Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird
Speaker 3: House we're going to be talking about the two thousand
Speaker 3: and one Japanese animated fantasy film Spirited Away, directed by
Speaker 3: Hayao Miyazaki. This week, I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: a weird movie with a good soul, and I can
Speaker 3: hardly think of a better example. This is not only
Speaker 3: one of my favorite films we've covered on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: this has got to be one of my favorite films
Speaker 3: of all time. I just came back to it for
Speaker 3: the first time in many years this week, and I
Speaker 3: knew I was going to love it on rewatch, but
Speaker 3: I think I was not prepared still for just how
Speaker 3: lovely and exciting and wonderful this movie is and basically every.
Speaker 2: Way absolutely I mean this is this is one of
Speaker 2: the all time greats. This is a film I've seen
Speaker 2: multiple times over the years, and yesterday, late in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: I asked my family's like, Hey, I've got to watch
Speaker 2: spirit It Away again for work. Who wants to watch
Speaker 2: it with me, and they were both on board, my
Speaker 2: wife and my son, so we all just sat in
Speaker 2: and sat in the living room and watched the film
Speaker 2: all the way through again. And it's one of those
Speaker 2: films where every time you watch it, yeah, you make
Speaker 2: new discoveries. You find yourself re examining the things you
Speaker 2: love about it and discovering new things to love about
Speaker 2: it as well. And for a weird House Cinema purposes here,
Speaker 2: this film is also notable for in a couple of ways.
Speaker 2: It's our second Miyazaki film, following NAUSICAA, and it's only
Speaker 2: the fourth film out of Let's see what have we done?
Speaker 2: We've done I believe one hundred and eighty one pictures
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema, And this is the only fourth
Speaker 2: time we've looked at a film from the two thousands,
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, the decade, the others being the
Speaker 2: year two thousand Psycho Beach part that was one that
Speaker 2: had Seth as a co host, and then we did
Speaker 2: two thousand and one's Jason X in two thousand and fours,
Speaker 2: the Chronicles of Riddick. What a selection, you know, It
Speaker 2: is interesting how those other films I just mentioned. Those
Speaker 2: are all very much in each film's own way, an
Speaker 2: artifact of the time. Spirited Away is a film that
Speaker 2: stands outside of time, though it does not feel like
Speaker 2: something that exists just within the year two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: It exists in all years, you know. It just takes
Speaker 2: one of those films.
Speaker 3: Yes, apart from the implied technology that we see on
Speaker 3: display in some of the animation shots, this could have
Speaker 3: been made any time in the history of color animated cinema.
Speaker 3: It could have been from the seventies, it could have
Speaker 3: been from this year. It really is out of time
Speaker 3: in that way. Well, I don't know if it could
Speaker 3: be from the seventies. We see some cars and technology
Speaker 3: and stuff at the very beginning that, or maybe a
Speaker 3: little beyond that. But really it is an out of
Speaker 3: time kind of film. So sometimes on weird house Cinema
Speaker 3: we like to pull out obscure gems from a dusty,
Speaker 3: forgotten shelf on the video store. That obviously is not
Speaker 3: the case here. Many of you probably know of this
Speaker 3: movie already. Spirited Away was a big hit both in
Speaker 3: Japan and internationally. You know, it was a box office success.
Speaker 3: It won an Oscar for Best Animated feature at the
Speaker 3: seventy fifth Academy Awards. Usually I don't pay a huge
Speaker 3: amount of attention to award ceremonies, but in this case,
Speaker 3: I'm glad to see the accolades going to something. I
Speaker 3: think it is absolutely deserved, both as a story and
Speaker 3: as an achievement in technical filmmaking. Spirited Away is just perfect.
Speaker 3: It's the kind of object you just want to take
Speaker 3: with you everywhere. It feels so weird and so wise
Speaker 3: and so interesting and has such a good heart.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, I don't think it's very controversial to say
Speaker 2: it absolutely deserved. That Oscar over the movie Ice Age.
Speaker 3: And that's never seen that so I can't compare.
