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bob_fishSo, this is basically a fic journal, but I felt moved to share this. It was my birthday a few days ago, and for one of my pressies my sister-in-law got me some Grave of the Fireflies tie-in candy. Yes, Grave of the Fireflies tie-in candy.
If you haven't seen the movie, or dimly remember it, it's about two adorable little Japanese kids battling homelessness and malnutrition after being orphaned in the wartime bombing of Kobe. It is not a very cheering film.
Setsuko, the cute, unlucky little heroine, carries around a tin of boiled sweets with her throughout the film. That's her depicted on the sweet tin in the pic, desperately rattling the can to see if there's any sweet, nourishing candy left. The sweets featured in the film, according to Prof. Wikipedia, are Sakuma drops, a classic Japanese sweetie which is sometimes marketed with Setsuko's cute, doomed little face.
Highlight for the spoileriffic, misery-sodden full story of the film's use of Sakuma drops: Setsuko fixates on those sweets because she's too tiny to deal with her horrible situation. When the starving little moppets run out of sweets, Setsuko's big brother puts water in the tin and she drinks that. Then he puts stones in the tin and she sucks on them, pretending they're sweets. Then she dies, slowly and heartbreakingly, of starvation. He burns her on a pyre and then carries her bones and ashes around with him in the sweet tin. And then (in the film's first scene, due to flashbackness) he dies unmourned and alone in a railway station, clutching the tin to his chest. Then the station janitor callously throws out the sweet tin. The end!
The sweets, I can report, are rather nice. They have real fruit juice in them. Oishii, indeed.
If you haven't seen the movie, or dimly remember it, it's about two adorable little Japanese kids battling homelessness and malnutrition after being orphaned in the wartime bombing of Kobe. It is not a very cheering film.
Setsuko, the cute, unlucky little heroine, carries around a tin of boiled sweets with her throughout the film. That's her depicted on the sweet tin in the pic, desperately rattling the can to see if there's any sweet, nourishing candy left. The sweets featured in the film, according to Prof. Wikipedia, are Sakuma drops, a classic Japanese sweetie which is sometimes marketed with Setsuko's cute, doomed little face.
Highlight for the spoileriffic, misery-sodden full story of the film's use of Sakuma drops: Setsuko fixates on those sweets because she's too tiny to deal with her horrible situation. When the starving little moppets run out of sweets, Setsuko's big brother puts water in the tin and she drinks that. Then he puts stones in the tin and she sucks on them, pretending they're sweets. Then she dies, slowly and heartbreakingly, of starvation. He burns her on a pyre and then carries her bones and ashes around with him in the sweet tin. And then (in the film's first scene, due to flashbackness) he dies unmourned and alone in a railway station, clutching the tin to his chest. Then the station janitor callously throws out the sweet tin. The end!
The sweets, I can report, are rather nice. They have real fruit juice in them. Oishii, indeed.
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Date: 2009-08-14 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 06:00 pm (UTC)I looked it up and apparently it's not a one-off, that brand of candy regularly advertises itself with Setsuko. *Shakes head* Oh, Japan.
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Date: 2009-08-15 05:40 am (UTC)That being said, I didn't have any sort of emotional reaction to the film at all so I actually wouldn't have any qualms about buying this sort of candy. Still, a very interesting marketing technique. Hm.
On a whole 'nother note, happy belated birthday. *g*
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Date: 2009-08-15 07:02 am (UTC)