Barefoot Gen 2

Barefoot Gen 2

DVD cover
Japanese はだしのゲン 2
Hepburn Hadashi no Gen 2
Directed by Toshio Hirata
Produced by Keiji Nakazawa
Written by Keiji Nakazawa
Starring Issei Miyazaki
Masaki Kōda
Junji Nishimura
Yoshie Shimamura
Katsuji Mori
Seiko Nakano
Taeko Nakanishi
Takao Inoue
Kei Nakamura
Takami Aoyama
Kōichi Kitamura
Music by Kentarō Haneda
Cinematography Kin'ichi Ishikawa
Edited by Harutoshi Ogata
Release dates
  • June 14, 1986 (1986-06-14)
Running time
 85 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese

Barefoot Gen 2 (はだしのゲン2 Hadashi no Gen 2) is a 1986 Japanese action drama anime film following the 1983 Barefoot Gen animated film, loosely based on the Japanese manga series by Keiji Nakazawa.

Plot

Barefoot Gen 2 takes place in 1948, approximately three years after the end of the original movie, as Gen, his mother, and his adopted brother Ryuta try to survive as Hiroshima, like the rest of Japan, struggles to rebuild following the catastrophic devastation of the Second World War.

While the first movie focused on the immediate effect of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the second film focuses on the long-term problems that faced the survivors, including the devastated economy and infrastructure, food shortages, unemployment, lack of housing, and the lingering effects of the atomic bomb's radioactive fallout.

Three years after the war, most of Hiroshima is still in ruins. Gen and Ryuta's school is housed a building half-wrecked by bomb damage, where a teacher is seen explaining the principles of Japan's new constitution. Still under American military occupation (which Gen clearly resents), Japan's economy is beginning to recover, but many of its people still cannot afford even basic necessities of life. Gen and his family struggle to survive, and while his mother gets a job at a brick-building factory, it is barely enough to support their basic needs. There are also several gangs of orphaned children squatting in the ruins instead of going to school. At first, contact with them is adversarial, but Gen soon realizes that they have nowhere else to go and are as desperate as he is, striking up a friendship with them. During a lighter moment in the film, Gen and the children stumble upon an old military firing range where ammunition was dumped at the end of the war. The gang leader, Masa, realizes they can sell the old bullets for scrap metal, and the entire group starts filling wheelbarrows with spent shell casings, singing as they work.

The other major plotline in the movie follows the long-term effects of the use of the atomic bomb: even years later, many people are suffering lingering medical effects from the radiation. One of the orphans is a girl who had half of her face badly burned in the bombing, and is ostracized by the rest of the group for her condition, though Gen accepts her. Gen's own mother is gradually dying of cancer throughout the movie, due to exposure to radiation the atomic blast (compounded by years of malnutrition). They both know that she is dying, though Gen struggles to comprehend how he will survive without her.

Cast

See also

External links

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