"For the Japanese filmmaker Isao Takahata, who died last year at the age of 82, the animated film was more than a vehicle for the whimsical and phantasmagoric, it was a platform for personal expression. While the same is certainly true for his friend and colleague Hayao Miyazaki, with whom Takahata co-founded the production house Studio Ghibli, Takahata pushed harder at accepted boundaries.

“Grave of the Fireflies, the 1988 film that was Takahata’s first for Studio Ghibli, is a still-stunning example. While suffused with near-fantastic elements, “Fireflies,” based on a late-days-of-World-War-II story by Akiyuki Nosaka, mostly uses animation to heighten a harrowing realism."

—New York Times, 2019