Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka - 1988)
Isao Takahata (dir.)

Nobody will confuse this animated Japanese film with a Disney cartoon. 
Grave  tells the sad story of two Japanese children orphaned by an 
Amerikan bombing raid during World War II. Left to fend for themselves, they 
slowly starve to death. However, like other films which simply try to convey 
the horrors of war -- the German films  Das Boot  and  Stalingrad 
come to mind --  Grave  makes no attempt to explain the causes of 
wars and how they can be avoided in the future. 

Because of that, MIM can't recommend the film, but we will say that it is 
more progressive in the Amerikan context than in the Japanese.  Grave  
reminds Amerikans that the firebombing of Tokyo -- to say nothing of 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- had brutal consequences for the civilian 
population, on a scale far surpassing anything Amerikans have experienced. 
It's a far cry from the jingoistic  Pearl Harbor  (2001), which 
portrayed an Amerikan raid as a great spectacle over empty warehouses, 
watched from afar by two kimono-clad women on a lazy afternoon.

In the Japanese context, Grave bolsters the prejudice that Japan was 
the victim in the war. The children's father is a naval officer, and he is 
simply portrayed as doing his duty and defending Japan. No mention is made of 
Japan's imperial ambitions in Asia and the Pacific; no discussion of the rape 
of Nanking, the occupation of Korea, etc. etc. When the older boy Seita 
learns that Japan lost the war, he weeps, not believing that the invincible 
Japanese empire could lose. Just as in the United $tates today, most children 
in Japan and Germany brought up during World War II were taught to identify 
with their militaristic governments, so there is nothing wrong with 
acknowledging this fact -- but  Grave  does so without comment. The 
scene where Seita breaks down could provoke outrage that the Japanese 
militarists twisted his mind, but it could just as easily promote nostalgia 
for the good old days when Japan had a strong navy and army.

One reviewer (out of over 100) on an internet message board argued that  
Grave  contained a subtle critique of great nation pride. If so, it was 
too subtle, as most of the other comments did not pick up on this.  Grave 
suffers from what could be called the "Mother Courage" effect. 

Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written by the German anti-
militarist Bertolt Brecht during World War II. The title character tries 
everything she can  in the context of war and capitalism  to keep her 
children alive, but by the end of the play, war has killed them all. The play 
was intended as a critique of Mother Courage and a reminder that suffering 
the horrors of war was not enough to teach people how to avoid it in the 
future. When it premiered in the rubble of Berlin after the war, however, 
audiences hailed Mother Courage as a heroic character, indicative of the 
persistence of ordinary Germans to carry on with their lives as they always 
had despite the trauma of defeat.

Although perhaps intended to challenge oppressor-nation complacency, as  
Mother Courage  was,  Grave  never goes beyond sentimental humanism.