Can't get over how The Boy and the Heron is haunted by napalm. Of course in the way that it haunts Mahito's trauma and dreams, but also in the fantastical imagery. The vision of his mother melting into a pool of liquid, the story of the fiery rock that dried up an entire lake upon contact, Himi entirely. The fact that the fantastical world, far from the touch of war, has an abundance of water.
References to graphic violence ahead. Firebombing wrecked Tokyo. The firebombing attacks,iirc, actually killed more civilians than the atomic bombs did. There are anecdotes from survivors about crowds of people running and trampling each other to try to escape the napalm. About people running to local swimming pools just to try to douse out the fires or escape only to find that the water of the pools completely dried up because of the heat. Of people bursting into flames in the middle of running. Of people's organs/bodies, quite frankly, melting into liquid. An account of a survivor's mother, for years after the war, pouring cups of water over her deceased daughter's grave and saying "little one, you must have been so hot."
It's subtle and I am not even sure that it was intentional, or if this was on Miyazaki's mind as he directed the art, but I can't shake off the echoes of history when I watched it.
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