PLOT: San and Mayu are drafted into the war effort with their classmates as nurses during the closing months of the Pacific War. They escape only to face the harsh environment of a tropical paradise that has become a hellish battlefield.
REVIEW: Yukimitsu Ina and Stephanie Sheh’s Cocoon: One Summer of Girlhood is this generation’s Grave of the Fireflies. Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about this breathtaking, tragic anime that put me on an absolute emotional rollercoaster.
Based on Machiko Kyo’s acclaimed one-volume josei manga, Cocoon begins innocently enough, with San and Mayu laughing and goofing off alongside their friends while prepping a haven for wounded soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Each woman in San and Mayu’s friend group is charming, talented, and full of promise. They all work so hard, ask for little in return, and await the day when they can serve their country with pride.
However, when the girls are redeployed to a makeshift hospital inside a nearby cave, the peace they knew is quickly shattered as war reaches the serene shore of their tropical island. Almost without warning, they are forced to confront the horrors of combat as one wounded soldier after the next floods the hospital like a rushing river of misshapen limbs and choked screams. Forced to abandon their shelter, the women head for the coast, leaving you to wonder how quickly a paradise can disintegrate into absolute ruin.
Cocoon: One Summer of Girlhood serves as an allegory for the tragic real-life Himeyuri Corps, a group of Okinawan female students and teachers conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army as frontline nurses during the Battle of Okinawa. Shockingly, the movie runs just an hour long, using every minute to tell a lamentable story that shattered my heart. No one should ever be made to suffer what these women experienced, forced to watch their friends disappear in a plume of red mist, their bodies left lying in the tall grass.
Despite having my heart ripped from my chest, spending half the movie feeling like I needed a brown paper bag just to compose myself, I loved Cocoon. San is a tremendous lead, and I felt for her at every step. I identified with her timid nature and reluctance to cause a stir. Throughout the film, San makes fatal mistakes by refusing to let her voice be heard, leaving me constantly asking: What if she had spoken her mind? Would the people we lost still be alive if she had shared the warning signs?
Mayu is equally thrilling to follow. She’s everything San wishes she could be: reactive, outspoken, and brave. She’s the type of friend who extends a hand when you’re about to fall and pushes you beyond your limits. Yet, Cocoon explores what happens when someone like this is reduced to a shell of their former self by the atrocities of war. Watching her change is both mesmerizing and devastating.
Visually, Cocoon is stunning. The film marks the feature debut of Studio SASAYURI, founded by former Studio Ghibli ink-and-paint director Hitomi Tateno. With key animators Akihiko Yamashita (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) and Shinji Otsuka (Princess Mononoke, The Boy and the Heron), the fluid animation and vibrant color palette echo Hayao Miyazaki’s greatest works. Everything looks so serene that it lulls you into a false sense of security until the bombs begin to drop. In a brilliant, brutal artistic choice, the animators trade blood for flower petals, leaving pools of flora where crimson would stain the ground. It would be beautiful if not for the children littering the coast.
Like Grave of the Fireflies, Cocoon left me shaken, but deeply grateful. The film accomplishes more in an hour than most movies manage in over two. The hardships these women endured are unfathomable for a privileged viewer who has never known the nightmares of war, but Cocoon puts you right in their tiny shoes, capturing all the love, optimism, and crushing reality of a life none of them chose. The world can be cruel, but honoring their sacrifices through stories like this is the least we can do. Cocoon is a movie that will stick with me forever.
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