In This Corner of the World

A hand-drawn animated epic based on a Japanese manga, Sunao Katabuchi’s In This Corner of the World concerns Suzu, a daydreaming teenager from Hiroshima married off to a young naval clerk in the early days of World War II. Suzu is forced to relocate to a nearby naval town to live with her husband’s ungrateful family, slowly settling into her role but still carrying a torch for the gruff boy back home. As the tide of war turns and her new hometown becomes a daily target for air raids, Suzu finds her strength, even employing ancient methods to stretch their food supply; meanwhile, we wait for the inevitable nuclear horror to hit. Fascinating and frustrating in equal measures, In This Corner of the World offers a compelling look at life in Japan during and directly after wartime, with a rich female character at the center, but it’s also maddeningly choppy. D.B.