The film, Spirited Away, is by far my favorite Miyazaki film. First of all, the music was amazing throughout the entire film, phenomenal job. It does a great job portraying many underlying events and fun filled story. The main character, Chihiro is travelling to her new home when her father takes a shortcut to the house only to find an abandoned train station in the middle of a forest. Normally, an individual would not go explore the abandoned train station but of course, our characters went right for it. After many unfortunate events, Chihiro finds herself in the spirit world, alone and scared in a new environment. I really enjoyed how the overall movie played on the fact that she is moving to a place she didn’t desire and adjusting is hard. Becoming less dependent at that age is also a major theme considering she starts out spoiled and ends up sufficiently independent. Only comment I would have about the movie was that her parents just greet her at the end of the movie with a “where have you been?”. Clearly something should have been wrong if their daughter was missing for nearly five days. Anyways, the story was great, never boring considering events progressed at a decent pace. The artwork was truly magnificent. It gave a perfect sense of being in another world while also relating common aspects of the natural world to it, like a bathhouse and restaurants with common surroundings. The character models were extremely imaginative and detailed. I enjoyed how they portrayed human greed throughout the entire bathhouse, mainly Yubaba and No Face but also the denizens of the structure. The insatiable greed of the citizens and Yubaba led to the eventual downfall of their civilization (or bathhouse, however you’d like to call it). It is only when Yubaba has reached her limit and realized she had been conned with the fake gold and loss of her son that she had a change of heart. Lastly, I’d just like to mention that there are countless Japanese religious symbols throughout this film, (stones, statues, sekkai gates, bridges, etc.). I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun, imaginative, and heartwarming story in general.
