Light of the Fireflies is a trilogy of Grave of the Fireflies stories written by Haruko123
The trilogy begins in June of 1945, not long after Seita and Setsuko leave their aunt's house. When an air raid destroys a portion of the city of Nishinomiya, a fourteen year old girl named Yuki is separated from her family, and flees to the bomb shelter where the siblings have made their home. After getting over his initial distrust, Seita allows Yuki to stay with them until she finds her family, and soon, the three of them find themselves depending on each other for survival in a time when food is scarce and when air raids are becoming an increasingly common occurrence. Yet despite everything, Yuki clings to the hope of seeing her family alive, and Seita and Setsuko dream of the day their father will come home. But what will happen to them if these hopes and dreams turn out to be impossible?
However, the end of the war is only the beginning, and the series takes on a more slower, slice of life pace as it continues to follow Seita, Setsuko and Yuki as they grow into adolescence, and finally into adults. They are still haunted by their memories of the war, and continue to face hardships, but with each other's help and encouragement, they are able to press forward, with bright hopes for the future.
The trilogy was completed, but as of 2020, all parts of the story have been deleted.
This fanfiction series contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Education: In Part 2, Setsuko's school follows the Western school year which starts in autumn and finishes at the beginning of summer. In Japan, the new school year begins in the spring. Averted in Part 3 where the school follows the Japanese school year.
- Ascended Extra: In Part 2, Setsuko makes friends with two boys who she plays with and are seen a number of times during that fic. They made their first appearance briefly in a chapter during Part 1.
- Babies Ever After: The final chapter of Part 3 was an epilogue that included Seita's children growing up and having children of their own.
- Berserk Button: Hurting anyone that Seita considers to be his family will put him in a rage. This also holds true for Yuki to an extent.
- Big Brother Instinct: Seita will go to great lengths to protect Setsuko.
- Cheerful Child: Setsuko. Despite having to live during rough times, she's still able to smile and be optimistic. Having an older brother like Seita who does his best to cheer her up certainly helps.
- Cool Big Sis: Yuki becomes like this to Setsuko, as well as being the Team Mom. Seita himself is a Cool Big Bro.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: In Part 3, Yuki discourages her daughter from playing with her two classmates because they are Chinese. When she explains to Seita why she did this, she says it is because the Chinese are cruel. Seita then chides her because her view is based on wartime propaganda.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The parts are all named One Word Titles, are are immaterial nouns:
- Survival
- Love
- Endurance
- Happy Ending Override: The house that Seita and his family move into receives no Plot Armor - in the epilogue, Seita reveals it was affected by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. As the house was made of wood and not built to withstand earthquakes, it falls apart and is then burnt by fires from the city.
- Injured Limb Episode: Yuki's leg is injured by a bullet from a plane during Part 1. She is treated for it, but the damage has already been done. In Part 3 she mentions that she cannot run due to her injured leg, and in the final chapter Seita mentions that it got worse as time went on.
- Mythology Gag:
- At the end of Grave of The Fireflies, Seita returns to the shelter only to find Setsuko hallucinating. While the kids go to live with Obaa-chan in Part 1 before Setsuko's condition deteriorates to that state, this scene is recontextualised as part of a nightmare Seita has during Part 2.
- Seita's kids, Tsutomu and Ayano, are named after the actors who voiced Seita and Setsuko in Grave of The Fireflies.
- One-Word Title: The parts:
- Survival
- Love
- Endurance
- Parental Abandonment: As in the original film, Seita and Setsuko's mother died of her injuries from an air raid, and Seita eventually learns of their father's death. Yuki's father died fighting in the war, and she is separated from her mother and sisters during a separate air raid. She never sees them again, and they are heavily implied to have died in the raid.
- Parental Substitute: Seita, Setsuko, and Yuki end up in the care of a kind elderly woman named Tanaka Teruko.
- Scenery Gorn: The aftermath of the various air raids leave piles of ruins, and several blackened, decaying corpses.
- Shout-Out:
- In Part 2, Seita overhears Yuki singing a song called "Middle of a Muddle", which was a deleted song from Cinderella. Another chapter also features Seita and Setsuko singing the opening lines from "Stroll", the opening theme from My Neighbor Totoro.
- In Part 3, Seita recounts to his children a pregnant Yuki's obsession with pineapple, only for Yuki to have moved on to something else by the time Seita finds one. This was based on a scene in Only Yesterday where the family gets a pineapple for the first time and end up hating the taste of it, and a scene from Lady and the Tramp where the husband has to find Chop Suey, because his pregnant wife has started craving it.
- Sole Survivor: Thanks to an air raid and a naval battle, Tanaka Teruko (known as "Obaa-chan") is the only surviving member of her family. Yuki is also the only one in her family to live through the war.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In stark contrast to the original film, which ended with Seita and Setsuko dying due to starvation, the support brought by Yuki means both end up surviving WWII and were allowed to grow up.
- War Is Hell: Losing one's home and family, being permanently injured in an air strike, and struggling to find food every day when one is starving is not a pleasant experience to say the least.
