A young girl and her family living in Tokyo, Japan before and during World War 2? If you've seen Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen then you know this movie is going to be littered with sad moments.
Warning!: All spoilers for Tear Jerker pages are unmarked.
- Kayoko reading a postcard from her Uncle Kotaro, the brief flashback to a previous occasion where she spent time with him and inheriting his harmonica, given he is later confirmed to have been Killed Offscreen.
- Kayoko constantly failing to shine in her music lessons and being harassed and humiliated accordingly by her unsupportive teacher and peers.
- It doesn't help that she never really wanted to have music lessons in the first place and was only really pushed into it by her grandmother who believes her crybaby antics to be down to her being a Spoiled Brat.
- After one particularly harassing lesson, she walks home on the verge of tears and is bullied by three boys who force her to wade through a deep puddle, getting her dress wet. This finally breaks her but it does lead to a Moment of Awesome for Kisaburo as he overhears her crying and comes at the bullies with a stick.
- At one point in the film, Kayoko's oldest brother Tadayoshi contracts Typhus and ends up in hospital. Mr and Mrs Nakane go to stay in accommodation close to the hospital in order to keep an eye on him and leave Kayoko's grandmother in charge of her, Takejiro and Kisaburo. The family have to live with the possibility that his illness could kill him. This also happens to coincide with Kayoko's increasing stress as a result of the bullying she's had to endure from her music teacher and peers and she doesn't know about the situation with Tadayoshi until she decides to tell her parents about her situation, only to find they're not at home.
- When a recovered Tadayoshi returns home, his father chews him out for his lack of regard for cleanliness and hygiene, stating he wouldn't have become ill in the first place otherwise. Poor Tadayoshi proceeds to cry into his pillow as his concerned siblings look on. Kayoko at least tries to comfort him.
- Things immediately take a turn for the worse for Kayoko as, at this point, her grandmother finally finds out about her skiving off her music lessons and berates her accordingly and continues to berate her when she promptly gets upset.
- Tadayoshi's illness and surviving it is Harsher in Hindsight because he is later among the family members to die in the firebombing.
- Although it's a minor example in comparison to the rest of the movie, Kayoko crying after finding the infant Konosuke who had been led astray by a trio of stray cats because Kayoko had momentarily become distracted from looking after him by going to play with her friends in the playground is bound to pull at the heartstrings of anyone who's ever lost a sibling. Konosuke, seeing his big sister cry but being too young to understand why, quickly starts crying himself.
- This becomes all the worse later on in the movie when Kayoko is evacuated and Konosuke is among the family members killed in the firebombing.
- Kayoko leaving to go and live in Numazu with her Aunt Masae. It's for her own safety but it still means having to leave her family behind. Her father escorts her on the bus to the train station and as the rest of the family and all her friends from school and her neighbourhood (who haven't already been evacuated) wave goodbye, Kisaburo runs alongside the bus as it drives away. Only then does Kayoko realise the extent of what she's leaving behind. To make matters worse, apart from Kisaburo, this ends up being the last time Kayoko sees anyone in her immediate family alive.
- Before Kayoko leaves for Numazu, she's excited about the prospect and her mother (who, by this point in the movie, has already lost her brother and almost lost her oldest son) has to angrily remind her that she is being evacuated so she'll be safe.
- Crossing over with Nightmare Fuel, Kayoko discovers the bleeding corpse of a soldier who was shot by the P51 Mustang that had attacked her. This finally drives home the reality of why she was evacuated in the first place and even this won't guarantee her safety if she's not careful.
- Kayoko seeing American bombers flying in the direction of Tokyo and witnessing the firebombing from the mountain tops above Numazu. She prays desperately for her family's safety. This makes it all the more devastating for her when Kisaburo comes a few days later to tell her their family are all deceased.
- According to Kisaburo, the family were forced to leave the air raid shelter and take cover somewhere else. The only building they could find that was still standing and not burning was the local middle school but the place was seemingly filled to capacity and the gates were locked. Kisaburo then managed to find an open window to climb in through and did just that. He naturally expected the rest of the family to follow but they didn't and consequently they all died, either by burning or from smoke inhalation or being crushed by other people desperately trying to find cover. Either of the above is possible since we don't actually see what happened to the rest of the family once Kisaburo is safe. He, Kayoko and Aunt Masae all proceed to bawl to the rafters in mourning.
- When Kayoko finally plucks up the courage to return to Tokyo herself (mainly because her other aunt has heard Kisaburo has gone missing), she knows the truth about the rest of her family but still doesn't quite want to believe it, even though by this time, she's had 8 months to do just that, she hears Konosuke's name mentioned but it turns out to be another young boy of a similar age to her younger brother.
- The final clinching proof is when she discovers her home and neighbourhood completely razed to the ground. She proceeds to mourn for her deceased family members and remember the games she used to play with her friends and other kids in the neighbourhood in a Call-Back to the movie's opening scene.
- Whilst mourning, Kayoko encounters her family members' spirits, confirming that only Kisaburo survived as his spirit isn't among them. (Kayoko does eventually find Kisaburo and the two of them appear together in the end credits).
- The firebombing of Tokyo in actual fact, was one of the worst attacks on Japanese cities during World War 2, if not the worst. It immediately caused more fatalities and left more people homeless than the immediate impact of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
- To make matters even worse for Kayoko, her real-life counterpart had to rely on relatives and acquaintances for accommodation, moving from one place to another.
- She couldn’t attend much of her junior high school classes and sometimes had to live on weeds for sustenance.
- At the time, she didn’t know where she could obtain certificates verifying that she was a survivor of the bombing and a bereaved family member of those who died in the air raid.
- As of 2021, the real Kayoko has never received an invitation to an annual memorial service for victims of the bombing held by the Tokyo metropolitan government because she has yet to be officially recognized as a bereaved family member.
