"I want to touch Gin."
"Hotaru, come here..."
These are the words we've heard that further broke our hearts. "Hotaru" means firefly in Japanese, and I can't simply express how something delicate and sad can be turned beautiful such as that of a flickering light of a firefly. I mean, the romance was something I wasn't hoping for--because if you were to met a strange guy (that doesn't age) and you start visiting him year by year and can't seem to touch him--if that isn't sad, that is merely tragic. Love grows in places we last expect. Sometimes it betrays us.
Time, betrays us.
The moment Hotaru grew up to be a lovely girl, there goes she--perhaps the only friend of Gin (what a lovely name), longing to see him again...as a 'friend'.
What we learn from 'Into the Forest of Fireflies' Light', is that...*cries*...*sobs*...*cries*...*sobs*...
I have three aspects to look here, which were complimenting factors of the film. (1) I've read reviews that it is nationalistic to Japan, which is if you were to look at the masks in the festivals and having watermelons as snacks. (2) The story is hauntingly beautiful, effective. A supernatural world and a supernatural character who presents himself as a "ghost", is alive, but weak, as he cannot touch his supposed own kind. (3) For 30 effing minutes, it was shortened up to that...and the film still lived up to its glorious madness of breaking our hearts.
Hotarubi no Mori e is a generally heartbreaking story of two lovers that can't be together...because of fate. Sooner or later, come to think of it, if the price of touching each other is Gin's death...he wouldn't have made it over a year. Physical connection is important, one can't deny it. Hotaru may have avoided it...but Gin, whose soul hasn't touched one his whole life (and now manages so), couldn't...
So, apart from Gin obtaining Kakashi Hatake's hair and the story representing a metaphor of life's flicker of light and dark, Hotaru no Mori e is nothing but beautiful, exquisite, dramatic.
