ended the war. From the seconds after the appearance of the mushroom clouds, to the broadcasted capitulation of the Empire of Japan, this is a show that truly showed the…
Read at the sourceNeonKazma
Barefoot Gen... Well, what can I say? It's one of the most important anime films in history, along side with Akira. It became famous for it's dark and brutal take on the bombings of Hiroshima, which was based on the manga by Keiji Nakazawa who wrote this manga based on his experience as a Hiroshima survivor when he was 6 years old and it is still the most harrowing experience ever witnessed on an anime film.
Barefoot Gen takes place in Hiroshima, as we see Gen and Shinji live with his family and working their very best to help them in a time of need, since the bombings destroyed half of Japan's cities in the war. Gen and their family lived the good life until that fateful day when the bomb, created by American WWII scientists, was dropped in Hiroshima and everyone got burned through radia…
Read at the sourceggultra2764
Barefoot Gen paints a realistic and graphic look at the damage to Hiroshima during and after the dropping of an American atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. The movie doesn't hold back any punches in depicting the horrific reality of the situation as homes are destroyed; hundreds of thousands of people are either dead, homeless or suffering serious health problems from the radiation of the bomb; military personnel are around to pick up corpses and tend to those who can be saved; and water and food supplies are contaminated thanks to radiation exposure. Seeing villagers being fried to a crisp from the atomic bomb and the countless burnt corpses in the aftermath made for some of the most disturbing material I've seen in an anime and this is saying something when I've seen titles like Elfen Lied a…
Read at the sourceDonwun
Note: In this review I will be talking about both Barefoot Gen (1983) & Barefoot Gen 2 (1986) in every respect even though there is a 3 year gap in production between the two movies I don’t really feel there is much of a difference with anything in particular. In many ways both films would have worked better a single release. This would have made more sense as the two movies address two different aspects of the given situation. Also considering the subject matter is quite difficult for many to digest I actually feel having the two films separate has hindered the second movie.
Using animation to tell this somewot autobiographical account of the Hiroshima disaster personifies the unique tool animation can be to tell a story. Although stories like this which are based on true events will al…
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