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Spirited Away Analysis

Decent Essays

Spirited Away (2002) produced by Studio Ghibli, it is a dramatic animation told in the point of view of a ten year old girl, Chihiro. She is forced to work in a bathhouse for exhausted spirits. She is then forced to tend to the every need of these beings. She has to escape the bathhouse and the grasp of her Master/Boss (Yubaba) and save her parents lives. Hayao Miyazaki is the writer and director of this wonderful film. The leading roles are: Chihiro (Daveigh Chase), Haku (Jason Marsden), Yubaba and Zeniba (Suzanne Pleshette), and Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers). Dramatic animation is an animated film that shows any type of drama basically. This can be any type of animation from 3D to 2D to motion graphics and many more. A drama is a genre in which it relies on emotional developments as well as characters that you can relate with. The drama element is there of course because Chihiro (Sen) is trying to get back to the human world and has to save her parents life, all while trying to stay alive herself. That is a lot of pressure for a 10 year old, right? In one scene in the beginning her parents decide to eat this huge, freshly prepared meal that was just sitting out in an abandoned amusement park (nothing weird about that) and then they literally turn into pigs. Big Fat Pigs engorging themselves in many platters of food as tall as they are! That seems quite dramatic. Another was when she needed to work in the bathhouse; she literally signed her name away and was given a new name, Sen. This symbolizes her life, identity, everything. You are nothing without your name. After she signed it away she started to forget parts of her life, this was how her “Boss” tried to control her. In the film she comes across a masked shadowy figure, No Face, he is a really lonely spirit that just wants friends. However he is unwanted. No one wants a friend without a face, that’s well… terrifying. It also doesn’t help that he eats them when they wrong him. Yes, a figure with no face eats them with a mouth that opens on the “abdomen” area of its shadowy form. They also weren’t true friends, they only liked him because he gave them gold. When he tried to befriend Sen by giving her gold, she wouldn’t accept it. This intrigued him and

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