©Nosaka Akiyo/Shinchosha, 1988
For decades, literary lovers have believed that certain classics have been overshadowed by their animated film adaptations, and young people may think that is certain. For example, how many people think about it now Alice’s Adventure Wonderland,,,,, Bambi and Jungle Book As a Disney movie, not a book Lewis Carroll,,,,, Felix Salten and Rudyard Kipling?
I read similar thoughts fireaward-winning Japanese novella Akiyuki NosakaAbout the life and death of two children at the end of World War II. (This is not the spoilers; their deaths are revealed on the opening page.) In some Japanese schools, this may still be a text, especially given its simplicity – a 60-page translation of the translation. However, I also guess more young Japanese people know firefly pass IsagohataGhibli’s movie, pictured right. If they know exactly, that’s it. one Japan Times Articles from this summer lead A university professor said his students had hardly seen it.
On the other hand, in English-speaking countries, most people who read this translation will appear from the movie, which is still one of the most widely acclaimed anime of all time. It’s not only heartbreaking. It’s very powerful, even if you follow the cliché and only watch once, you’ll be with you even if you follow the cliché. Furthermore, the anime is very loyal to Nosaka’s story. There is almost no major difference, while the film’s increase.
As someone who has watched the Gohata movies many times, I can’t judge this book purely based on my own merits. The movie is “overlapping” on every page, usually on a single paragraph and line. However, this does not mean that the book does not have a unique texture. This is a pretty typical sentence from the early stage of the story, with the view character of the book Seita, the little boy, looking up at the American bomber on his hometown Kobe.
Before this he saw only them as little discernible points, walking eastward, leaving the steam path, five days before the raid in the air in Osaka, and then weaving on the clouds of Osaka, like a shallow fish, now they are above their heads, but they are huge, so close, and so close that they can even radiate thick footsteps on the seabed, and then on the seabed, under their feet, under their feet, under their feet, and exposed their footsteps, and in pain. The sound of the bomb fell, and he stood desperately, as if the air suddenly became too dense to enter, and something blue fell off the roof, a burning 12 bomb five centimeters wide and sixty centimeters long, bounced up like an inch of spray oil.
The translation of this book is Ginny Tapley Takemori, who also translates Murata Sayaka’s best-selling book Women in convenience store and a novella based on Makoto Shinkai‘ She and her cat (I Review elsewhere). She discusses seriousVery useful prose style of the post-logy. She explained that Nosaka actually uses Longer Sentences in Japanese texts are stopped less to convey Seta’s stream of consciousness. But to make the book more accessible, Takemori decided to break down the sentences, “trying to keep the original breathless and confusing.”
I think it works well, but what I read afterwards is the “advantage” of Gohata’s movie playback. Of course, this style leads itself to portray the sudden interaction and wandering of Seita’s thoughts, especially from the invasion of happy memories before the explosion, now infected with painful sorrow. This experience has resonated with animations recently. We’ve seen how Ghibli makes the story anime, but imagine Pixar boldly adapting it to bleakness Inside out Movie.
Seita and his little sister Setsuko were only four years old and ended up living alone in a tunnel shelter. Their “escape” from adult society is the turning point of the story – the last terrible turning point, but we will see it eventually, but it is not very obvious. The siblings collect fireflies to light up their new home, and Seita is once again immersed in the memories, which is lyrical. This time, his memory is a naval comment from his beloved father and will surely save them eventually. Even when dropping out of school, Seita craves patriotism and patriarchy.
But soon, he and Setsuko knew about hunger. Finding food becomes impossible, and Seita can only remember the candies, snacks and feasts he loved when he was young Reject food. Now, he imagined cutting his finger off to feed his hungry sister: “It’s okay for one finger. She can eat the meat from it.” They had no hope. Nosaka has told us how their story ends.
Hunger is more conveyed in prose than in the movie, or at least has a different power. Watching images of malnourished children on screen is terrible, but prose conveys the obsession of an eagerly hungry child. Even on the first page, we get a long list of all the food on the black market, If only You can afford: “Steamed sweet potatoes, sweet potato dumplings, rice balls, bean jam rice cake, fried rice, bean soup, bean jam bread, udon noodles…
The book also has a candid attitude to some of the details that the film has not arrived, although Takada gestures to them. Exhaust is a theme – this book has a comic anecdote about a very young package of swallowing marble and how the family restored it to its original state, placed in a terrible moment in the event of a child’s corpse failure. There is a mention of Seita’s newborn sexual behavior, and although he is not an abuser, he sometimes feels about his mother and occasionally even his sister. (This is hinted in the films of the Plateau, although simple and easy to miss.)
The film also brings a lot to this story – and most importantly, Setsuko exists more. In the book, she is very ghost. Seita’s sequence of escape from the burning city is powerful, for example, but it’s all boy’s eyes. Although Setsuko’s reaction was not mentioned at all, even though she was put on Seita’s back. She did have a conversation, and there were heartbreaking moments like when she After the assault, try to comfort Seita like an adult. We feel her sometimes, both as a real child and an angelic figure that Seta sometimes sees.
But setsuko exists much more in the movie version. One factor is that Takahata’s bold decision to let her express it in Japanese Real Toddlers, Ayano Shiraishi. The film also centers on many moments that are not in the book. A key example is a scene outside Seita’s school. Setsuko began to cry because she couldn’t see her mother, and Seita tried in vain to distract her by flipping the horizontal bar. In the book, Seta’s actions are mentioned, but no setsuko reactionthis is hardly a scenario.
There was a similar difference when Seita was told to sell her mother’s kimono rice. In this book, he obeys without problems, and in the movie, Setsuko is hard to watch. Reading the book through the movies, there are many shocking “omitations”, such as chains with candy jars. In the story of Nosaka it once mentioned, while in the film, Setsuko’s beloved property encapsulates the trajectory of the story, a sweets ship, then cremated bones.
Then there is the most joyful moment in the movie, when Seita passes through the fields at night on fireflies. Even this is not the original story. To me, it’s like reading the original sound! Euphonium Light novel, realizing it doesn’t “Crossing the Bridge” scene from Kyoto AnimationTV version. In both cases, anime is a peak and it is almost impossible to see the “error” omitted by Source Book. Bad movie adaptations can damage a good book. fire Shows how an appreciation of a good book is received by a Outstanding adapt.
The most prominent difference between the book and the movie is that the latter adds Seita’s ghost’s equipment to our guide and re-appreciates his story as it plays. In this book, there is no supernatural suggestion except what mortals perceive, except what mortals perceive. Interestingly, however, Takemori did not do this in the first draft of Nosaka. The final image may be seen as a Disney-style sensuality… Before you remember the whole story, this is the memorial for Nosaka because of his true foster sisters. At the end of World War II, she died in 16 months.
That night, countless fireflies flew around the Nunobiki Valley and formed a stream that flowed into the weed bushes outside the Bayside exit of Sannomiya Station, covering the area where Setsuko’s bones were thrown away, as if to protect and comfort her, comfort her. ”
