I've never seen
Barefoot Gen the movie, but the manga is certainly heart-rending.
Ever see
Grave of the Fireflies? It's a story about 2 kids in Tokyo during WWII, whose parents are killed in a bombing raid. They are a boy of about 12 years old and his sister of about 5 or so. The boy is very brave and strives to maintain his pride and dignity while supporting them both as the charity of their family and neighbors runs out and their living situation steadily deteriorates. It's basically an allegory about the devastation of war on the personal lives of civilians and the resulting breakdown of basic human civility. I watched it on VHS years ago with a girlfriend and her mother, and about halfway through, her mom started bawling uncontrollably and had to leave the room. Kinda awkward... But yeah if you like
Barefoot Gen, then
GotF would be right up your alley.
Dr. Osamu Tezuka was the father of Japanese manga and anime. He's the creator of
Astro Boy and many other famous titles. You know that distinctive Japanese anime "huge eyes" look? That was his creation.
Back in the '50s, when Tezuka was starting out, he loved American cartoons, especially the work of Disney, whom he often cited as his #1 influence. Disney, the world's greatest champion of intellectual property law, repaid Tezuka's kind words and admiration by shamelessly ripping off one of his stories,
Kimba the White Lion, a mere 5 years after his death.
The Lion King was almost a point-for-point duplicate of
Kimba, and the Disney people never gave him so much as a posthumous mention in the credits. That company has no class whatsoever.
But Tezuka is ace. He did a great manga about the life of the Buddha. Probably my favorite story of his is
Adolf, a WWII story about a young half-Japanese, half German man (named by his Nazi father after
Der Fuhrer) who travels to Germany and learns some hard lessons about intolerance and racism while moving through the ranks of the Nazi Party.
