Grave of the Fireflies: BFI Film Classics
Ebook
Overview
On its release in 1988, Grave of the Fireflies riveted audiences with its uncompromising drama. Directed by Isao Takahata at Studio Ghibli and based on an autobiographical story by Akiyuki Nosaka, the story of two Japanese children struggling to survive in the dying days of the Second World War unfolds with a gritty realism unprecedented in animation. Grave of the Fireflies has since been hailed as a classic of both anime and war cinema. In 2018, USA Today ranked it the greatest animated film of all time.
Yet Ghibli’s sombre masterpiece remains little analysed outside Japan, even as its meaning is fiercely contested - Takahata himself lamented that few had grasped his message. In the first book-length study of the film in English, Alex Dudok de Wit explores its themes, visual devices and groundbreaking use of animation, as well as the political context in which it was made. Drawing on untranslated accounts by the film’s crew, he also describes its troubled production, which almost spelt disaster for Takahata and his studio.
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) is a Studio Ghibli masterpiece. In this book, author Alex Dudok de Wit analyses the film’s pioneering use of animation and the nuanced treatment of its subject that earned it ‘classic’ status.
A part of the renowned BFI Film Classics series
Studio Ghibli films often feature in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses on animation or Japanese cinema
Studio Ghibli has a massive global following
This is the first book in English to focus on Grave of the Fireflies and Takahata
The book draws on untranslated Japanese sources
Acknowledgments and Author’s Note
Introduction: Japanese Suffering, Japanese Guilt
The Production: A Monster and a Grave
The Film: The Lovers’ Journey
The Legacy: A Rethinking of Animation
Notes
Credits
A little jewel of a book, concise, lucid, informative, moving.
Alex Dudok de Wit provides a valuable service to Japanese animation studies by writing the first book-length analysis in English of Grave of the Fireflies. Let us hope it will pave the way for similar scholarship to follow on other anime films.
For readers to now have access to this detailed, well-written and richly illustrated companion guide to the film is without doubt a boon to both future generations of moviegoers and scholars of animation - thought provoking in all the right ways.
A thoroughly interesting, enlightening read… Alex Dudok de Wit has done this challenging film a real justice.
Extremely well researched… Insightful.
Alex Dudok de Wit’s impactful BFI monograph grapples with the Ghibli stunner’s intended socio-political message – and whether it has been washed away by audiences’ tears. Plus tense tales of missed production deadlines.
- Title: Grave of the Fireflies
- Author: Alex Dudok de Wit
- Series: BFI Film Classics
- Publisher: British Film Institute
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 104
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781838719258, 9781838719241, 1838719245, 1838719253
- Resource ID: LLS:9781838719258
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:15:25Z
Alex Dudok de Wit is the Associate Editor at Cartoon Brew. He is an animation correspondent for Sight & Sound. His writing has also appeared in Vulture, Little White Lies, The Telegraph, The i, The Independent, Time Out, Index on Censorship and elsewhere, including specialist animation publications like Skwigly and ASIFA Magazine. He also translates from Japanese as part of Art Translators Collective. He is based in London, UK.