En este rincón del mundo

There have been few anime movies which have not left me deeply moved, and this is no exception. Mixing cute anime characters and their straightforward lives (at least on the surface) with the chaos and trauma of the Second World War may seem like an oversimplification of the war and a cheap, melodramatic effort at invoking sadness and tears, but there is a depth to the characters and emotions in this movie, and the ultimate message of the movie is not just that war is devastating and destroys the lives of countless innocents, but also that life moves on in spite of all the carnage, and people change and discover new qualities and things about themselves, transforming them into different (perhaps better?) versions of themselves.

The movie follows our female protagonist Suzu through her childhood to early marriage to the tumultuous years of the War. Suzu is a lovable and cheerful protagonist, gentle and kind but also clumsy and forgetful, redeemed by her artistic talent and her perseverance, but there are hidden depths to her that are only partially revealed through some odd sequences in the first part of the movie, and come into the spotlight in the second part after her traumatic brush with the War. The animation is beautiful, and the attention to detail is superb, transporting the viewer effortlessly to rural Japan in the 1940s. The cultural quirks of this place and era are delightfully presented in the first half of the movie, during which it feels like a gentle slice-of-life movie. Once the War begins in earnest, we see the effect that it has on the ordinary citizens. While there are some traumatic sequences, the movie does not linger on them, and instead it focuses on how the characters handle the changes and come to terms with them, often questioning the futility of all the devastation (especially after Japan loses the War) but also forging new bonds among each other and finding hidden depths in themselves.

One stark criticism of the movie is that some important supporting characters are not properly introduced, and Suzu's own feelings and desires are not properly explored, so that some revelations later on feel artificial and we never really entirely understand Suzu's actions and her motivations. Apparently, an extended version of the movie is being prepared which I feel is definitely required to understand this story in its full details.