Speaker 2: But not even any shame, you know, directed at the
Speaker 2: makers of Ice Age. I'm sure the people who made
Speaker 2: Ice Age are probably like, yeah, I mean yeah, Spirited
Speaker 2: Away is a better film. Most most films are not
Speaker 2: as good as Spirited Away. It's just on its own level.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is easily one of my favorite Miyazaki
Speaker 2: films as well. It really has no faults in my opinion,
Speaker 2: and to your point, has just such a pure heart.
Speaker 2: I love all of Miyazaki's films and a number of
Speaker 2: the films that I've seen in the studio Ghibli family
Speaker 2: as well that he did not actually helm as a director.
Speaker 2: But this one's a real gem. I hadn't watched it
Speaker 2: in a few years. It's been very much on my mind, though,
Speaker 2: since my family and I visited Ghibli Park in Japan
Speaker 2: earlier this year, which is a location loaded with recreations
Speaker 2: and exhibits related to this and other films from the
Speaker 2: Ghibli canon. I highly recommend that experience for Ghibli fans.
Speaker 2: If you happen to find yourself in Japan and can
Speaker 2: set aside a day in Nagoya which will get you
Speaker 2: close enough to take the train to the park, just
Speaker 2: give those tickets in advance.
Speaker 3: Now, there are so many fascinating ways that Spirited Away
Speaker 3: stands out. I think maybe we'll save a lot of
Speaker 3: those observations for the later part of the episode, where
Speaker 3: we're just talking through the plot and we can bring
Speaker 3: things up as they come up in the story. I
Speaker 3: will say upfront that, of course, in this episode we
Speaker 3: are going to talk about the plot from the beginning
Speaker 3: to the end. And you know, we often give spoiler warnings,
Speaker 3: especially for films where it feels like the surprises are
Speaker 3: very exciting to experience firsthand. This case, I would really
Speaker 3: emphasize if you've never seen Spirited Away and you want to,
Speaker 3: this is one where I would say, please please watch
Speaker 3: the movie before you listen to this and hear us
Speaker 3: explain the whole plot. It is worth it, definitely to
Speaker 3: just go in knowing nothing and experience it for yourself.
Speaker 2: And if you have no experience with Miyazaki films, if
Speaker 2: you have little or no experience with the Japanese animated
Speaker 2: pictures or TV in general, I still think that Spirited
Speaker 2: Away is a wonderful starting place for you. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't You don't need to know anything else before
Speaker 2: you go into this picture other than you just need
Speaker 2: to be on board for the journey. All right, Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and throw in just a little bit of
Speaker 2: trailer audio, probably not the whole trailer here, but maybe
Speaker 2: just a taste so you can get some idea of
Speaker 2: the audio involved here.
Speaker 3: Honey, don't take a short cut, you always get us
Speaker 3: lost from master filmmaker Hyao Miyazaki.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 3: Come on, let's go in. I want to see what's
Speaker 3: on the other side.
Speaker 1: Will hey, you.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't be here, Get out.
Speaker 3: Of here. Now leave before it gets dark. You've got
Speaker 3: to get across the river.
Speaker 1: Go.
Speaker 3: I'll distract him.
Speaker 2: Don't be afraid.
Speaker 3: I'm master Haku.
Speaker 2: I just want to help you, all right. Well, if
Speaker 2: you want to go watch Spirited Away again or for
Speaker 2: the first time before you proceed with this episode, we
Speaker 2: encourage you to do so. It is available wherever you
Speaker 2: get your studio Ghibli Films. I own this one on
Speaker 2: DVD from back in the day, but we ended up
Speaker 2: watching it on Max Streaming, which as of this recording anyway,
Speaker 2: streams a number of Ghibli films in the States, maybe
Speaker 2: all the major ones, but like you know, certainly all
Speaker 2: the major Minyazaki films are on there. But if you
Speaker 2: reside or are traveling internationally, you might find them streaming
Speaker 2: elsewhere like Netflix, you know, crossover international boundary, and then
Speaker 2: suddenly Netflix may have your studio Ghibli films. Just see
Speaker 2: what's up when you're there.
