KONO SEKAI NO KATASUMI NI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA DramaKono Sekai no Katasumi ni
MOVIE DramaKono Sekai no (Sara ni Ikutsumono) Katasumi ni

REVIEWS

• 

  seanny

  90/100
  As the director puts it, the film is a time capsule that portrays its setting in obsessive detail.

  I would write something about its vivid portrayal of life in the early Shōwa era, obsessed with immersive, animated detail and focused on the mundane, but director Sunao Katabuchi has made his apparent approach explicit in an interview:

  ”[Manga artist] Ms. Kouno researched everything about that era and was able to create an accurate account of what life was like back then. This was necessary because what we have come to understand about that time has changed over the years. For the anime, we did the same type of research for the same reasons. It was very important for us to recreate what people looked like at the time.

  "The important part of ‘In This Corner of the World’ was to portray everyday life. When we spoke to the elderly who lived during the war, they will tell us about the air raids and the hardest times. However, when it came to their everyday lives, they didn’t feel like that information had any value. Our generation hasn’t had the opportunity to talk with them about their everyday lives during the war. I felt that those experiences are invaluable.”

  We observe war and the Japanese Empire’s last days through the lens of suburban civilian life. Hiroshima is within reach but just hidden from view over a mountain range. Battleships such as the iconic Yamato can be seen treading water in the bay. The boys are sent to war and, like the Yamato itself, never return. The girls pick up the pieces of their shattered families amidst the hastening tempo of air raids that presage the ultimate doom.

  Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni is often criticized for its verbatim portrayal of its time period. Modern audiences expect modernity superimposed over their historical dramas as a way to right the wrongs of the past. But there’s no assertion of feminism or an explicit statement of the wrongs of the Japanese Empire (though I believe an implicit case for both is sufficiently made within the film's narrow scope). Instead, Kono Sekai is a time capsule unconcerned with our desire for historical power fantasies. Helplessness is the core of its experiential being, as it likely was.

  Yes, the women do as they are told; wedded off to unfamiliar families, severed from dreams of what could have been. Though the film is hardly without moments of happiness and beauty, the war eventually encompasses all. They scrape by in loss of limb, loved ones, livelihoods and eventually the culturally provided rationale for all their sacrifices: the dream of the Japanese Empire.

  Evangelion creator and nationalist Hideaki Anno, whose works portray the Japanese spirit overcoming American oppression (Shin Godzilla, Gunbuster), criticized the protagonist: “What a woman, doing nothing. I wanted to strangle her.”

  Unfortunately, there’s no super-robot to climb into. No way to make history as we prefer it to be. No way to give meaning to loss. History just is.

  ”[Audiences] will be able to experience the world and society that once existed in a very raw way. I’d like to think that ‘In This Corner of the World’ is like a time machine where you can experience life and a culture of a different time.”

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• 

  AhmedAlkautsar

  98/100
  TruThis is a very well done film with a distinct art-style (it is realistic but it's a reality)

  A "Slice of Life" in Kure and Hiroshima in 1940s, Involving Love, Laughter, Fantasy, Hope, and Death.

  The protagonist is a nonchalant (at least on the surface) and a bit dreamy ordinary girl who loves to draw and paint. She is raised in Hiroshima and marries into a family of a young man employed in the naval town of Kure,

  The movies goes into great detail showing the life of an ordinary family of that time. It starts as a great slice of life, of her old-style marriage with a new husband, sharing life with in-laws and communicating with neighbors. There are happy, sweet, and tender moments although the life is set in wartime, and the hardship gradually creeps into life. The relationship with the sister-in-law is a bit fictitious, but the protagonist forms a solid bond with the family and the relationship to her little niece is just beautiful.

  And I will stop there, as it would be a great spoiler.

