Barefoot Gen (1983)

Stars	User	Rating
2	anjinash	97 _95th
Not quite as good as Grave of the Fireflies, but just as effective and tear inducing.
1	PeaceAnarchy	73 _36th
For the first half hour this is a pretty cheery mediocre anime, then suddenly shit gets real with some truly gruesome and impacting images, but only for a little while. Unfortunately, it can't really sustain the heavy emotional impact it's going for, falling back constantly on silly melodrama with occasional somber moments. It's above average and historically interesting, but not really anything more than that.
1	Stain	90 _86th
One of the few animes about "real" things... no giant monsters or robots or anything, it's about a little boy trying to survive postnuke Hiroshima. Juvenile but really something
1	ZayanK	72 _42nd
The bad animation sometimes makes serious things (people being vaporized by the atomic bomb) look unintentionally funny.
1	Dunder74	7 _68th
A juvenile approach to a horrific story, Barefoot Gen, despite its animation, is emotionally wrecking. There are a number of scenes that will absolutely be ingrained in your mind, and though it may not be that other WW2 anime flick, those scenes alone make this worth a watch. The score, however, would have been much higher if it weren't for a lackluster final act and some other story-related choices.
1	FrankHowley	80 _80th
Its bomb dropping sequence is absolutely incredible.
1	MArkjp	80 _70th
Occasionally has the same vibe as the joyful 'Heidi'-anime I used to watch on German television as a kid. Apart, of course, from the nuclear holocaust making peoples skin sear away from their bodies and their eyes crawl out of their skulls. And corpses in the streets...the thousands and thousands of rotting corpses. People have complained that it's too silly to take seriously, but go on then: You make film about the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that appeals to Japanese kids.
1	goremeat	90 _95th
I loathe half the running time. But the goldfish-esque internal memory of the film is perfectly reflective of a child in that situation. I rate this on the scene that makes this film noteworthy. If you can sit through it and still feel that initiating an expansionist war is a good thing, you're colder than I! Often mistaken for an anti-American film, it's in fact subtly anti-Jingoistic. Treat it like a short film and it's marvellous.

Average Percentile 65.52% from 327 Ratings