Barefoot Gen


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Name:Barefoot Gen
Contains:
checked Comedyun-checked Mechschecked Drama
un-checked Violenceun-checked Shoujo 
un-checked Hentaiun-checked Explicit Sexun-checked Brief Nudity
Running Length:85 mins.
Description:

Vote Highlights Vote
Barefoot Gen
I THINK IT WAS A VERY SAD MOVIE AT TIMES (WHEN GEN'S SISTER DIES AND WHEN HIS FATHER , OLDER SITER , AND LITTLE BROTHER DIED ) . ALSO IT WAS VERY EDUCATIONAL ( BECAUSE IT TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TWO ATOM BOMBS DROPPED IN HIROSHIMA ).

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=17713


Barefoot Gen
While it's not the best manga ever from an artistic POV, hadashi no gen, or barefoot gen, is a brilliant and radical piece of Japanese history. People question why a brutal story such as this has to have a happy character to it, but that is an outsider's view... having lived in Japan for sometime and worked with a lot of kids as well as old folks who were around during the war, I find this work strikingly accurate as a portrayal of the Japanese response mechanism. In even a brutal situation, the typical Japanese response for awkwardness and distress is laughter or silliness (to my foreign eyes). Nakazawa's story is remarkable in that it isn't from a victimized-by-the-americans perspective typical of Japanese stories and attitudes surrounding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather intensly critical of the Japanese Empire. The details of Japanese life at the time and the political undertones could only have been drawn by someone who lived through the experience.

The original texts are indeed found in many junior high schools and high schools, which says a lot seeing as manga is banned pretty much unilaterally by the dictatoresque national education system which continues to uphold and reproduce a societal amnesia of Japan's involvment in the wars early in this century, and atrocities not only on much of Asia and lower class/foreign/aboriginal people of Japan, but her own (yamato) people as well.

A stark, unique telling of a brutal story, which pegs life as a child in Japan to a T. Don't watch it as fiction, this is how life was and, in some ways, still is for children in Japan. An important addition for libraries and youth centre shelves.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=17712


Barefoot Gen
Good story line, but why does it have to be a feel-good movie? Especially when nuclear bombs drop on Hirshima? A better movie to watch is Grave of the Fireflies.

Overall Rating: 7
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
By:
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=17711

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