So I just Googled Chirin No Suzu and sweet merciful God, this story is depressing! I do think a fluffy version would be fascinating to read, so hopefully one of our resident sadbox scribes gives it a shot.
On a side note, I can’t believe this film got green lit for children. Even in the 80s with all the extremely dark children’s programming, even in Japan where there is a much higher threshold for what constitutes a kid’s cartoon, i I cannot believe this got dropped into theaters! It’s stuff like this that makes me unabashedly love Japanese culture.