How To Write An Essay About Who Killed Mallaby

1496 Words6 Pages

Produced by MSV Pictures located in Surabaya (see Fig. 4), the movie was set in the World War II after Indonesia was freed from Japanese colonialism, which leads to the incident of November 10th 1945 that takes thousands of lives from both sides and used as the background of the film. The story tells about Musa, a 13 years old boy who lived with his mother in a residence of a former Japanese soldier, worked as a shoe shiner in Surabaya city. His mother worked as a housemaid for the residence that belongs to the name of Yoshimura. After the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Indonesia caused by the bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Indonesia has lost the colonies state, which triggers the youths and other residents to proclaim independence …show more content…

According to a researcher, J.W.G. Parott, in “Who killed Mallaby?” explains two possibilities, by two points of view, of how he died. The first point of view was from Roeslan Abdulgani as Indoneisa’s viewpoint, who stated that Mallaby’s death was caused by an explosion coming from the British side (1975, p.99). This could be assumed as the carelessness of a British soldier, Capt. Laughland, upon throwing the grenades whilst the condition where they supposed to be unarmed, until they were told to open fire (1975, p.97). Though Abdulgani insisted that the fire was the Brigadier’s command that started the war, it was never stated for sure as who gave the command at this point. However, according to an official British viewpoint stated …show more content…

One of the similarities is shown by the main characters, which are kids, in both films. They also able to engage the audience emotionally using the character’s point of view to show the conflict they are struggling with. Perhaps due to its similarity and the target audience of Battle of Surabaya, Grave of Fireflies could be an influence to create the animation in the process. However, Grave of the Fireflies shows the despair of World War II instead of creating a fictional adventure like Battle of Surabaya did. According to Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle, as one of two most famous anime concerning World War II, Grave of the Fireflies attempt to “speak for history” through the image of suffering, destruction, and renewal (2005, p.218) through the eyes and voice of children. Following its attempt, this evokes sympathy from the viewers as they follow the story by using straightforward narrative structure (2005, p.219). The account of personal suffering in the movie also strengthens the feel of sadness and lost, while Battle of Surabaya focused on patriotism and nationalism to protect the state of a country. The characters presented in Battle of Surabaya also have a different essence of struggle (betrayal and lost) compared to Grave of Fireflies (despair and survival). Furthermore, the realistic part of the history were