No Thank You 

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

Not only does the system prevent upward mobility, but it makes it incredibly easy to slide from comfortably middle class to unhoused.

Not every silence is empty. Some are filled with things too heavy for words.

There is a lot of controversy around Q-force. It’s certainly not hard to see why—the series is quite hyperbolic. I will say, that was the first aspect I noticed on my initial watch. Right from the get-go Q-Force barrages you with gay joke after gay joke. This is hit or miss throughout the series.

Given a choice between a man and a mountain, it’s safer to choose the mountain.

'Living' dives into many themes that we can all understand regardless of our cultural backgrounds. We can see this through the shared similarities between 'Ikiru' and 'Living'.