Hiroshima No Pika

Narrated by Susan Sarandon, Hiroshima No Pika is an iconographic-animated adaptation of the award-winning 1982 children's book by Japanese artist Toshi Maruki, detailing in paradoxically beautiful watercolor illustrations the hellish experiences of a seven-year-old girl named Mii and her mother and father, whose lives were forever altered on the morning of August 6, 1945, when their breakfast was interrupted by "a flash." Although most of the pictures in the U.S. published after the Enola Gay dropped the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb on Hiroshima emphasized the landscape (a scene of flattened desolation), Maruki's tale focuses on the people affected, as Mii and her parents suddenly find themselves in a world engulfed by fire and make their way down to the river and into the water. The scenes of the family stepping over the dead bodies underwater, or watching a sparrow--its wings burned off--struggling to fly, aptly underscore the text's observation that "hell could not be more awful than this," while one of the most poignant passages comes after a downpour of black rain when Mii sees (a bitterly ironic) rainbow in the sky. Combining details about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the decades-long aftermath of illness and death) together with the story of one family's misfortune (Mii's father's hair eventually falls out and he dies), Hiroshima No Pika is a powerful, disturbing piece that belongs in general collections, but is definitely not for young children (due to the nightmarish horror of the subject matter, as well as the sadly hellish sight of nude figures whose clothes were literally burned off). The DVD boasts an excellent bonus: the Oscar-nominated 1986 film Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, an hour-long profile of husband/wife artists Iri and Toshi Maruki, with generous samples of their acclaimed work "Hiroshima Murals" (much of which is significantly darker than what's found in Hiroshima No Pika). In addition, viewers will find a gallery of artwork and Sarandon's "activism page" with website links. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)