Barefoot gen movie — Barefoot Gen│© Madhouse

With Oppenheimer dominating screens all over the world, it’s almost a careless move to not take a moment and look back on the brutal reality which unfolded on that day in August ‘45.

Oppenheimer walks you through the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, his path towards the creation of the first atomic bomb. The movie ventures deep into the labyrinth of his morals, progressively entangled as the bomb neared completion. One aspect not touched in the movie, at least visually, is the horror, pain, and devastation wreaked upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs.

There’s a variety of anime out there that touch on the topic of World War 2 through the eyes of Japanese citizens, the prime example being Ghibli’s “Grave of the Fireflies”. Yet there is no anime that embraces the topic of the Hiroshima bombing as intense and darkly as the 1983 anime movie “Barefoot Gen”.

Barefoot Gen Anime — Barefoot Gen│© Madhouse

Written by Keiji Nakazawa, you follow the 6 year old Gen Nakaoka and his family as they endure the hardships of war in Japan. Life is tough, food shortages disrupt their daily life and air alarms frighten people at random times during the day. However, Gen and his family manage to get by. They stick together and live a joyful life as far as the circumstances allow.

Hiroshima got spared from massive destruction during the war, and air raids were mostly false alarms, leading to people becoming skeptical of them. The tone of the film at this point sets a colorful atmosphere filled with the rich carelessness of life as a 6 year old. Gen’s pregnant mother and hard-working father do everything in their power to make life for their kids in war-torn Japan as pleasant as possible.

Barefoot Gen anime movie — Barefoot Gen│© Madhouse

On July 16th 1945, the first test explosion of a nuclear weapon took place in the desert near Los Alamos. Knowing the Soviets were trying to produce their own nuclear weapons, the United States decided to keep this information a secret to the world.

A mere 21 days after its first test, on the 6th of August 1945, Gen is making his way to school, his mother is hanging the laundry on the balcony, his father, sister, and younger brother are inside the house. A B-29 flies over the city. The air raid alarms don’t sound, people go about their day. At 8:15 am, the world oblivious to its existence, the first nuclear bomb explodes in Hiroshima.

This is where “Barefoot Gen” changes pace radically. The colorful and joyful depiction of life during wartime suddenly turns real. We see the immediate effects of the nuclear explosion on the human body. Clothes get ripped from bodies in an instant, flesh scorches from peoples bodies, eyes gauche out of their sockets as the explosive heat melts the facial structure, a mother gives her daughter a final embrace while burning alive in seconds. The horror of a nuclear explosion is tangibly animated.

After being left speechless by witnessing the destructive explosive power, we’re quickly made aware this was only the start of a long path of suffering. Gen wakes up from underneath a collapsed house and goes looking for his family. Running to his house, he passes endless amounts of burn victims, stumbling around him like zombies. He makes his way to where his house once stood. There he finds his mom trying to save his father, sister, and brother who are stuck underneath debris from their house.

Remind you that Japanese cities were built out of wood and extremely flammable. Together with his pregnant mom, Gen tries to free his father, sister and brother. He fails, and watches them burn alive while his dad screams he has to take good care of his mother, his little sister and brother crying out in pain.

barefoot gen anime hiroshima — Barefoot Gen│© Madhouse

The days that followed the explosion, things got gradually worse for burn victims of the bombing. The unforgivable Japanese summer sun made it impossible to cool down, creating the ideal environment for infections. The destruction of the explosion eradicated hospitals and medical stations, leaving victims without any form of care for days. The only means to find any form of refreshness is the river. Contaminated water filled to each riverbank with burn victims looking for a way to still the pain of their wounds. Maggots start to dwell in the infected wounds and the smell of rotten flesh takes hold of the city.

We can keep going but you get the picture. The misery didn’t stop years after the event and is still felt today, as radiation effects started kicking in. Barefoot Gen captures the suffering from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings painfully accurately. Gen’s path as a survivor throughout the destruction of Hiroshima while helplessly encountering endless humans in agonizing pain, creates a depiction that exposes a side of history that’s hard to capture in a non-animated format.