Speaker 3: I guess Google Results falsely told me I could stream
Speaker 3: them on Netflix. Oh it's not the case.
Speaker 2: Nope, not unless you I think maybe if you go
Speaker 2: to Mexico you can, but or at least at one
Speaker 2: point that was the case. Anyway, the shop Factory, DVD
Speaker 2: and Blu Ray releases for this film are all pretty excellent,
Speaker 2: So if you want to go physical media, definitely go
Speaker 2: that direction. But also Miyazaki films are periodically re released
Speaker 2: on the big screen pretty much every summer. I see
Speaker 2: some opportunities to see a Miyazaki film on the big screen,
Speaker 2: and I haven't done it for one of any of
Speaker 2: the classic films yet, but I have gotten to see
Speaker 2: at least two or three of his films when they
Speaker 2: were initially released in theaters, and it's always a grand time.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's talk about at least some of the
Speaker 2: people involved here, As is always the case with any film,
Speaker 2: but especially the big animated picture like this, So many
Speaker 2: people's work went into making it. We cannot list everybody.
Speaker 2: We're gonna list, you know, we're going to talk briefly
Speaker 2: about the director. You know, we'll hit the music, and
Speaker 2: we'll hit some of the vocal talent involved here. But yeah,
Speaker 2: at the top, we have Io Miyazaki, director, writer, story
Speaker 2: and storyboard artist, born nineteen forty one, the legendary Japanese
Speaker 2: animator and filmmaker. We previously went into a lot of
Speaker 2: detail on him in our Nasca episode, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: a good bit more about him as we proceed here,
Speaker 2: but I'd largely say, well, you know, for our purposes here,
Speaker 2: refer back to that previous episode. But suffice to say,
Speaker 2: towering figure not only in the realm of Japanese animation,
Speaker 2: but global animation filmmaking. He's one of the great living storytellers,
Speaker 2: and every single one of his films deserves a look
Speaker 2: and speaks to a universal audience on themes of childhood, environmentalism,
Speaker 2: the anti war movement, cross generational conflict, and so many
Speaker 2: other themes that should resonate with all of us today
Speaker 2: as much as any other day throughout his decades of filmmaking. Plus,
Speaker 2: if you like Miyazaki, love fantastic creatures, feelings of wonder
Speaker 2: and discovery, and of course action packed flight sequences, then
Speaker 2: his work is absolutely for you.
Speaker 3: He did love flying. All of his movies I can
Speaker 3: think of. Is there a single one I've seen that
Speaker 3: doesn't have a major flight element. I think they all do.
Speaker 2: If there's not a direct flight element, there is a
Speaker 2: scene that, like, like, I think captures a feeling of flight.
Speaker 2: You know, in fact, at Ghiblie Park there, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a full blown sort of theme park, and it
Speaker 2: is a theme park. It's not as ride centric as
Speaker 2: you know, something like six Flags. There's not six Flags
Speaker 2: over Miyazaki or anything. But it has a number of
Speaker 2: attractions and there's one little corner that has a scale
Speaker 2: model shop because Miyazaki, of course famously a fan of
Speaker 2: scale model building, especially when it comes to airplanes and
Speaker 2: tanks of the World War II era. And so you
Speaker 2: go into this little store as tiny and I'm like,
Speaker 2: one wall it's you know, you know, Japanese made classic,
Speaker 2: you know, World War two model kits, and then on
Speaker 2: the other wall it's model kits of various robots, planes
Speaker 2: and vehicles from Miyazaki movies, and it's it's really really nice.
Speaker 2: It made me feel really good to go in there.
Speaker 2: I bought something and then really cracked my head hard
Speaker 2: as I was coming back out. I like having to
Speaker 2: stoop through the doorframe because it and and I thought
Speaker 2: of that as we watched this film, because there are
Speaker 2: several scenes where our main character cracks her head on
Speaker 2: something or she's going through a little doorway, and I
Speaker 2: was like, yep, that's that was for me. The the
Speaker 2: Ghibli park experience as.
