Spirited Away
This particular Miyazaki movie rightfully received an Oscar Award and 35 other various awards in the year 2003. But I’m sure Miyazaki would still be very excited if he knew that I was blogging about it, lol.
Alright, time to give you a description of what this movie’s about.
Spirited away is a Miyazaki movie. Though the intended audience for Miyazaki’s anime seems to be aimed towards children, this is a movie for people of all ages.
The movie starts off with introducing the viewer to an average ordinary family. The family consists of a mom, dad, and young daughter, Chihiro, who’s about the age of ten.
Chihiro is a semi-spoiled child who is first seen in the car, pouting about having to move into a new home. She makes faces and slumps while her parents ignore her, preferring to look at the road ahead instead of glancing into the back seat. While the family is on the main road her dad claims he knows a shortcut, even though he’s also new to the neighborhood.
They speed through a dirt road leading into the woods, father driving as if he has nothing to lose, then abruptly break when there’s a small stone sculpture in the center of their path. The rock object is sitting eerily by itself in front of a huge stone archway.
The family decides to get out and investigate, and realizes that the tunnel leads to a room that has another tunnel which leads to a field. Though Chihiro (the little girl) protests entering the tunnel in the first place, she is too scared to stay behind on her own and decides to follow her parents. 
Her mom is confused and asks herself something along the lines of, “How did this place get here?” and her father answers as if he helped build the place. Something about it being an abandoned amusement park that went bankrupt.
They travel deeper, over a creek and through the meadow, until they reach a town. Once they enter the village they immediately smell food and sniff it out like drug dogs in Canada.
They find a smorgasbord of piping hot, well everything really, sitting upon a counter.
Nobodies there.
They yell for someone to come out from behind the counter but nobody turns up and the parents decide to serve themselves. Chihiro objects, they haven’t even asked if they could eat the food, but her dad says, “Don’t worry, Daddy’s got credit cards and cash.”
Reread what her father says if it didn’t quite process in your mind. His mentality is that being rude, or basically doing anything you want is okay, as long as you have the money to pay for it. This whole movie builds off this basic idea, with Chihiro believing this idea in the beginning, and learning through hard work and many trials that money doesn’t rule everything. It’s just another object.
Chihiro leaves the presence of her parents to wander the town for a while nervously. The day turns to evening and shadows begin to creep across the village. But the shadows aren’t the only things lurking around the town. Huge black blobs double the size of the panicking child slowly slide along their nightly schedule.
Chihiro sprints back to her parents only to find that they’ve been turned into mindless pigs. No doubt it is a metaphor to their hog like behavior. Chihiro gasps and sprints away from her mom and dad, she needed to get out of there. She realizes that she’s starting to become see through and rubs her skin frantically. She then meets a boy who tells her to eat a small red berry, assuring her that it won’t turn her into a pig but she had to eat it. She does what she’s told and her body becomes solid again. 
The boy leads her to the center of the town, a thriving and popular bath house. To get inside they need to cross a long bridge, the boy tells her to stay behind him and no matter what not to breathe until they cross the bridge. Strange creatures and spirits went in and out of the bath house and Chihiro is about ready to have a heart attack. Just as they about clear the bridge a frog in a Japanese style shirt greets the boy…
OMFG THAT THING TALKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s what I believe was going through Chihiro’s head as she gasped. However gasping is breathing, and they were still on the bridge. The frog could now see her and exclaimed “A HUMAN?” Luckily nobody else heard and Haku (the boy) casts a stun spell on the annoying amphibian.
Haku gave Chihiro orders, she needed to get to the bottom of the bath house and beg the man/spider/thing in the boiler room for a job, any job at the bath house at all.
She faces her fears and runs all by herself down freakishly brittle and steep stairs, already learning more about self reliance and bravery than she knew in the beginning of the movie.
The boiler man declines her beg for a job, he has workers, enchanted soot balls that put coal in the flames for him. If they don’t work then the spell will wear off and they will die. It makes you wonder if this is a reflection on society, are we just mindless soot balls? Do you think they might just rather to be dust?
However Chihiro pleads longer and she’s proven to be a professional when comes to whining to get her way. He calls a girl downstairs who works in the Bath house above. She’s dressed in her workers clothing and agrees to take Chihiro under her wing in exchange for her favorite food, roasted salamander…
She soon becomes an older sister to Chihiro, and takes care of her. Chihiro learns that this girl depends on her to help her work and decides to try, the most difficult thing she’s ever done in her pampered life.
The Movie continues to show that its hard work and good character that make a difference and not the money that comes from it when a blob with a mask appears named No Face. 
No Face offers chunks of solid gold to Chihiro and she rejects the offer, not going to lie, I would probably take it. This may be the first time anyone’s ever rejected his gifts. This is a good thing though because later on we find out that these are not gifts but payments. He eats the people who accept his gold, it is a bit more of an outright statement that money doesn’t make everything better than what happened to Chihiro’s parents. When No Face doesn’t understand this, he becomes a mindless monster.
I love this movie for its art, metaphors, and sound track, like most Miyazaki movies I give Spirited Away a ten out of ten.
