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Tear Jerker / Barefoot Gen

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  • The animated film does not hold back on showing the devastation caused by the bombing. The sight of the city being destroyed in an instant is horrible and while the story is fictional, the devastation and death actually happened.
    • A young mother is seen diving to the ground in a futile attempt to shield her baby from the heat blast, even as she herself is burnt beyond recognition, and dies curled over her infant.
    • For animal lovers, the dog panicking and biting the nearby railing before burning up can be painful to watch.
    • One scene shows an infant futilely trying to suckle on a woman's chest, with the woman not even holding them to her. It's not even clear that it's her child.
    • Perhaps the most gut-wrenching part is the sight of Hiroshima Castle, which had been built in the late 1500s, being blown to pieces. While it was later discovered that the explosion destroyed the lower pillars of the castle which caused the collapse, it still fell and was destroyed in the blast.
  • Daikichi is devastated when his eldest son Koji announces that he's volunteering for the Navy in order to get the neighborhood to let off on their persecution of his family. Enraged, fearing that his son is heading towards certain death or worse, Daikichi assaults him, reminding Koji about how his cousin Gokichi joined the Navy and ended up a blind quadruple-amputee because of the war. Later, during an air raid, Daikichi throws open the window and screams into the air for Koji to come back alive, tears flowing freely down his cheeks:
    Daikichi: Fool!!! You fool. You're a fool, Koji!!! Koji, don't you ever die!! Whatever happens don't you die!!! Be a coward, a weakling... just come back alive!!!
  • While Daikichi reconciling with his son Koji and seeing him off by the railway tracks is a Heartwarming Moment, it also is this, as it is the last time that father and son see each other. Koji revisits this moment later in the manga, when he returns from the Navy and learns that his father, brother and sister are dead.
  • Gen sobs to the skies after Tomoko's birth. "Father, are you out there? Eiko? Shinji? The baby's here, everybody! Can you see her? It's a girl! You were wrong Shinji! It's a girl! What's happening? Why? Why? Why? Why?! She's the prettiest girl in the whole wide world, and you never got to see her."
  • Kimie picking up her newborn daughter and raising her in the air slowly showing her the destruction of the bomb. "Take a good look around little one. You see? This is the war that killed your father, remember it."
  • Tomoko, whom Gen put his hopes on, dies of starvation when Kimie cannot make enough milk for her—shortly before the two boys come back with food. Gen breaks down, saying she should have waited and didn't say goodbye.
    • Is it any wonder that Tomoko’s death is arguably one of the most saddest moments to have happened in this entire story? The poor baby was literally born in the middle of a mini-nuclear holocaust, her father and two of her older siblings never stood a chance of meeting her since they died due to the bombing, was almost killed by a deranged woman mourning her own deceased baby (who thankfully snapped out of it and nursed Tomoko), and the manga she’s is kidnapped by various strangers not showing concern when she gets sick. Gen promised his father right before he died that he would take care of his unborn sibling, only to loose her in the end.
  • The live-action adaptation has the father and Shinji, buried in the weight of their crumbled house, spending their final moments singing on the former's urging. Most likely as an attempt by Daikichi to have his son succumb to the fumes, which would be more merciful than being roasted alive.
  • The soldier carrying Gen on his back to get medical attention, passing by a few wells with bloated corpses inside. The soldier tells Gen that they'd ran into the water, thinking it would save them from the fire.
    That there is a boy and his little sister. He died trying to save her. And that woman there tried to protect her children by hugging them close to her. All in vain.
  • Most of the random civilians we see post-bombing are worth quite a few tears. The woman who thinks her son has reincarnated into a swarm of flies, the gang of orphan boys who all watched their own families die, the adolescent girl who wanted to be a dancer survives but with horrible burns on her face—she'd watched her mother die and walks among the corpses, checking their teeth for her mother's gold teeth, so she can bury her by her father...
  • Kimie's death by cancer due to radiation poisoning. As she's dying, she confesses she knew she didn't have much time left, but didn't want to let it show before her children (who also knew about it, but thought no one told her), so they would be strong. Then, after she passes away, Gen straps his mother's dead body to his back and plans to walk all the way to Tokyo just to show Gen. MacArthur and Hirohito what their war had done. Koji stops him before he can go anywhere past Kyoto (they had travelled there because it was their father's hometown, and Gen wanted to give his mother a nice memory before her time came).
  • Early on in the second volume, Gen sees his father and siblings alive and well and has a fun time with them...until he wakes up and Kimie has to tell him that it was All Just a Dream and that his dad and siblings are still dead, much to his horror.
  • As Gen and his mother dig up the remains of their family, a couple walk past them crying. Gen asks them what happened and they reveal that the Emperor has announced on the radio that Japan has been defeated and surrendered. Kimie's response is that of pure fury and anguish.
  • The bullying the entire community dish out on the Nakaoka family is just plain petty and tragic. Imagine having to be persecuted over every little thing over voicing your pacifism again a war that led to not only you, but also your own kids and pregnant spouse to be harassed, assaulted, and in the case of poor Eiko, strip-searched by your own teachers over an obvious slander over an alleged theft. Is it any wonder why the last part pissed her father into going Papa Wolf against all that wrong Eiko?
  • Mr. Park tried to get his gravely injured father medical help after the bombing, but no doctor would see him, even when there’s obvious open beds for him. When called out on this, Mr. Park is bluntly told to his face that he and his father don’t deserve any help because they’re Korean. It doesn’t take long forMr. Park’s father to pass on, leaving him extremely bitter towards Japan itself for such a ruthless discrimination to have literally kill his own father.

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