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wingless said:

I don't know if I'd agree with that. I think the WW2 the Japanese experienced was very different from the WW2 Europeans or Americans experienced. It wouldn't make much sense to have a movie about the holocaust set in Japan, would it? Meanwhile Japan is the only country to have ever been a victim of nuclear warfare, an "honor" that I feel should not be appropriated. Granted, this particular movie does not focus on the nuclear bombings directly, but it is still an experience that is tied more to Japan and the Japanese people than one may initially think. If Grave of the Fireflies was purely fictional then I wouldn't really care, but seeing as how it is not only explicitly set in WW2 but also semi-autobiographical on the author's part, giving the setting a complete overhaul would not only make little sense to me, it also seems like a plain insensitive thing to do.



The experiences of Germans, Russians and even British weren't that different from the experiences of the Japanese. Destruction of their cities, rations, police hours, and in the German case, refusal to surrender until the bitter end.

And as you pointed out, the original movie doesn't focus on the use of the A-bombs, which were Japan-exclusive, so the difference in setting would have minimal impact on the overall plot, character development and themes of the Western adaptation.

As for the "insensitivity" of hijacking someone's tragic personal story to use it as a vehicle to suit your own agenda, let me point you to this interesting review of the "Grave of the fireflies":



http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/anime-abandon/35418-anime-abandon-grave-of-the-fireflies



As you can see in the review ( and if you've maybe read the original novel you'd know it already ), the anime adaptation of the novel also took some liberties and skewed the messages and meaning of the original story, so whatever the Dresden Pictures decide to change, the precedent has been already done. Or maybe changing the original story is OK for the Japanese anime directors but strictly forbidden for the Westerners?

Besides, I don't see a problem in them taking the basic concept and the idea of the original story and change it slightly to make it more relevant to the modern ( Western ) audiences, as long as it's good. Movies such as "V for Vendetta" show us that it is not imperative for a movie to be a 100% faithful adaptation of the original material; what matters the most that the movie is good in its own right. The experiences of Germans, Russians and even British weren't that different from the experiences of the Japanese. Destruction of their cities, rations, police hours, and in the German case, refusal to surrender until the bitter end.And as you pointed out, the original movie doesn't focus on the use of the A-bombs, which were Japan-exclusive, so the difference in setting would have minimal impact on the overall plot, character development and themes of the Western adaptation.As for the "insensitivity" of hijacking someone's tragic personal story to use it as a vehicle to suit your own agenda, let me point you to this interesting review of the "Grave of the fireflies":As you can see in the review ( and if you've maybe read the original novel you'd know it already ), the anime adaptation of the novel also took some liberties and skewed the messages and meaning of the original story, so whatever the Dresden Pictures decide to change, the precedent has been already done. Or maybe changing the original story is OK for the Japanese anime directors but strictly forbidden for the Westerners?Besides, I don't see a problem in them taking the basic concept and the idea of the original story and change it slightly to make it more relevant to the modern ( Western ) audiences, as long as it's good. Movies such as "V for Vendetta" show us that it is not imperative for a movie to be a 100% faithful adaptation of the original material; what matters the most that the movie is good in its own right. BBCode