Speaker 3: Well, correct me if I'm wrong. But you're you're a
Speaker 3: bit of a model airplane enthusiast yourself, aren't you? Or
Speaker 3: are you not?
Speaker 2: My dad was, I'm I've always been. That was his
Speaker 2: level of scale modeling. He did a lot of planes
Speaker 2: and tanks of the World War Two era. I'm more
Speaker 2: of a like maybe a fantasy tank, Like I'll do
Speaker 2: some Star Wars tanks here and there, or maybe I'll
Speaker 2: be tempted to pick up a Warhammer tank or something,
Speaker 2: But mostly it's like fantasy figures, dungeons and dragons and
Speaker 2: so forth. But yeah, I like painting little dudes.
Speaker 3: So I was looking a bit into the production process
Speaker 3: behind Spirited Away, and one thing that really surprised me is,
Speaker 3: I don't know, the final product of this movie feels
Speaker 3: incredibly tight and polished and perfected. It is like it's
Speaker 3: just it feels like somebody's life's work. You know that
Speaker 3: they thought about this immensely, and immense consideration went into
Speaker 3: making it a perfect project. But I was reading a
Speaker 3: bit in a book by a scholar named Susan Napier
Speaker 3: called Miyazaki World, a Life in Art from Yale University
Speaker 3: Press twenty eighteen and that actually, behind the scenes there
Speaker 3: was a good bit of chaos that led to this movie.
Speaker 3: So before this movie came out, Miyazaki had released the
Speaker 3: very successful film called Princess Mononoke, which maybe one day
Speaker 3: we'll talk about on the podcast in its own episode.
Speaker 3: But after this, Miyazaki apparently quit the studio, quit Studio
Speaker 3: Ghibli in January of nineteen ninety eight. But then he
Speaker 3: had a successor, somebody who, in Napier's words, was deemed
Speaker 3: Miyazaki's heir apparent, named Yoshifumi Kondo, who died suddenly less
Speaker 3: than a week after Miyazaki left the studio, And so
Speaker 3: Miyazaki was then brought back in. And so Napier writes,
Speaker 3: quote Spirited Away was thus born out of some turmoil
Speaker 3: in the studio, which the movie sometimes chaotic structure seems
Speaker 3: to reflect. And there are other parts in this book
Speaker 3: that mention many people involved, saying that the chaotic, kind
Speaker 3: of frantic running about atmosphere of the Bathhouse is in
Speaker 3: many ways supposed to reflect the studio in which the
Speaker 3: movie itself was made.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, okay, I can imagine that, you know, because
Speaker 2: the bath house, the onsen here is it is home
Speaker 2: to a lot of chaos, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: very strategically minded management of that chaos. You know, we see,
Speaker 2: we see a lot of effort going in to figure
Speaker 2: out what what are we going to do about this
Speaker 2: sudden change in our circumstances. Yeah, so I can see that.
Speaker 3: There's another thing that comes up on that same frequency,
Speaker 3: which is that Miyazaki had some tendency to uh to
Speaker 3: sort of insert an avatar of himself or some kind
Speaker 3: of self parody into his films, And so there's question
Speaker 3: over who he was really thinking of or who should
Speaker 3: be thought of as the Miyazaki parallel within the Bathhouse
Speaker 3: of the movie. Is he the witch Hubaba running everything
Speaker 3: with you know, with the kind of iron fist and
Speaker 3: with these these chaotic enchantments, or is he Kamaji the
Speaker 3: boiler man? Or is he you know, is he the
Speaker 3: stink spirit?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Who knows, but they're there. I don't know. I thought
Speaker 3: this was funny, the question of like, who is Miyazaki
Speaker 3: in this movie?
Speaker 2: I feel like he's Kamaji. I've also seen I've seen
Speaker 2: in reference to interviews where people have asked him, Hey,
Speaker 2: are you no face in this? And I think when
Speaker 2: he's been asked about like what no face is or
Speaker 2: what no face represents, He's always like, no faces.
Speaker 3: No face.