  I will only add that air raid scenes were really terrifying, although it was not right in your face bloody. The reason why almost excessive showing of daily life was necessary becomes evident when the war becomes very personal and relate-able to the protagonist, and you are shown what war can do to people leaving emotional and physical scars. The effects of the A Bomb is not directly shown apart from a later brief horrifying scene (as the protagonist was in Kure, 30-40km away from Hiroshima), but depicted as a culmination of personal tragedies in a mass scale (if one could feel the great tormenting pain and sorrow of losing a loved one in Kure which was attacked by conventional incendiary bombings, then imagining the tragedy of hundreds of thousands lives lost in Hiroshima can evoke fear and despair without showing it right in the face).

  This is a very well done film with a distinct art-style (it is realistic but it's a reality only achieved by animation and not a photoshop production using photographs or rotoscope), thorough research in history, and passion. I don't know if this film is the best of all war films, but I think it is one of the best animated films produced dealing with war (I can't say which is better- the Grave of Fireflies, or this).

  This should be seen at theaters with a wide screen and good audio.

  I suspect we, as a majority of foreigners, expect that the bombing of Hiroshima would be the absolute worst thing to happen (I know I sure did), but it wasn't. The aftermath, of course, was another deal, but that's what I feel is so special about In This Corner of the World. It's not spectacular in the sense of being a spectacle, it's spectacular in the sense of being quietly real. We know the experience of an entire nation, more or less. We know what happened. But what we're shown is the experience of just a handful of people. It makes it personal, and it makes it special.

  And, through all the suffering you see in this film, in the end you can't help but feel a certain... hope. In the end, even after all the hard-hitting stuff you see on screen, you're left with a feeling of it gets better. You know it gets better, and you remember not just the hardships of the characters but also the message of sheer human resilience, and hope, so much of it.

  In This Corner of the World is an absolutely beautiful film. It truly is a masterpiece, for any film - animated or not, and if you have a good supply of tissues, I can not recommend it enough.

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• 

  EmmaOO

  58/100
  Mistakes I can only assume must be made due to trying to squeeze a multi volume manga into a 2 hour story

  The first half of this movie is paced like absolute shite, simultaneously rushed and drawn out to make for a confusingly boring spectacle. In a movie with limited time, every minute is important. But here, things just happen and they feel pointless because we can be in, like, May 1944 and thirty seconds later it's June. Instead of trying to max out quantity, they should've focused on quality. I would've liked more intimate focus on our characters' lives, romances, dreams, hobbies, motivation given the ordinary people in war thing this movie is going for. Suzu's marriage to "whoever that guy" could've been so stinking cute. Speaking of characters, I couldn't remember their names, except for Suzu, their importance or really any defining qualities. Suzu, the fucking protagonist, her whole character can be summed up as art and clumsy. The hell is this, Wattpad!?!??!?! She's not endearing, she's infuriating to watch and boringly stereotypical. I wanted to punch her stupid face open when she wasted the sugar in a goshdamn famine. The further I went, the further I was waiting for August Sixth to bomb the hell out of everyone.

  So I was like, they're gonna kill the kid, right? They always kill the kids in these movies. The movie was already unoriginal and generic as fuck. And I was right, they did kill the kid; it just happened a little earlier than I was expecting in the firebombs rather than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Since I wasn't attached to the brat, I felt nothing. I didn't care that everyone was sad or grieving. The whole movie at this point was just...nothing. Even still, after that lazy shock value the story was actually rather good. That's because they actually allow the story to breathe this time over. I could feel the frustration of being propagandised to think your country is so awesome and great only for them to surrender rendering all your losses meaningless. Suzu's loses her only talent, her family has been reduced to ashes. It turns into a story about grief and trying to live after unimaginable tragedy. The scene that ripped of Attack on TItan, with her just breaking down after all the shit they've been through was beautifully directed and voice acted. And the ultimate lesson that life keeps moving is beautiful.

  This could've been a great slice of life during war and post war but the during stuff is so bad that it drags the post stuff down with it.

  Disappointing.

  Side note: I don't even like Grave of Fireflies as much as everyone else but it managed to tell a more in depth story with thirty less minutes. If you like the idea of a slice of life in war: Sound of The Sky/Sora no Woto is remarkably good in that category.

  Anywho: buh-bye.

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