Seita and Setsuko go off and live in an abandoned bomb shelter, where disease and hunger take their horrifying toll.

Grave Of The Fireflies is an absolutely astounding film, is what it is, and really, folks need to forget all about the Best Animated Flick Of All Ever tag and just go ahead and declare it one of the Best Flicks Ever Made, regardless of the drawings and such.

Roger Ebert knows a thing or two about it all, is the alarming development. In his rather damn good Review Of The Flick, he notes this right here; "Grave of the Fireflies doesn't attempt even the realism of The Lion King or Princess Mononoke, but paradoxically it is the most realistic animated film I've ever seen--in feeling."

He also notes, much like I did a couple paragraphs ago (I mean come on Ebert, think of your own motherfucking shit would you ever) the difference between the tear-jerking in Bambi and the effect of Fireflies; "These films exist within safe confines; they inspire tears, but not grief. Grave of the Fireflies is a powerful dramatic film that happens to be animated, and I know what the critic Ernest Rister means when he compares it to Schindler's List and says, 'It is the most profoundly human animated film I've ever seen.'"

This isn't empty hyperbole. Grave Of The Fireflies is a devastatingly beautiful, tender, scarring experience. But don't go thinking it's all blood and guts, neither. It's not. The horrors of the post-bombing clean-up are there, but almost as afterthoughts. They're in the background as Seita makes his way here and there, piles of bodies being torched, the wails of infants.

It also provides plenty of opportunities for to reflect on it all. Lingering shots of bullfrogs on a pond, of water dripping into a bucket, things you ain't ever gonna find in Aladdin 2 - Return Of Jaffar. Which is not to say that Grave Of The Fireflies is better because it deals with BIG MOTHERFUCKING ISSUES. It's the manner in which it relates these issues that elevates it up all those lists, is what. The fact that this right here is nothing more than a load of drawings going past your pupils, and yet it grips your fucking soul, makes a fella ache as the 5-year old weeps with grief and her brother tries to distract her, but also distract himself, by doing tricks on a climbing frame.