Speaker 2: Yes, some people are like no face, but I wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking of anyone in particular. You mentioned Condo, by the way,
Speaker 2: he had directed the highly successful nineteen ninety five film
Speaker 2: Whisper of the Heart that was his first and sadly
Speaker 2: only feature film as a director. That one is also
Speaker 2: readily available wherever you get your ghibli films. It's a
Speaker 2: sweet film with some fantastic elements to it, but it
Speaker 2: is not in its entirety like an escape into a
Speaker 2: fantasy realm. It has a great sort of fantasy sequence
Speaker 2: in it, but it's a sweet film. I recommend it now.
Speaker 2: When we talked about Nausica previously, that was the case
Speaker 2: where we had the Japanese vocal talent and then two
Speaker 2: different waves of English language vocal talent coming along and
Speaker 2: doing the dub. In this case, we really only have,
Speaker 2: for you know, the consideration of of English speaking audiences,
Speaker 2: we really only have the two. We have the original
Speaker 2: Japanese cast and then we have the Disney produced English
Speaker 2: language cast. And not going to go through all of
Speaker 2: these here, but I wanted to touch on some of them.
Speaker 2: I have never watched a Miyazaki film with its original
Speaker 2: Japanese language track. I was tempted to do it on
Speaker 2: this one, and I might have done it if the
Speaker 2: whole family wasn't coming on the journey with me. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, well, like, we should just do
Speaker 2: the dub. We all love the dub, and it's it's
Speaker 2: it's a really well done English I can't speak to
Speaker 2: the translation specifically, but it's a really there's some really
Speaker 2: great vocal performances in it. And for my taste, if
Speaker 2: I'm watching a Miyazaki film, I want to be able
Speaker 2: to take in all of the sites and and that
Speaker 2: works a little better for me. If I'm not reading, you.
Speaker 3: Don't want your visual attention to vice I did reading
Speaker 3: the subtitles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But I do want to acknowledge that this
Speaker 2: is an area where Miyazaki fans definitely all have their
Speaker 2: own preferences, just talking about like English only fans here.
Speaker 2: I know some prefer the subtitles, some prefer a dub.
Speaker 2: It's just going to vary depending on what your tastes are.
Speaker 2: So at some point I really need to dig in,
Speaker 2: probably with something like Naska and do subtitles, so I
Speaker 2: can absorb.
Speaker 3: It that way as well. I also watched this movie
Speaker 3: with the dub, and I don't know. I see the
Speaker 3: appeal in general. I see the appeal of both approaches,
Speaker 3: but in this case, like the experience of watching it
Speaker 3: with the dub is so nice, I can't really imagine
Speaker 3: it being improved. But who knows.
Speaker 2: All right, so we're just going to take it through
Speaker 2: a few of the main characters here to discuss the
Speaker 2: vocal talent. First of all, we have our ten year
Speaker 2: old protagonist. This is Shahiro, who also ends up going
Speaker 2: by the name of Sin later on in the picture.
Speaker 2: Voiced in the original Japanese version by Rumihiaji borneteen twenty seven,
Speaker 2: who also voiced the mom in two thousand and Eight'sponio.
Speaker 2: In the original Japanese language version. Now in the English
Speaker 2: dub of Spirited Away, Chihiro is voiced by Devey Chase
Speaker 2: born nineteen ninety. I don't believe Chase is currently active
Speaker 2: in show business, but she has some pretty cool credits,
Speaker 2: both in animation and live action. In addition to voicing Chehiro,
Speaker 2: she also voiced Lelo in the two thousand and two
Speaker 2: Disney film Lelo and Stitch. In live action, she played
Speaker 2: Samantha Darko in both of the Donnie Darko films that's
Speaker 2: two thousand and one and two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 2: she played Samara in two thousand and two's The Ring,
Speaker 2: in addition to being a cast member on HBO's Big Love.
Speaker 3: That's the American remake of The Ring where.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, wow, she's definitely creepy in that quite yes,
Speaker 2: she actually she does have some lines and they're like
Speaker 2: watching these.
