Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni

Suzu Urano is a pure and kindhearted girl who loves to draw and keep her head in the clouds. Growing up in the outskirts of Hiroshima with her family, she is more than happy to help with her grandmother's nori business.

However, when she becomes of age, Suzu leaves her beloved home to marry Shuusaku Houjou, a man she barely knows. As she integrates into her new husband's household, the homesick bride struggles to adjust to the unfamiliar environment as the war effort extends far beyond its point of no return. When the war reaches Suzu's own backyard and peace gives way to brutality, how will she support herself and those she comes to love along the way?

Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni paints a colorful yet haunting depiction of everyday life in the years before and after World War II, showcasing the perseverance and fortitude of ordinary Japanese during one of the darkest periods of modern history.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Urano, Suzu Main

Nounen, Rena Japanese

Houjou, Shuusaku Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Kuromura, Harumi Supporting

Inaba, Natsuki Japanese

Kuromura, Keiko Supporting

Omi, Minori Japanese

Urano, Sumi Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Shiraki, Rin Supporting

Iwai, Nanase Japanese

Mizuhara, Tetsu Supporting

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Urano, Juurou Supporting

Koyama, Tsuyoshi Japanese

Doumoto Supporting

Semi, Kikuyo Japanese

Urano, Kiseno Supporting

Tsuda, Masumi Japanese

Matsuo, Ryouichirou Producer

Maki, Taro Producer

Katabuchi, Sunao Director, Sound Director, Script, Theme Song Lyrics

Kouno, Fumiyo Theme Song Lyrics, Original Creator

Reviews

Nov 23, 2016

GohanwaOkazu

Recommended

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).

I groaned in the theater as shedding tears was not enough to control my emotions. After the film finished I was in the streets with Christmas lights and happy faces around among families and friends. The world felt very ordinary yet very fragile. I kept on half-weeping on the train heading home.

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jun 25, 2020

cameronrb24

Mixed Feelings

This movie didn't leave much of an impression on me. It wasn't notably bad in area, bud it failed to really catch my attention.

The story paced was paced awkwardly, but was fine overall. Mostly slice-of-life up to about the last quarter of the film, where it shifted to more serious tone. The transitions between scenes abrupt and I'd sometimes lose track of how much time had passed.

I wasn't a big fan on the character designs, it would make some characters look at younger than they actually were. The animation was smooth though, and the backgrounds were pleasant to look at. The MC herself, Suzu, probably ... wasn't best type of character for this setting (kind of an airhead, childish) but she was serviceable.

Haven't watched many comparable animes, but I do think this was more enjoyable than Grave of the Fireflies for what it's worth. This could be worth a watch if you've been looking for WWII settings.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 25, 2017

ShrinePriest

Not Recommended

Some spoilers below, be you warned.

There are several ways in which one can engage in criticism.

There are objective determinations on which one can base their criticism. There are also criticisms that come from biases and presumptions that one as an individual have and want to see, presumptions and biases which others might not share. To some extent, there's overlap and ambiguity in the delineation between these two styles of criticism. In a trivial way, what is typically seen as objectively bad writing might not bother someone else out of apathy. For instance, a central drama or conflict which becomes resolved without any proper build up ... towards that resolving (viz., deus ex machina). In less trivial ways, individuals may share different substantive views on the moral responsibility involved with storytelling.

The issues I find most arresting about this film come more from the latter than the former, but I did want to express the idea that this film had some issues on this front: a number of scenes could have been cut without any harm done to the film's narrative integrity (if there ever was any) which served no purpose; a number of scene or shot transitions were noticeably rough (the atomic bombing scene as well as the rapid transitions in the beginning portions of the film come first to mind); there's a lot of thematic inconsistency (note the art direction, the main character's childish naivete and aloofness, in contrast to some of the darker themes later on, which aren't themselves that well developed or strongly held onto); similar to the previous point, but some of the darker themes (Suzu's depression, Suzu's wish for the war to continue) are introduced and dropped real quickly without buildup, and certainly without resolution.

On this last point I can imagine some who would disagree. They might argue that Suzu's wish for the war to continue comes from all that she's sacrificed. What Suzu has "sacrificed" for the war however isn't very clear. A lot of the labor she's performed in the film has simply been from her position as a wife in Japan in the early 20th century, much of the seriousness of her labor is further reduced by the naivete of Suzu and the lighthearted approach of the film which seems to take no interest in displaying Suzu's labor here as what would be seen today as a loss of liberty. Without having access to these grounds for Suzu's exhortations, the disagreer is forced to say that Suzu's sacrifice comes from the loss of her hand and Harumi, but Suzu's relationship with Harumi isn't well developed. In any case, the conclusion seems to be that Harumi and Suzu's hand are lost to ground Suzu's wish for continued war, which makes the point seem forced. And for what? A single scene which is completely abandoned once we've transition to the next.

What was most arresting about this film however was its glossed naivete. Our main character, Suzu, is a character without much thought or intelligence behind her. This is not a character well suited for viewing the Second World War and what it meant. As I discussed in other ways before, Suzu's naivete actually collides with the narrative at certain points. For instance, Suzu's wish for the war's continuance when she has never expressed any feeling or thought about the war or what it means. This film could have used such a character's naivete to make a point, but this film didn't seem interested in that. There was no dramatic irony in the early bits of the film when Suzu is married off and is forced to labor for her new family. The film doesn't treat this as if we, the viewer, know better about what's going on than Suzu does. It instead plays it lightheartedly.

The sharpest expression of this naivete, was the contrast between the character designs and the moral context of the film's very setting. It strikes me as not an accident that all the characters in the film are designed with childlike intimations. The film seems to wish for the viewer to view the characters as innocent children. This is a very troubling request given the moral dynamics of the Second World War, and Japan's role therein.

This may or may not have been intentional. I'd actually have a lot more respect for the film had it not only been intentional, but had it been part of a larger message or purpose. I don't view this film harshly because of some perceived immorality to it, I view it harshly because it offers no artistic or narrative contribution to the subject of Japan in the Second World War, has seriously flawed writing, all the while contributing aimlessly to a morally problematic viewpoint with contemporary ramifications.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) el_morris - Mar 12, 2017	131 replies	by -Hyunckel- »» 22 minutes ago
	Extended Version (+30 minutes of new content) premieres December 20th Zaugr - Mar 29, 2019	8 replies	by CaptainKenshiro »» Sep 26, 9:47 PM
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