10 Years Later, MAPPA’s World War 2 Movie Is the Perfect Rival of Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies (IMDb rating as of August 31, 2026: 8.5/10) is often considered the near-perfect World War 2 anime movie, but 10 years ago, MAPPA released a slightly different take on the same tragedy that you may not know about. The movie is called In This Corner of the World.

It is a quiet, slow-burn story about a young woman just trying to survive World War 2 in Japan. It doesn’t try to copy Grave of the Fireflies. Instead, it tells its own kind of tragic story, and that’s exactly why it works. Let’s explore this movie and how it does some things better than Studio Ghibli’s Grave of the Fireflies.

What Is the Plot of In This Corner of the World?

In This Corner of the World follows Suzu Urano, a young girl living a normal, kind of clumsy life in Hiroshima before she moves to Kure after getting married. The movie itself starts with her life right before marriage. She loves drawing, she daydreams a lot, and honestly, she’s just trying to figure out adulthood like anyone else her age.

The movie spends a fair amount of time just showing what kind of person she is. Suzu cooks meals with barely any ingredients, deals with her new family, makes small mistakes, and slowly falls into a routine.

Then the war creeps in. In fact, if you didn’t know this movie is centered around World War 2 before watching it, it almost comes off as a surprise. Food gets scarcer. Air raid sirens become part of daily life. And eventually, the story brings us all the way to the bombing of Hiroshima, a place where Suzu still has family.

How Grave of the Fireflies Set the Bar This Film Had to Clear

Seita and Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies | Credit: Studio Ghibli

Here is the thing: Grave of the Fireflies actually changed what people expected from war anime. It was brutal, honest, and did not hold back from showing what happens to kids caught in a war they didn’t ask for. Seita and Setsuko’s story hits so hard because it’s so raw. Two siblings without parents or any sort of safety net in this life, just trying to survive in an environment they had no control over. This is also what makes it one of the saddest anime movies ever.

Because of that movie, any anime that wants to tackle World War 2 has to cross the bar it set. Fans expect emotional devastation, and if the consequences of war are not shown properly, the comparison with Studio Ghibli is inevitable.

What MAPPA Did Better When Showing World War 2

Suzu from In This Corner of the World | Credit: MAPPA

Here’s where this movie really carves out its own identity. Grave of the Fireflies drops you into tragedy almost immediately, but MAPPA‘s In This Corner of the World does the exact opposite. It takes its time, showing years of Suzu’s peaceful, ordinary life before the war fully takes over.

That choice makes a huge difference. Initially, it feels like a very slow slice-of-life anime where it is hard to imagine that anything bad can even happen. By the time things start falling apart, you’re watching someone you’ve spent a fair amount of time getting to know. Hence, the pain starts feeling more personal.

That longer timeline is what makes this one hit differently. It’s not trying to out-sad Grave of the Fireflies. It’s showing a different kind of loss, the slow kind, where you watch someone’s whole normal life get taken away piece by piece instead of all at once.

What are your thoughts on these movies? Let us know in the comments.

In This Corner of the World is streaming on Crunchyroll, and Grave of the Fireflies is streaming on Netflix.