Speaker 3: Old videotapes of her where she's like she's like, I
Speaker 3: won't stop hurting people or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of in some ways. Yeah, a very
Speaker 2: dark reflection of the character we have here, all right.
Speaker 2: We also have the character Haku. Haku was voiced by me,
Speaker 2: you know, in the original This actor was born nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, voiced here by Jason Marsden born nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: who has done a fair amount of live action in
Speaker 2: vocal performing over the years and produced and directed as well.
Speaker 2: His TV credits include the likes of Boy Meets World,
Speaker 2: Tales from the Crypt, and Star Trek The Next Generation.
Speaker 2: But I also have to mention that he played Tommy
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine's Robot Jocks hold the first feature
Speaker 2: film role. Wow, do you remember Tommy? I did not
Speaker 2: remember Tommy. No idea, no idea who Tommy was. Was
Speaker 2: there a child in Robot Jocks at all? I guess
Speaker 2: there apparently was. Apparently was that there was a twelve
Speaker 2: year old boy in it, and that's Tommy played by
Speaker 2: Jason Marsden. Here, I'd have to go back and watch
Speaker 2: it too. No exactly which role this was or Hallie
Speaker 2: factored into the plot.
Speaker 3: That is a heck of a one degree connection spirited
Speaker 3: away to robot Jocks.
Speaker 2: By the way, speaking of Robot Jocks, I want to
Speaker 2: take you just a second to include a call out
Speaker 2: to longtime listener Matt, who designed a mech based combat
Speaker 2: card game called Iron Future. He sent me a copy
Speaker 2: to try out with my son a couple of months back,
Speaker 2: and to be clear, did not ask me to mention
Speaker 2: it on the podcast or anything. But it is a
Speaker 2: really fun casual combat card game for two players, and
Speaker 2: I'm happy to mention it here. So if that sounds
Speaker 2: like fun to you as well, go check it out
Speaker 2: at ironfuturegame dot com. All right, up next, we have
Speaker 2: the character Ubaba, voiced in the original by Mari Natsuki
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty two, a singer, dancer, and actress. In
Speaker 2: the English dub, she is voiced by Susan Plachett, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and eight, best
Speaker 2: known for her role as Emily Hartley on the original
Speaker 2: The Bob Newhart Show. Her other credits include nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: He's the Birds in nineteen sixty eight's The Power.
Speaker 3: Plachette is very good. In the English dub.
Speaker 2: Now we mentioned Kamaji earlier, we'll get into him. He's
Speaker 2: the boiler Master. That's kind of this. Oh, He's a
Speaker 2: wonderfully strange being in his own right, voiced in the
Speaker 2: original by Bunta Sugawara, who lived nineteen thirty three through
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. This actor also appeared in the Battles Without
Speaker 2: Honor and Humanity film series and two thousand and five
Speaker 2: is the Great Yukai War. I've seen that one, and
Speaker 2: in the English dub, David Ogden Stiers does the voice.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen forty two through twenty eighteen, an actor
Speaker 2: best known for his role as Charles Winchester. I think
Speaker 2: it's major Charles Winchester on TV's Mash, and he also
Speaker 2: did some vocal work on Lelo and Stitch. We also
Speaker 2: have the character Lynn that is pivotal to the plot,
Speaker 2: voiced by Yum Tamai in the original. She was born
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy and then in the English dub, voice by
Speaker 2: Broadway TV and film actress Susan Egan. Her credits include
Speaker 2: Disney's Hercules. I believe she sings one of the key
Speaker 2: songs in that one. She was on Steven Universe. Oh,
Speaker 2: and she also provided some vocal talents for the English
Speaker 2: dub of Porco Roso.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, that's the one with the pig fighter pilot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of flying action in that one. So that's
Speaker 2: essentially it for the actors. But I will note that
Speaker 2: the English dub also features the voices of Paul Iding.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who you may not recognize the name,
Speaker 2: but if you ever played any of those Metal Gear
Speaker 2: Solid games like I did, he was the colonel that
Speaker 2: was talking in your headphone the whole time and sometimes
Speaker 2: saying I don't know, Snake, I think you've been playing
Speaker 2: video games a little too long and you should maybe
Speaker 2: go outside. And run around a bit. I forget which
Speaker 2: one that was. If you played long enough, he would
Speaker 2: give you that life advice, so.
