Today we watched the double header of Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro because that's literally the only way we can watch Grave of the Fireflies. We have watched both films before, and almost always together.
Grave of the Fireflies is bleak and unrelenting from the very beginning. There is no fantasy or whimsy here, though there is some magic, fleeting as it is. Seita does his very best to protect his much younger sister Setsuko from American bombs, from the truth of their parents' death, from their horrible aunt, and from hunger and malnutrition. He fails at all of them, not through any fault of his own, but simply by living through a really terrible time. Seita tries to shield Setsuko from the horrors of war as best as he can, and that's where the magic comes in. There are moments of true warmth and happiness, even as the bombs drop and the food runs out and the adults behave horribly.
In contrast, My Neighbor Totoro is almost entirely fantasy and whimsy. From the moment Satsuki and her younger sister Mei see the first group of soot-spreaders, there are smiles and laughter from both girls. The adults are all nice and cheerful, helping and feeding them. Totoro and the Catbus are adorable (in an occasionally horrifying way?) and very, very helpful. There is only one moment of possible danger, when we think Satsuki and Mei's mother might have gotten sicker, and then when Mei goes missing, but this is used mostly as a way to give us more whimsy and fantasy. Satsuki asks for and receives Totoro's help, who immediately bounds through his giant camphor tree to call on the Catbus, who immediately takes Satsuki to Mei, and then both of them to see their mother, who is perfectly fine after all.
I studied literature at university, and one of my professors once told our class the difference between a comedy and a tragedy was simple: a comedy ended in a wedding, and a tragedy ended in a death. He was talking about Shakespeare (and he may have been quoting or paraphrasing someone else; I have forgotten almost everything I learned at university), but I think the sentiment applies here as well. If Seita and Setsuko had been just a little bit luckier, or had found even one nice adult, or hadn't lost both or either of their parents, Grave of the Fireflies could have had a happy ending. Likewise, if Satsuki and Mei had been unlucky, or had found evil spirits, or their mother had had something terminal, My Neighbor Totoro could have had a sad ending. Why does one set of siblings get a safe and happy family while the other gets death? Comedy and tragedy.
Grave of the Fireflies always leaves me wrecked at the end. It doesn't matter that I know how it ends (the film tells us in its opening scene how it's going to end), I always sob uncontrollably for a few minutes. And then I put on My Neighbor Totoro, and I start to feel better from the moment the opening credits start. I didn't know this before today, but Studio Ghibli did release these two films together in Japan in 1988, and were shown as a double feature in cinemas, proving that even they knew we would need a Totoro chaser after Grave of the Fireflies.
Coda: the US, however, decided to release Grave of the Fireflies in 1989, a full year before they released My Neighbor Totoro, because they're apparently a bunch of fucking sadists.
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