The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (1961)
The final entry is where Kaji breaks. He maintains his humanity, but it is fragmented and his idealism is broken. He is forced into making terrible choices of life and death, and while there are moments of optimism throughout his long journey, the epic ends in a beautifully tragic manner.
We start and end in a prison labor camp, and we see that no military is much better or worse than the others. Add even your own countrymen will stab in you in the back. Kija gets no reward for doing the moral right thing, like speaking the truth.
As for the whole trilogy, the first still stands a bit above the others, but that is because its setting was different from the countless of war epics this has clearly inspired. Especially the middle part of this was a bit long winded, not because there is anything wrong with it, but it is another case of its influence being evident in later films that I have seen previously and thus the impact was greater there than it was here. Like in Come and See which brought into the same sort of mental state.
I finished it last night but I think the full impact of that ending just fully hit me this morning as I am writing this. It is not Grave of the Fireflies level but it is a contender.
Rating: 4.5