Caleb Plouffe

Mr. Terrien

Hon. Modern World History

11 November, 2025

The Sad Demise of Seita’s Family

The film “Grave of the Fireflies” is about a boy and his sister named Seita and Setsuko whose village was bombed and destroyed. Shortly after the air raid ended, they found out that their mother had died during the air raid. This led the two of them to have to live with what we are to assume is their aunt, who was not super happy about them living rent free. Due to some rude comments and some obvious discontent with their presence, Setsuko and Seita both leave to live in an abandoned shelter to try and survive until their dad comes home from the war.

Not long after they leave and get set up inside the shelter, they run into a problem with food and clean drinking water. That problem leads to Seita having to steal food and resources to help his sister, who was getting very sick due to malnutrition. Seita brought Setsuko to the doctor to see if there was anything that he could do to help Setsuko survive, but got no help because of the cause. In the end Seita overheard that Japan had surrendered and the entirety of the navy had been sunk, leading to the realization that the war was over, but his dad had fallen. On top of having no more parents because of the war, Seita’s sister ended up dying because she could not get enough nutrition from the little food that Seita could obtain.

In order to understand how this movie approaches a historical event, you have to understand that almost every nation involved in the war has had some sort of issues when it comes to the public of the nations. War is a tragic thing, forcing so many people to seek shelter, join camps, flee the country, or sometimes just die. Looking at this movie, the main characters are forced out of their home because of war, and have to live with others in order to survive. It wouldn’t be so much of a surprise if this happened to almost everyone and anyone in the world at this time.

Knowing the tragedy of war can influence how some of us act when we grow up or have people in need that we are able to help. It also represents the scarcity of resources the moment that one area gets destroyed, with some farmers barely making enough resources to provide for themselves. Seita had been going around and attempting to trade with many many people so that he could feed himself and his sister. Seita and assumedly people in real life resorted to robbing peoples houses while they were evacuating to bomb shelters for items to trade, but failing to trade some things due to not being the cleansest.

Some things that were interesting were that IHL(international humanitarian laws) had to be included in the Geneva Convention for the military to not just bomb civilians. The need of the creation of the Geneva Convention seems honestly stupid, just due to the fact that some parts of it should generally be unspoken rules of war. Whereas some laws such as chemical warfare make sense to be part of it, given how deadly and in a way you could say “cheap” it is. But putting that aside, you have laws such as article 15 where it states that “the wounded and sick shall receive adequate care”, which evidently did not happen much in The Grave of the Fireflies. Along with that, there is article 12 which states that the wounded and sick must be protected and respected without any discrimination of any criteria whatsoever.

The creation of The Grave of the Fireflies is not so much to be a children’s movie just because it is animated, but is a great representation of how some life was throughout the duration of the war. Although this film was more focused on more historical events, it also can connect to advancements in film history showing that you can represent some tragedies in less harsh forms. All in all, movies aren’t all for just entertainment, but also for informing new generations of people on how the past was and may sadly end up being.

Chen, By Heather. Grave of the Fireflies: The Haunting Relevance of Studio Ghibli’s Darkest Film. 16 Apr. 2018, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43695803.

“Historical Perspectives on Isao Takahata’s Grave of Fireflies – Not Even Past.” Not Even Past, 4 Sept. 2023, notevenpast.org/isao-takahatas-grave-of-fireflies-1998.

Caleb Plouffe

Mrs. Roderick

ELA 11

2 February, 2026

Utopia through Death Dilemma

My name is Darkness Sukehiro and I was just a senior in high school, the top of my class at that. But I turned to being a murderer in secret half way through my senior year there. I was on lunch break one day, and decided to walk around campus because I get bored often with nothing to do. But I was not in fact just wandering aimlessly, I had seen a black disk drive that looked like it had some sort of writing on it when I was in my 3rd period class. It was either hidden or lost behind one of the bushes in the front of the school, so I went over to investigate.

When I got to the drive, I picked it up and read what was on it. The disk said “Drive Through Death”, which I thought was extremely weird, but I pocketed it and continued on with my day. When I got home, I put the disk into my computer to see what it was all about, and on it I got a pop up that said “RULES OF THE DEATH DRIVE”. The rules were as follows, “If you type the name of any person onto the drive, they will die”, “In order to kill, you also need to know the victims eye color”, “The Death Drive will know who you are targeting as to not kill someone you don’t intend to kill”, and the last rule is that “you may not kill in order to gain any resources directly”.

I didn’t believe the disk drive would work, so I jokingly turned on the news and figured I would test it on some lowly criminal, thinking that it was a prank. There was this drug addict that was trying to rob a bank and was holding people hostage inside so that the police couldn’t actually do anything. Sooner than later some hostages started running out and said that the criminal just died suddenly, so the police ran inside to investigate. They confirmed that the criminal was in fact dead and denied that they did anything to said person. Later on during the autopsy, it was discovered his heart exploded, and he had major wounds across the rest of his organs.

When the report was made, I was sure to read it and was mortified by the findings, so I was shell shocked for a moment. What snapped me out of it was a voice behind me that said “Gruesome isn’t it? Hahaha”. As soon as I heard the voice, I whipped my head around to see what looked to be a hobo crouched in the corner of the room. I yelled “Who Are You!”, and he replied that he was the owner of the disk drive, but brought it to this universe because he was curious what people would do with it here. I asked if there are any limitations, and he said that you need to be in ownership of the drive in order to kill at all, which indicates that when he dropped it into our universe, the ownership of the drive was voided.

Now that I knew the drive was able to kill anyone anywhere with almost no limitations, I decided to test if I could control the actions of the person that would lead to their death. This was also a good time to test it out because I had also killed some criminals that were recently broadcast on the news, which got the police’s attention and they sent their best detective to determine my identity. I ended up choosing a murderer who had recently escaped police custody, and wrote down a fate where he would try to rob a bank where I was at the time while I was being followed by an investigator. He saw a mob of hobos surrounding him and freaked out then started shooting at them, but they were merely illusions or apparitions from the LSD he took earlier. Luckily missing everyone there, and then ran out to the middle of the road where his stomach exploded outward killing him instantly.

It was later determined that a criminal organization had actually planted a bomb in his stomach that would detonate if he didn’t rob the bank. And because there was a reasonable cause of death, my name was temporarily cleared of any suspicion. After that fiasco, I decided I needed to figure out how to eliminate the investigators, and the perfect plan came to mind. I would track down the person who was following me and have him type the names of his co-workers into the disk drive. The next week I had gotten the perfect chance to put this plan into action, and by the end of the day, all the members of his investigative team were dead.