Background
Spirited Away is one of the highest grossing films to come out of the famous film production company Studio Ghibli. It was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and the original music was done by Joe Hisaishi and Youmi Kimura. Spirited Away was released in 2001 and had a box office gross of $274.93 million USD and overtook Titanic in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a ¥30.4 billion total. In 2016, it was voted the #4 best film of the 21st century as picked by 177 film critics from around the world. The characters of the movie are Chihiro Ogino (Sen) who is voiced by Daveigh Chase (English) and Rumi Hiiragi (Japanese), Haku who is voiced by Jason Marsden (English) and Miyu Irino (Japanese), Yu-Baaba and Zeniiba who are voiced by Suzanne Pleshette (English) and Mari Natsuki (Japanese), Rin who is voiced by Susan Egan (English) and Yumi Tamai (Japanese), Kaonashi (No-face) who is voiced by Bob Bergen (English) and Tatsuya Gashuin (Japanese), and Kamajii who is voiced by David Ogden Stiers (English) and Bunta Sugawara (Japanese). All of my background information came from the website Studio Ghibli Movies.
Spirited Away starts out with 10-year-old Chihiro and her parents heading to their new house in a different town and they end up getting lost in a forest. They go through a tunnel and end up in the spirited world where Chihiro finds a bath house and meets a boy named Haku, who tells her she needs to leave but she doesn’t make it back in time, while her parents eat too much at an empty food stale and get turned into pigs. Haku takes Chihiro back to the bath house where meets Kamajii, a six-armed man who runs the boiler room and Rin, a bath house maid, who tell her that she needs to see Yu-Baaba to get a job.
Once she does Yu-Baaba takes her real name and tells her to remember it or she will be trapped in the spirited world forever and gives her the name Sin. She works at the bath house with Rin, and so much happens while she is there. She finds out Haku is a dragon who then gets hurt by Zeniiba, Yu-Baaba twin sister, who wants her seal back, she lets No-Face into the bath house and he almost destroys it, and helps Haku find out that is the spirit from the river that she fell into and that he saved her. Yu-Baaba final gives Sin the chance to leave the spirit world but only if she can tell her which of the pigs is her parent. She guesses correct that none of them are, gets her name back, and gets to go home.
Professional Criticism
FILM REVIEW; Conjuring Up Atmosphere Only Anime Can Deliver written by Elvis Mitchell was published in The New York Times on September 20, 2002. In Elvis Mitchell’s review of Spirited Away, he talks more about how Hayao Miyazaki is different from American animators. He talks about the theme of the film being dislocation and how Hayao Miyazaki uses his specialty of taking the primal wish of a children, transporting them to a fantasy land, and leaving them marooned there. In the film Chihiro’s name is taken from and she finds out that is if she doesn’t hide her real name she will lose her identity and Miyazaki shows how Chihiro is changing in that throughout her journey pieces of her are being chipped away and her whininess gradually disappears as she learns responsibility. He begins to talk about how the beauty of the animation, a skillful blend of hand-painted foreground and well-placed computer background, works to generate the storytelling. He writes about how Spirited Away is a marriage of two early films from Studio Ghibli is that has the power of Princess Mononoke and the lively pop-pop-pop of My Friend Totoro. Elvis Mitchell ends his review by talking about how Hayao Miyazaki got his inspiration for the film from the daughter of one of his friends right after he began to think about retiring from story writing.
‘Spirited Away’ turns heads in U.S. written by Claudia Puig was published in USA TODAY on September 19, 2002. In Claudia Puig’s review of Spirited Away focuses more on the things that Chihiro learns while she is in the spirit world, and the experience that the audience will receive when they watch the film. Chihiro goes to an enchanted world and experiences newfound excitement and a sense of purpose. She learns that she must work hard to rescue her parents who have been turned to pigs. Just like Chihiro the viewer of the film will also be able to escape the boredom of their lives and the predictable animated fare. Unlike other directors of animated film focus mostly on children when making their films, Hayao Miyazaki treats his audience as imaginative and intelligent human beings, rather than catering to kids with rote displays of silliness, stunts and scares. She talks about landscape of the spirit world is really amazing and vivid, how Chihiro meets eccentric characters and how the elements of Eastern religions and Japanese legends add to the otherworldly, magical quality of the film. Claudia Puig ends her review of Spirited Away with talking about how the tale of the film creates an alternate universe that can also come from vivid childhood dream or a detailed retelling of a classical fairy tale.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2002-09-19-spirited-away_x.htm
High Spirits written by Richard Corliss was published in TIME on September 22, 2002. Richard Corliss begins his review by talking about how Spirited Away transports views outside themselves and how well the film did in Japan before coming to America. He then moves on to talk about what the film is about and how Chihiro learns things while she is in the spirit world. He writes that Chihiro learns that being an adult is not always about just saying no. Richard Corliss compares Chihiro in the spirit world to other girls like Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy Gale in Oz in that they are all three help captive in a kingdom that both amazes and troubles them. He talks about the people who help Chihiro get through the spirit world safely like Haku and Rin and how she builds a relationship with each of them. He ends his review with talking about the animation of Spirited Away and how it is different from the things that Americans are used to. He even gives a compliment to the animation film by writing “Artful but not arty, Spirited Away is a handcrafted cartoon, as personal as an Utamaro painting, yet its breadth and heart give it an appeal that should touch American viewers of all ages.” http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020930-353577,00.html
Social Impact
Review