Speaker 3: You'd be like crawling around at the feet of an
Speaker 3: enemy soldier and he'd suddenly like snake, watch out for yeah.
Speaker 2: Or indeed he would be like snake, go touch some grass,
Speaker 2: which was probably some good advice.
Speaker 3: I've never finished a Metal Gear Solid game, but I
Speaker 3: started playing Metal Gear Solid two years ago, and I
Speaker 3: remember thinking, like, I am getting so many calls on
Speaker 3: this radio. I cannot believe the volume of calls. It
Speaker 3: was almost like spam at this point.
Speaker 2: It really was. I also don't think I ever finished
Speaker 2: one of them, but I always really enjoyed them before
Speaker 2: it got too hard. Let's see, Oh yeah, Roger Bumpus
Speaker 2: is in this. If you don't recognize his name, he's
Speaker 2: the voice of Squidward SpongeBob SquarePants. Lauren Hawley does one
Speaker 2: of the voices, and Michael Chicklis provides the voice of
Speaker 2: Tahiro's father. So really, performance wise, a great overall English
Speaker 2: language cast here. And of course, once more, we have
Speaker 2: Joe Hasashi providing the music. Born nineteen fifty Japanese composer, musician,
Speaker 2: noted for his work with Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki in particular.
Speaker 2: He has scored I believe, all but one of Miyazaki's films,
Speaker 2: and that one was nineteen seventy nine's Loop in the Third.
Speaker 2: So to just go, he just goes with Miyazaki pictures.
Speaker 2: I mean, it can find no fault there.
Speaker 3: Miyazaki loves themes of wind, not just flying, but of
Speaker 3: like breezes, blowing and wind lifting and moving objects. And
Speaker 3: this score sounds like a wind. It's like the exciting parts,
Speaker 3: it sounds like a rushing wind. In the contemplative parts,
Speaker 3: it sounds like a gentle breeze. I don't know how
Speaker 3: to explain that in sonic terms, but that is what
Speaker 3: it makes me feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a film where we definitely have
Speaker 2: some flying sequences, but we also have some scenes that
Speaker 2: are not quite flying sequences that have the feel of flight,
Speaker 2: the feel of surging through the air or being pulled
Speaker 2: towards the object of your trajectory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some high speed, lowel to flight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm off and inside.
Speaker 3: All right, are we ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Okay, last warning, once again, this is
Speaker 3: one where I really really strongly recommend if you've never
Speaker 3: seen it before, and you do plan on seeing it
Speaker 3: at some point in your life, go ahead and watch
Speaker 3: it before we talk about it. Please. So the story
Speaker 3: begins with a road trip. Our protagonist is the ten
Speaker 3: year old chi Hero, and she and her parents are
Speaker 3: moving to a new house in a town out in
Speaker 3: the country, far away from their old life. And chi
Speaker 3: Hero is sulking because she has had to leave behind
Speaker 3: her school and her friends, but her parents are trying
Speaker 3: to They're trying to put on a happy face about it.
Speaker 3: You get the sense that maybe her mother is not
Speaker 3: one hundred percent thrilled about the move, but she's telling her,
Speaker 3: you know, moving somewhere new can be fun and it's
Speaker 3: an adventure. So they're trying to help her along with
Speaker 3: her attitude. But che Hero does not believe this. She
Speaker 3: spends her time in the car focused largely on a
Speaker 3: goodbye letter from her best friend at school. So they're
Speaker 3: driving through the country, they're passing by things. That they
Speaker 3: pass by a building, they're like, oh, look, that's your
Speaker 3: new school, and she's just like, yak, don't. And so
Speaker 3: they're on their way to the new house to meet
Speaker 3: the movers and get settled in. But on the way,
Speaker 3: che Hero's father takes a wrong turn somewhere and they're
Speaker 3: going up these winding mountain roads, and at some point
Speaker 3: they find themselves driving down an unpaved road through a deep,
Speaker 3: dark forest, and along the way they see shrines, these
Speaker 3: little tiny box like houses in a sort of piled
Speaker 3: in a jumble, and she heroes like, what are those?
