'Spirited Away' Retrospective
Image Source: IMDb
Hayao Miyazaki is known for his stunning animation and phenomenal stories. He has found a way to make mundane life feel magical and romantic, and Spirited Away is by far his most well-known film to date. The film was released in the US in 2003, and it quickly became a favorite of audiences both young and old. It not only put Studio Ghibli on the map for western audiences, but it also changed how the world would forever perceive animation. Let’s take a look at how the film has evolved over the last twenty-one years.
While this is not the first Studio Ghibli film to be released in the US, it was one of the most popular. The film held the record for highest-grossing Japanese film for 19 years and was the only foreign language film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature until Miyazaki’s newest film, The Boy and the Heron won the award this year. The film also came at a time when most animation was turning to CGI, but this film, like most of Studio Ghibli’s films, was completely hand-drawn. There is no denying that since its release Spirited Away has had an enormous impact on the world of animation, but I think its biggest impact is seen in the fans. Not only did this film lead to many fans going into animation, but it also ignited a love for anime that is still burning more than two decades later. We can thank films like Spirited Away for the massive amount of anime that Western fans can access today.
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Image Source: IMDb
The film follows a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro who is thrown into a world of magic and darkness after her parents accidentally get themselves turned into pigs. While on the way to their new home, her father takes a shortcut, and they find themselves at what they believe is an abandoned amusement park. It turns out that they have stumbled upon a bath house for spirits, and if Chihiro isn’t careful she and her parents will be stuck there forever. This film was different from most animation of the time because the heroine wasn’t thrown into a world of magic and beauty with a sidekick to help her navigate the strange world. Instead, the heroine is thrown into a world of magic and darkness which she must traverse herself, and each person she meets may or may not be trustworthy – it is up to her to figure that out. She is forced into hard labor for parts of the film, and she is not the most likable character at the beginning of the film.
We watch as she learns not only who she is, but also how strong she is and what she is capable of when she believes in herself. This story also did not feature a young girl being saved by her true love. Instead, she was the one doing the saving, and if it weren’t for her then our main male character would never have survived. While the film is set in a magical world, it feels so much like real life which is one of the most enchanting things about Miyazaki’s work.
Spirited Away not only changed the world of animation forever, but it also changed the way that fans saw it. The film taught us that there is beauty in the darkness, and sometimes we have to start a journey on our own and find who we can trust along the way. In the last two decades, no film has come close to touching fans of the animation industry in the way that this film did, and I don’t know that there will ever be another film that can.
Spirited Away is available to stream on Max.
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