YMMV / Barefoot Gen

• Anvilicious: Barefoot Gen condemns many things without any subtlety, like the atomic bombing against the citizens in Hiroshima, the demonization and prosecution against anti-war citizens by the Japanese public and Kenpeitai, the horrific treatment against Koreans and similar racial minorities, the formation of the National Police Reserve (the predecessor of Japan Self-Defense Force) in post-war Japan, and so on.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The foreword in Volume 10 says, "Japan alone has over fifty nuclear reactors in operation. A missile striking one of those reactors could in effect function as a nuclear weapon, even without a nuclear warhead. Herein lies the true, albeit hidden, nature of 'peaceful' nuclear power. Whether triggered by an earthquake, accident or attack, it contains the seeds of horrific destruction." On March 11, 2011 a massive earthquake did critical damage to one of Japan's nuclear power plants and caused the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
  • While the editor's words are technically true—the effects of a Fukushima-style disaster is functionally like a "dirty nuke," or radiological weapon—the implication that destroying or damaging a nuclear reactor would cause it to "function as a nuclear weapon" (like the type that was used on Hiroshima) is, sadly, Artistic License – Nuclear Physics. ^note  It wouldn't explode like a nuclear bomb, basically. It would be more like Chernobyl, as in heavily radiated material would leak and violently radiate everything on a hundred miles radius or more.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Gen's teacher after the bombing has longish black hair, a beak-like nose, and seems very strict towards the students, a bit too resembling Prof. Snape from Harry Potter.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Surprisingly, many of the scenes and lines (mostly in Hiroshima dialect of Japanese) became meme on Japanese internet.
  • ギギギ (Gi Gi Gi) ^Explanation  Rather unusual Unsound Effect used for the scenes where characters are furious or clenching their teeth. When someone says ギギギ on Japanese internet, they are usually referencing Barefoot Gen.
• Moral Event Horizon: Denjiro Samejima and his son cross it when they left Gen's brother, sister, and dad to die in the fire after the former saved him from the debris of his burning house, immediately breaking the promise of making up for the hell they put to his family.
• Narm:
  • The animated adaptation overall manages to convey hauntingly the horrors of war and atomic warfare... then Gen starts talking about the surrounding debris and devastation rather casually. Also, his mother's giraffe neck.
  • In the scene where Gen and his mother are trying to free his father and siblings from the burning debris of their house, there's a part where Gen begins frantically switching between his left and right foot due to him being barefoot and the ground being hot due to the fire. This makes it look like he desperately needs to go to the bathroom.
  • While many people no doubt found the scene frightening, the part where survivors are portrayed as zombies wandering around aimlessly is a bit too over the top as they're drawn with far too little detail and just look very cheap.
  • The poor voice acting in the English dub of the animated adaptation ruins some of the scenes that are meant to be taken seriously.
• Moment of Awesome: In the manga, Gen fighting the bullies who were harassing his sister Eiko and managing to scare them off after biting their leader's finger off.
• Paranoia Fuel: The lingering threat of fatal radiation poisoning throughout the series. Gen & co encounter a number of people that they grow fond of. And then they start to cough and wobble. The reader/watcher will think "Is that radiation? Are they done for?" And for the most part, they are.
• Signature Scene: The entire three-and-a-half minutes of the bombing scene, but particularly the part where the first victim, a small girl with a red balloon, is carbonized in the initial blast of the atomic bomb.
• Values Dissonance: Several. Gen's father hits him and his brothers often as a means of discipline, and while it may be somewhat cringe worthy for a modern audience, it's made clear that he loves his family and the practice was more acceptable then than now. To some, it may also be how hard Gen's father hits them. (This was fairly typical for Western families and remains typical in a lot of Latin American countries as well.)
• Values Resonance: The manga's scathing criticism about Imperial Japan's atrocities that befell not only the Japanese people, but the neighboring countries, is still relevant decades later, especially given the Japanese right-wing's constant denial of World War II crimes after the turn of the millennium.
  • Of course, the criticism toward cruelty of Atomic Bombings, the main topic of the manga, is still relevant, as many Americans try to justify these bombings ^note or even make jokes about them and ignore what actually happened under the mushroom clouds ^note or bringing up Japanese war crimes to make Japanese people as a whole less sympathetic, saying even non-combatants served as war machines of the Japanese Empire in Total war, similar to how many Japanese people are ignorant toward war crimes that Imperial Japan committed.^note As aforementioned, not in the case of this manga.
  • Stories around Mr. Park resonates to present Japanese society greatly, considering racism toward Koreans which strongly persists today. In fact, even his existence itself apply to the trope, since they are very few Korean characters represented in Japanese media.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: If you're aware of its graphic violence and gruesome portrayal of the aftermath of an atomic bombing, it may come as a surprise that this was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump, a magazine whose main audience are teenagers. There is some Values Dissonance at play here, as the manga was first published in 1973, when there were different standards for what was considered acceptable for a shonen magazine.

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