Product Details

• Actors: Issei Miyazaki, Masaki Kôda, Seiko Nakano, Takao Inoue, Yoshie Shimamura
• Format: NTSC
• Studio: Orion Home Video
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303523072
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,076 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will make you Cry, June 8, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Barefoot Gen (DVD)

I watched this movie in a class one day and it almost made me cry. A story about the bombing of Hiroshima, a boy escapes the effect of an etomic bomb by a stroke of luck! Watching his father, sister and brothe die in their burning house, he and his pregnant mother a forced to live on the streets. Things don't go to plan when his mother goes into labor with no docters around and is forced to give birth by themselves. Dying of poor health, he and his new friends are forced to get a job to buy milk but something goes horribly wrong. This movie is moving and touching and I highly reccomend it to those that don't mind a few graphics and violence. Five stars all the way!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gotta get 'Gen', February 27, 2001

By 

Jerrod Maruyama "mediaboy" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barefoot Gen (DVD)

Few animated films can be comfortablly labeled "important". Mamoru Shinzaki's "Barefoot Gen" is, without a doubt, one of these films. Based on Keiji Nakazawa's poignant graphic novel, the film tells the story of a family and how their lives are affected by the atomic bomb dropped on Hisroshima in 1945. Shinzaki perfectly adapts Nakazawa's somewhat akward style of drawing and adds dimension to these already strong characterizations. The animation is a bit on the stiff side. The style of animation looks a bit like what we stereotypically think of when picturing anime. While there are moments of great beauty and grace (mostly in the film's backgrounds), the animation is closer to Speed Racer than Princess Mononoke. The film elegantly re-tells Gen's tragic story of survival, streamlining the narative for the big screen. Missing from the film are several charming vignettes as well as two of Gen's brothers. Focusing mainly on Gen and his actions and responses, the film loses some of the comic's political vigor but retains a strong voice against war. Never is the film anti-American. It matter of factly cries out against the pointlessness of war. It is mainly through the horrors witnessed in uncompromising graphic detail (even more so in the comic) that this message is most vivid. And yet Barefoot Gen is ultimately a story of survival. Gen is a hero and his actions speak of the amazing potential of the human spirit when faced with the unspeakable. The only thing you will be longing for after the film's somber closing is more. Like "Grave of the Fireflies", "Barefoot Gen" is more than worthy of a spot in any collector's library.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feel Good?, May 30, 2003

By 

Daniel Rush (Bremerton, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barefoot Gen (DVD)

While there are moments of spectacle (the bombing and the horrific aftermath), it's basicaly a "good feeling" movie set in Hiroshima.
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I don't know how this person could get a feel good idea from this anime but I think he should seriously go back and watch it again. This isn't a "feel good" anime by any stretch. It is however brilliant, a tribute to the man who's life story brought it forth. The first time I saw it back in 1986 in Japan I turned it off, it was that powerful.

It blames no side, it takes no stand for the weak policy of victimhood now running rampent in Japanese schools, it lays bare the horror of that era of warfare for all to see in the hopes we shall never visit that era again.

It is a true magnum Opus of Anime and I think everyone should watch it.