This one doesn't build to a gut punch, it just sits with a seven-year-old and lets you do the math. Oshin gives up school and walks out of a rice farmer's house where her grandmother, her pregnant mother, her father and brother in the fields all can't scrape together enough to eat, and she goes to work as a servant for people with money. The animation stays quiet and unshowy on purpose. No swelling spectacle, no villain to hate, just the daily arithmetic of a child being spent to keep a family alive, and the wealthy household treating her exactly the way you're dreading. It is a character study in the strictest sense: nothing happens that isn't happening to her. Bring tissues and don't watch it in public, because the moment that breaks you is a little girl being polite about something no child should have to be polite about.

Oshin is born into a family of poor rice farmers. Her father and brother work the fields, while her grandmother and her mother, who is expecting another baby, scarcely have enough food. To help her family get by, seven-year-old Oshin leaves school and chooses to go into service as a maid for a rich household. There she meets hardships worse than anything she had feared. The film is a drama about a young girl giving up her childhood to support the people she loves.