Spirited Away

Spirited Away is one Hayao Miyazaki’s most well-known movies. Hayao Miyazaki is a famous Japanese director and animator who contributed to many different animated movies that generally follow similar themes. Spirited Away in particular won many different awards, including “‘Best Animated Film’ award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences… Best Film at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Best Animated Feature (among other awards) at the 2002 Annie Awards, Best Animated Feature from Critics' Awards in New York and Los Angeles, Best Asian Film at the 2002 Hong Kong Film Awards, and Best Film at the Cinekid 2002 International Children's Film Festival,” (Anime News Network). Also, on February 11^th of 2003 Spirited Away became the first “Japanese animated feature” to be awarded an Oscar nomination in Best Animated Film (Anime News Network).

          Spirited away is about a 10-year old girl name Chihiro who is moving from her old home. The movie starts out by her and her parents getting lost and stumbling upon an abandoned theme park. Within the theme park, her parents get turned into pigs because of them “pigging out” at an stall filled with food. This is just the start of her adventure into the spirit world. She first meets a boy who helps her into the spirit world and tells her she needs to find work that she finds at the bathhouse. Chihiro is able to find work from Yubaba, the witch running the bathhouse. The deal for getting a job at the bathhouse though, Chihiro has to give up her name, changing it from Chihiro to Sen. This is the start of her job at the bathhouse. She encounters many different challenges, including a stink spirit that turns out to be a river spirit, and a No-Face spirit who desperately wants Chihiro’s attention (SparkNote). The whole storyline is much more in-depth and continues, but to be able to discuss some of the themes and avoid spoiling the whole plot I’ll move on.

          Something in many of Miyazaki’s films is animism. This is shown in Spirited Away in mant different ways, one being the soot-sprites. These are little soot creatures that work in the boiler room, portrayed as living feeling creatures. Chihiro even sees one of the soot spirites struggling with some coal and it getting squished, where she quickly goes to help out. Upon rescuing the creature, it seems relieved. Then, when the other sprites see how she helped carry the coal for the one sprite, they all drop their coal hoping for help! Giving these inanimate objects feelings shows the belief that everything has a spirit.

Another theme of Miyazaki’s is the blurred line between good and evil. All of the antagonist in Spirited Away are truly just misunderstood, while good characters are not completely flawless. The perfect example of this is the No-Face spirit Chihiro kindly lets into the bathhouse while it’s raining outside. At first, the spirit just wants to help and please Chihiro for her kindness, giving her token’s needed for the bath house. But unable to get her attention, No-Face goes around causing issues by creating gold out of thin air. When he is finally about to find Chihiro, he tries to offer her gold which she refuses. This sets No-Face on a rampage. When finally confronted by Chihiro, No-Face becomes angry. But then, after calming down, he accompanies Chihiro, back to a normal non-threatening creature (SparkNote).

The importance of names and identity is shown throughout the film. The main example of this is how one exchanges their name, essentially their identity, to become ‘enslaved’ at the bathhouse. And to be able to escape that contract, Chihiro had to be able to remember her true name and not the name given by Yababa (SpakrNote).

What difference do you see between this kind of animated movie and those of Disney? Is either one better?

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Spirited Away.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2004. Web. 2 Oct. 2012.

"News Spirited Away Captures Oscar." Anime News Network. Anime News Network, 23 Mar. 2003. Web. 08 Oct. 2012. <http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2003-03-23/spirited-away-captures-oscar>.