Barefoot Gen (1983) on Netflix
TV-PG19831h 23mAnimationBiographyDrama
Six-year-old Gen Nakaoka lives in Hiroshima as the war nears its end. His father Daikichi calls the war unwinnable, the family is branded as traitors, and food runs short.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb8.0/1010,625 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Gen Nakaoka, six years old, lives with his parents and siblings in Hiroshima in the final spring of World War II. His father Daikichi insists the war cannot be won and tells his children to be like wheat, which grows strong even when it is stepped on. At a mandatory combat drill, a drunk Daikichi answers back to his instructor, and the neighbors turn on the family as traitors. Merchants and tradesmen refuse to sell them food. To restore the family's name, Gen's older brother Koji enlists in the Imperial Navy, against his father's wishes. Then, in August 1945, an atomic bomb falls on the city.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Barefoot Gen (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa long avoided writing about Hiroshima, and only changed his mind after his mother's death: when she was cremated, the bones that usually remain had been turned to ash by the radioactive cesium that had weakened them.
- In December 2012, access to Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen was restricted in Matsue's elementary and junior high schools because officials judged its depictions too graphic for school children.
- Leonard Rifas' EduComics published Gen of Hiroshima in 1980, billed as the first full-length translation of a manga from Japanese into English to appear in the West; it was canceled after two volumes.
- Keiji Nakazawa began serializing Barefoot Gen in Weekly Shōnen Jump in June 1973, but it was canceled after a year and a half and moved to three less widely distributed magazines: Shimin, Bunka Hyōron and Kyōiku Hyōron.
- The first English-language stage adaptation of Barefoot Gen premiered at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in July 1996, a collaboration with Tokyo's Theatre Zenshinza; director Bryn Jones had travelled to Japan in 1994 to get Nakazawa's permission.
