Children Untold (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for patriotic fervor
Take a Drink: for music
Take a Drink: for odd jobs
Take a Drink: for petty crimes
Do a Shot: for the oldest profession
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
The Grave of the Fireflies is perhaps the ur-text of WWII movies told from the perspective of Japanese children, but I don’t recall seeing one that deals with the aftermath, like Germany Year Zero did for the other hemisphere so soon after the war no set dressing was needed.
Children Untold does just that, following Kotoko, a young Japanese girl living in the countryside who finds in the waning days of WWII she may be an orphan- and the mean unreconstructed streets of Tokyo are no great place to be an orphan.
A Toast
We open with Kotoko living a relatively safe and sheltered existence in the countryside, but the way the other children in her school sling the label “evacuee” like an insult betrays tensions- these Tokyo children and even their teacher are not so welcome out in the rural areas they’ve fled to for safety. We flash back before to find out that her parents are not nearly as bought in to the blind nationalism little Kotoko is clearly getting in every other forum of her life. She practically demands she be ‘allowed to serve her country’ by going to the farmlands like all the other children.
One night we find out what that beautiful glimmer in the night sky was they at first excitedly observe- the firebombing of Tokyo, which burned down her home, with her parents now missing persons. The war ends soon after, and the teach ferries these kids back to what remains of the city- and to their waiting parents… or an orphanage. Kotoko refuses to go there, though, believing her family to still be alive.
Her circumstances get worse fast in heartbreaking fashion- her brother is actually where their house once stood, but injecting something in his arm. He briefly and tragically shows his once substantial talent with a violin later, but he’s not in the picture for long, and she’s soon shining shoes on the street with a group of urchins she comes across. Both both scenes in this film in which music from an unexpected source stops people in their tracks are transporting and sad.
She quickly learns that surviving as a girl here is not something she’s at all interested in, so she cuts her hair short and doesn’t correct anyone who calls her a boy. She also finds there’s a much higher degree of organization among these children than you’d imagine- they operate like little subsidiaries of a crime syndicate, run by an anti-Capitalist Fagin.
Her gang of friends have various backgrounds- some like hers, and some harder, like one boy who belonged to a family of Korean miners brought across the sea to be practically slave labor. They form tight bonds, which is both essential to their survival and tragic when a street clean-up initiative to ship off ragamuffins and tear down the street markets sweeps them onto a children’s prison island administered by the “water policemen”.
Kotoko learns that hope is in and with other people – the friends you make, those who help you with reason or no. The cost of war is always borne by women and children, but the hope for a life beyond it rests with them as well.
Beer Two
This is the kind of film that’s not averse to tugging those heartstrings with a little melodrama. The tears will flow- onscreen, at least.
Verdict
Children Untold is a story of the struggle for postwar survival experienced by too many children on the streets of Tokyo.
