For those of you who haven't finished this part of your history books, skip this huge spoiler:
The city of Hiroshima gets bombed. People die. A lot of innocent people die. Barefoot Gen is WWII unfiltered, and unapologetic (and a little over-exaggerated, but you can suspend your belief because of the important point it's trying to make) . It doesn't pick sides, but exposes the horrors of war through animation, which makes scenes that would have been unwatchable a lot more palatable. (Seeing children turned to ash in a live-action movie... Eh. I haven't seen the live-action adaptations, but I'd probably feel worse after watching them)
Like the other super-sad-WWII-movie-people-mention-when-they-talk-about-animation-as-an-artform, Grave of the Fireflies, BG uses painted cells to show what the war would look like to children. That's probably the most heart-breaking part of all. The two brothers in the movie and other children experienced things nobody should ever have to-things that, unfortunately, real children had. It's like a memorial to the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it's never preachy. In fact, I think I liked this better than GotF because of how hopeful (if somewhat cheesy) the ending was. But after the bleakness before it, it's a welcome relief.
