THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE.
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I believe this is based on a biography, so they didn't have the power to chose what happens in the story but I question the decision to adapt it as a film because it's kind of dull.
The war doesn't affect this family very much and they don't have to deal with that much hardship. The father is conscripted but he comes back unharmed and discharged. Miko's death and Chitose's injury had nothing to do with the war and were just bad luck. The only depiction of wartime deprivation is Chistose's ugly canvas backpack which is hardly heartbreaking. They even keep a servant (who we see taking on most of the chores when the mother doesn't feel up to it) until they fire her over Chitose's accident.
They do lose their house, but the Korean man who told them they had to leave was right; it was bought with ill-gotten gains. After that we don't see they or the other Japanese families suffer anything except uncertainty about repatriation. It's tough to sympathize that they lose their relatively comfortable existence.
They plot to escape the Soviet occupation zone and get caught but all the Russians do is tell them to walk back, an order they simply decide to defy. Either the Russians are incompetent or they just don't care very much what these people do. Either way, they're not very threatening. Once they cross into the American occupation zone they have no trouble and they're on their way back to Japan which will shortly experience a rapid recovery from the damage of the war. Korea suffers years of war which kills millions.
I'd rather have watched a movie about "Ohana". She has to live under a foreign name and serve a family which is part of the regime trying to suppress her culture, which might be what makes her father so angry at her even though she seems to give all her wages to him for the care of her mother. She loses the job and can no longer see the child she's helped raise and become so fond of. Who knows what happens to her and her (sick) mother and father during the war? She must have fled to the south at some point, though, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to visit Japan to see Chitose's performance. This woman had a much rougher life than what Chitose and her family had to deal with. |