Barefoot Gen: The Movies 1 & 2 - Region 1 DVD

Nakazawa's alter ego, Gen Nakaoka is on his way to school when the bomb detonates. He makes his way back to his home through hellish scenes of ruined buildings, corpses, and hideously mutilated survivors. Although his family is still alive, Gen and his pregnant mother are unable to free his father, sister, and brother from the rubble of their house and must leave them to burn to death. His mother goes into labor during their flight and his new sister is born amid the devastation. Holding the infant, Gen tells her to remember the horrors, so that they never occur again.

Barefoot Gen is completely unlike the musical fairy tales and slapstick comedies Americans associate with animation, but its powerful antiwar message has won admiration around the world. Barefoot Gen II follows the character through the early days of the postwar era. --Charles Solomon

Gen is a cheerful elementary school student living in Japan during World War II. After years of living with difficult wartime rationing and impoverished conditions, Gen and his family have managed to maintain a relatively normal and happy life. All that is about to change when an atomic bomb destroys their city in an instant. While Gen and his mother manage to survive the attack, the rest of their family is not so lucky. In the face of adversity, Gen manages to maintain his cheerful spirit and never loses hope that things will get better for him, and for the entire nation of Japan. Selected as one of the five best Japanese animation movies - Time Magazine