Miyazaki has explained that he drew from his own youthful experience of helping to clean a local river, removing random detritus including an abandoned bicycle, and eventually watching wildlife return to the waters. Amid the messy chaos, Chihiro treats the creature with gentle compassion, and it transpires to be a sacred river spirit who had suffered from human pollution. In one pivotal scene, Chihiro is enlisted to help wash a hulking "stink spirit" who has visited the bathhouse. In Spirited Away, Chihiro befriends a mysterious "Dragon Boy", and is forced to work in an opulent bathhouse owned by the grotesque witch Yubaba (who seizes Chihiro's identity, and renames her "Sen"). I'd like to see Manhattan underwater… Money and desire – all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over."Īnd yet, as we see in his films (and their intriguingly ambiguous "baddies"), there remains a capacity for positive transformation. I want to see the sea rise over Tokyo and the NTV tower become an island. He said with mass consumption continuing as it is we will have less than 50 years… I'm hoping I'll live another 30 years. Miyazaki himself hasn't always sounded upbeat on environmental matters in a 2005 interview in The New Yorker, he exclaimed: "Our population could just suddenly dip and disappear! I talked to an expert on this recently, and I said 'Tell me the truth'. This includes Miyazaki's 1978 directorial debut TV series Future Boy Conan (set in a post-apocalyptic 2008!) and his 1984 manga adaptation Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, where a courageous princess/eco warrior traverses a sci-fi Toxic Jungle, as well as the forest-set battles of Princess Mononoke (1997). Throughout numerous Miyazaki films, we experience a nostalgia for the natural world, respect for spirit realms (and Shinto traditions), and concerns about climate change, along with narratives where young girls and boys tend to be far braver and smarter than their elders. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) in particular was a glimpse of country life for latchkey kids stuck in dormitory suburbs, and I think Spirited Away takes that further, allegorising the constant pressures and distractions of modernity, for a little girl who just wants to be normal, but doesn't know what normal is any more, and sees her parents succumbing to temptation and greed." "Some film companies have adopted eco themes as an easy grade, but Miyazaki has a love not merely of sustainable environments, but also of the right of children to be children. You get a sense of that most poignantly in Isao Takahata's Pom Poko (1994), when the creatures briefly return the town to the way it looked before the trees were cut down and the ponds filled in. "Part of it is born out of their own genuine concerns for the environment, and partly it's a geographical awareness born from the fact that the studio itself is based in a new town in the Tama Hills that used to be open countryside. "Studio Ghibli in general has always been interested in environmental themes," says Clements. Even the name of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli is vividly elemental ("ghibli" is an Italian term, itself derived from Arabic, meaning "hot desert wind"). Yet two decades on from its original release, Spirited Away retains its bewitching power: as an extraordinary gateway into anime as a unifying form, and into themes of environmentalism, supernaturalism and humanity that are deeply rooted throughout Miyazaki's works, and feel more resonant than ever. Spirited Away was certainly not the first Japanese animation to reach a global mainstream – 1961 saw the US cinema distribution of Magic Boy and The Tale Of The White Serpent from Tokyo-based studio Toei Animation generations of kids worldwide have grown up with multi-genre anime TV series, from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (aka Battle Of The Planets) to Pokemon the film adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's explosive Akira (1988) renewed mass interest in anime. An indispensable guide to Studio Ghibli As dusk falls, accompanied by Joe Hisaishi's shiver-inducing score, we are enveloped in the shifting landscape – folkloric and pastoral, now neon-tinged we are captivated, with seemingly no way back. While her mother and father are charmed by these unexpected surrounds (mossy shrines, enigmatic signs, a strangely deserted restaurant feast), Chihiro is instinctively creeped-out. Within the first 15 minutes of Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning 2001 anime feature Spirited Away, the world has transformed. We find ourselves lost in some kind of enchanted realm with 10-year-old heroine Chihiro, whose parents have taken a diversion on their move to a new home the film charts her arrival and adventures in a world ruled by spells, spirits and sorceresses.
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