is a 1986 Japanese

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

action drama film and the sequel to the 1983 animated war film ''

Barefoot Gen is a Japanese historical manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa's own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen Nakaoka liv ...

'', loosely based on the

Japanese manga series Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Keiji Nakazawa was a Japanese manga artist and writer. Biography Nakazawa was born March 14, 1939 Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan and was in the city when it was Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by an atomic bomb in August 1945. Most of his famil ...

. Directed by Toshio Hirata, the film stars

Issei Miyazaki is a Japanese voice actor. He is the member of TAB Production. Voice roles *Gen in ''Barefoot Gen'' *Ogasawara Yuunosuke in Azuki-chan * Takashi Yamazaki in ''Cardcaptor Sakura'' *Kenji Ninomiya in '' Kamichu!'' * Subaru Sumeragi in '' X/1999'' * ...

, Masaki Kōda, Yoshie Shimamura, and

Taeko Nakanishi is a Japanese actress who specializes in voice acting and previously worked for Aoni Production. She is best known as the voices of the various Panther Claw villains in ''Cutie Honey'', and the Hell Tree in the first arc of the ''Sailor Moon R ...

, who reprise their roles from the first film, while Kei Nakamura and Takami Aoyama join the cast. In the film, Gen and Ryuta Nakaoka join a gang of orphan scavengers and attempt to save their mother Kimie from radiation sickness, a consequence of her survival of the Hiroshima atomic bombing.

Plot

Three years after the

atomic bombing of Hiroshima The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

, Gen Nakaoka, his mother Kimie, and his adopted brother Ryuta are scavenging for food and scrap metal to sell in the black market as

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, like the rest of Japan, struggles to rebuild following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. While Kimie starts working at a

geta Geta may refer to: Places *Geta (woreda), a woreda in Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region *Geta, Åland, a municipality in Finland *Geta, Nepal, a town in Attariya Municipality, Kailali District, Seti Zone, Nepal *Get� ...

factory, Gen and Ryuta attend school in a ruined building, in which they meet a gang of orphaned children and their leader Masa in a hostile first encounter. Gen and Ryuta start a shoe-shining business that Masa's gang disrupts, drawing the attention of policemen who attempt to place them in an orphanage. The brothers fight off the police and hide with Masa and their gang in their shelter, where Gen learns that the orphans pickpocket in the black market in order to survive. Realizing Masa's desperation for quality life, Gen and Ryuta join his gang in solitude. Gen befriends Katsuko, one of the orphans who sustained serious burns in the bombing, and Masa's gang invites Suekichi, a retired journalist who lost his family in the Hiroshima bombing, to live with them. After Gen rallies the orphans into constructing a new home out of wood and other materials from abandoned buildings around town, they raid a potato field at night, but the field's farmers catch them and kill Katchin, a member of Masa's gang, as the orphans retreat. Meanwhile, Gen notices that he can now give Kimie piggyback rides despite being much smaller than her, which leads him to suspect that her health is failing. He and Ryuta learn from doctors that because of the atomic bombing, she is suffering from radiation sickness that progressively worsens with time. Kimie begins to vomit blood after her children come home for dinner one evening, distressing Gen and prompting him to take her to a surgeon, who informs Gen that Kimie has only four months to live. Gen refuses to accept that his mother will die and tries to convince her to let him and Ryuta work in her place, but Kimie insists that she work out of fondness for Gen's late father and the lessons he taught, which moves Gen and Ryuta into assisting her with building geta. Gen, Ryuta, and Masa attempt to steal copper from a shipyard to buy penicillin for Kimie, but their boat sinks as they return from the yard, forcing the trio to return to shore empty-handed. Later, they watch an improper burial of the victims of the nuclear attack by American soldiers, who chase the trio off. However, they discover copper bullets in an abandoned firing range, and Ryuta gets Masa's gang to collect them into a wheelbarrow. Gen and Ryuta return home with money for the penicillin, but they discover that Kimie is dying and carry her to a hospital. Along the way, Kimie dies on Gen's back after urging him to live on without her. Gen has Kimie cremated and plays with Ryuta, Masa, and the other orphans while reminiscing upon his parents' influence on his life.

Cast

as Gen Nakaoka * Masaki Kōda as Ryuta Nakaoka, Gen's younger adopted brother and Shinji Nakaoka, Gen's younger brother * Yoshie Shimamura as Kimie Nakaoka, Gen's mother * Kei Nakamura as Masa, the leader of a gang of orphans. In the manga, Masa was a yakuza who opposed Ryuta. * Takami Aoyama as Katsuko, one of Masa's companions *

as Hana *

Katsuji Mori is a Japanese actor, voice actor and narrator from Tokyo. He is most known for the roles of Go Mifune (''Mach GoGoGo''), Joe Shimamura/009 (''Cyborg 009'' 960s, Ken the Eagle (''Science Ninja Team Gatchaman''), Jouji Minami ('' Tekkaman: The Space ...

as Seiji *

Junji Nishimura is a Japanese anime director and producer currently residing in Karatsu, Saga. After graduating from Meiji Gakuin University in 1980, Nishimura entered into the anime studio Nishiko Production. Nishimura had his first job as a producer for ''Bald ...

as Boku-san *

Kōichi Kitamura , better known by the stage name , was a Japanese voice actor born in Osaka, Japan. Kitamura was employed by the talent management agency Mausu Promotion. He is known for dubbing roles played by Peter Cushing. He died on October 2, 2007 of pneum ...

as Suekichi *

Seiko Nakano is a Japanese former voice actress. She has contributed to more than twenty films and television series since 1974 until 1990. Selected filmography References External links * * 1952 births Living people Japanese voice actress ...

as Eiko Nakaoka, Gen's elder sister * Takao Inoue as Daikichi Nakaoka, Gen's father

Reception

Critical response

Writer and reporter, Ram Murata (村田らむ（むらた・らむ）) describes their experience watching ''Barefoot Gen 2'' and recalls growing up with the body of work in Japan. "It's a very sad story. But it's not all dark." Because of the style of the work, characters would often have comical expressions, making me laugh. "This 'funny' thing is also troubling. ''Barefoot Gen'' has a strong aura that says you shouldn't be amused with it." I went to university in Kyushu, but I made friends there that were from Hiroshima. One of them was aiming to become a manga artist like myself, so we would talk and he would show me random cartoons he had drawn. One day, when I showed him 'Barefoot Gen'' he burst into anger. "It was a story about a nuclear bomb," I realized. He told me, "Don't make fun of a nuclear bomb! I was beaten up by my father for just saying that the memorial service looked like an eraser at my parents' house." "People have different views on the atomic bomb depending on the year they were born and the region

f Japan F, or f, is the sixth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Let ...

they live in. ''Barefoot Gen'' is a rare work that looks directly at the topic, but it's still a manga. I think you can enjoy reading it. Please do laugh at the scene where Gen and others beat each other on the bottom to get used to the torture."

References

External links

* * {{Madhouse films 1986 anime films Anime films based on manga

Anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...