Description: Gen is a cheerful elementary school student living in Japan during World War II. After years of living with difficult wartime rationing and impoverished conditions, Gen and his family have managed to maintain a relatively normal and happy life. All that is about to change when an atomic bomb destroys their city in an instant. While Gen and his mother manage to survive the attack, the rest of their family is not so lucky. In the face of adversity, Gen manages to maintain his cheerful spirit and never loses hope that things will get better for him, and for the entire nation of Japan. Selected as one of the five best Japanese animation movies - Time Magazine
Amazon.com: Keiji Nakazawa attracted widespread attention in 1973, when he published the first installment of his semiautobiographical manga (comics), Barefoot Gen. Nakazawa was 6 years old in August 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Most of his family was killed in the blast, and the artist survived through sheer luck. Nakazawa's continuing story now fills seven volumes (nearly 2,000 pages). In addition to two animated features (also written by Nakazawa), three live-action films and an opera have been based on Gen.
Nakazawa's alter ego, Gen Nakaoka is on his way to school when the bomb detonates. He makes his way back to his home through hellish scenes of ruined buildings, corpses, and hideously mutilated survivors. Although his family is still alive, Gen and his pregnant mother are unable to free his father, sister, and brother from the rubble of their house and must leave them to burn to death. His mother goes into labor during their flight and his new sister is born amid the devastation. Holding the infant, Gen tells her to remember the horrors, so that they never occur again.
Barefoot Gen is completely unlike the musical fairy tales and slapstick comedies Americans associate with animation, but its powerful antiwar message has won admiration around the world. Barefoot Gen II follows the character through the early days of the postwar era. --Charles Solomon
Haunting Visuals Hide Badly Written Story. Barefoot Gen is at the same time a compelling visual of the horrors of war and a cheesy soap opera; a devastating tale of courage and survival and a badly written one dimensional flick. Gen can be seen as the polar opposite of the epic masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies (2-Disc Collector's Edition), for although they deal with similar subjects the way they go about doing it are completely different in both style and quality. Where Fireflies focuses on the small picture, one brother trying to care for his litter sister, Gen is bent upon showing the "big picture" of the war, the devastation that it brought upon the whole country. The difference is that in Gen, to get the desired emotional response they had to kill over 200,000 people, and when the mass deaths stopped so did the films quality; in Graves they only had to kill one, and that one death was more meaningful and more heartbreaking then all the millions of deaths in Barefoot Gen.
Gen is an energetic ten years old boy, living with his pregnant mother, his pacifist father, his overbearing older sister (about fourteen) and his loyal disciple, Shinji, whose maybe six years old. The war with America hasn't yet reached them in Hiroshima; they have food shortages, and every now and then they are rudely awakened by air raid sirens, but other than these inconveniences they are able to live their lives without the threat of being killed on a daily basis. But their mother is getting sicker, and baby in her womb is in danger of dying. Gen and Shinji take it upon themselves to find good, healthy food for her to eat. The movie is a feel good, heartwarming story about family trying its best to live their lives while their country falls apart around them.
That all changes, however, on August 6, 1945. On that fateful day Gen is on his way to school when he glances into the sky and sees a lonely B-29, the sun reflecting off its wings, flying overhead. A young girl beside him comments on how strange it is to see an American bomber all alone. Gen drops a pebble and bends down to pick it up; a moment later the sky turns white, a thunderous boom splits the air, and Gen looks on in horror as the girl who, seconds before, stood beside him took the full force of the atomic blast, her eyes melting out of their sockets, her skin instantly turning charcoal grey, skin peeling off her arms and legs. The visuals of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is almost enough to make me a pacifist, its devastation so real and unquestionably brutal that only a heartless monster could watch it and not think about how evil war is. It's all too much for anyone with a weak stomach; a small girl instantly turning into a skeletal; a baby suckling on the breasts of its already dead mother; a young boy trapped beneath the weight of his own home, screaming, pleading, for his mother to save him before the atomic fires burn him to death. A dead infant in its mothers arms; zombiefied children, transformed by the radioactive fire, shambling about in the ruble, their eyes and skin melted away, seeking out the relief of water and drowning to death once they find it. Gen survives by sheer luck, but his family isn't so fortunate. The death and sorrow of these twenty minutes of film are almost unsurpassed in film, anime or otherwise.
Unfortunately once the initial shock of the bomb subsides the weaknesses of the film return in full force, driving the memory of those twenty minutes away and forcing the viewer to suffer though another hour of bad writing, bad acting, and an overall bad war commentary. No attempt is made to make Gen into a rich, three dimensional character; he serves as a plot tool only, the eyes though which we are shown the devastation of the war, but little more. The film takes the most illogical plot turns, and the characters act and speak in ways that will make most people scratch their heads in confusion. When the filmmakers realize this, they kill someone else off, but this time the emotional impact is more like a cheesy soap opera then anything else.
Barefoot Gen is simply the cartoony version of Grave of the Fireflies. It is in every way Graves's inferior, in animation, music, character development and plot, it fails in every way to match the creative guineas of Ghiblis classic film. Those who have never see Graves might find this a breath of fresh air, but to those who have Gen will be nothing more than a cheap imitation, void of the same life and warmth which resonated so well with Graves. If not for the twenty minutes of death and suffering, this film would be nothing more than a bad war movie.
Film one; 3/5. Film 2; 2/5. Overall; 2.5/5. Rounded to three.
Replay value; low.
Heart-wrenching anime This has got to be one of the saddest animes I've ever watched. Told by a young boy during the bombing of Hiroshima, it follows his life before and after the terrible tragedy. It really shows what the Japanese went through during the aftermath without focusing on hatred towards America. There are shockingly accurate accounts of how the people died and suffered physically and emotionally, leaving nothing to the imagination. Highly recommended - a must-see!
war is hell...on children and other living things i have read all four volumes of "barefoot gen",and i must say, i was moved to tears.in my own life i have experienced war(vietnam 4/67-1068)and seen with my own eyes the havoc it can wreck on human beings.i was changed by the war in vietnam...i was set on the path to healing by "barefoot gen".i highly reccomend the books as opposed to the anime.i found the dvd version to be not nearly as hard hitting.as much as i looked forward to seeing the animated "barefoot gen",i was in the end a little disappointed to say the least.however,it has its good points!it is a good way to introduce the idea of nuclear war and holocaust to very young children.if it was as graphic as the books it would undoubtedly give them "nuclear nightmares". those are not just words,i began having nightmares of nuclear war as a child in the early fifties after viewing a film simulation of the Hiroshima bombing.and they continue to this day."barefoot gen" is one of the most powerful anti war stories ever told.make no mistake about that. read for yourself and you will see what i mean.thank you for this opportunity to express myself.arigato.
Japanese Anime Excellent movie to show kids from middle school to high school. The anime is graphic but poignant. Gives the other sides view on a awesome event in history.
Barefoot Gen very good movie based on keiji nakazawa'a experience of the A-bomb on hiroshima and he wrote this,I read three of the four graphic novels I didn't read the fourth until way after I saw the movie,I wondered why Koji and Akira weren't in the movie.I liked the characters Gen,shinji and ryuta
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