Speaker 3: And her mother tells her some people believe that spirits
Speaker 3: live there, and they also while they're driving through the forest,
Speaker 3: they see these round stone statues of these spirit beings
Speaker 3: or comi that seem to be living in the forest.
Speaker 3: She looks out and to be clear, they're not animated
Speaker 3: or anything, or they're not alive or anything. At this point,
Speaker 3: it's a totally mundane atmosphere. But as they drive through
Speaker 3: the forest, the feeling of something kind of mysterious starts
Speaker 3: to mount and the road ends at a tunnel, just
Speaker 3: a wall and a tunnel, and she Hero's father parks
Speaker 3: the car, gets out and wants to explore to see
Speaker 3: where the tunnel leads. So I would say Chihiro at
Speaker 3: this point is both annoyed and afraid. She doesn't want
Speaker 3: to be here, She doesn't want to be moving. She
Speaker 3: is frightened by the idea of going into this tunnel,
Speaker 3: like just not interested at any level. But her parents
Speaker 3: walk into the tunnel, and she's also afraid to be
Speaker 3: left behind at the car, so she runs after them.
Speaker 2: This is kind of an interesting turnaround if you compare
Speaker 2: it to My neighbor Totoro, in which May and SASKI
Speaker 2: are very adventurous and really want to get in there
Speaker 2: and explore the mysteries. You know, to hero is a
Speaker 2: lot more reserved.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and you know that actually brought up a
Speaker 3: point that I wanted to talk about. In a lot
Speaker 3: of stories, like fantasy stories with child protagonists about children
Speaker 3: escaping to or encountering a world of spirits and the imagination,
Speaker 3: the young protagonist is presented either as somebody with an
Speaker 3: adventurous spirit or like a day dreamer, a creative personality
Speaker 3: who does not fit in with their peers and wants
Speaker 3: to wants to seek refuge in a different world of
Speaker 3: the imagination. Think of time bandits or the never Ending Story,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera very common dynamic. I think this
Speaker 3: seems to me to not be the case at all
Speaker 3: with chi Hero, and I still think she's a wonderful character,
Speaker 3: but a different kind than this other familiar type of
Speaker 3: childhood fantasy protagonist. She is initially not presented as a
Speaker 3: dreamer who wishes to escape from the humdrum life of
Speaker 3: her social environment. She's shown feeling frustration with her parents,
Speaker 3: but she explicitly misses her school and her friends, and
Speaker 3: there's no indication that she's dissatisfied with living in the
Speaker 3: mundane world. So it's a different kind of character and
Speaker 3: a different kind of relationship between that character and the
Speaker 3: fantasy that's about to unfold. Shihiro is not looking for
Speaker 3: a magical adventure. Instead, she is forced to adapt when
Speaker 3: the adventure is unavoidable. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's dealing with more than enough already. She doesn't
Speaker 2: really want to take a potentially scary side trip into
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 3: World anyway, So she follows her parents into the tunnel,
Speaker 3: and they emerge in what seems like at first the
Speaker 3: waiting area of a long abandoned train station. There are
Speaker 3: these benches and it just seems like disused and nobody's
Speaker 3: around and that's kind of odd, And then they come
Speaker 3: out the other side into the open again and find
Speaker 3: weird empty buildings in vendor stalls, a courtyard with a
Speaker 3: clock tower, all nestled in a landscape of these gorgeous
Speaker 3: green rolling hills, and the father concludes, I know what
Speaker 3: this is. This is an abandoned amusement park. He says.
Speaker 3: They built places like this. I think, he says, in
Speaker 3: the early nineties, but then there was an economic recession
Speaker 3: and they all went out of business, and they've found
Speaker 3: one that nobody goes to anymore. It's just empty.
Speaker 2: You know, I mentioned cross generational conflict. I think tension
Speaker 2: would have been a better word choice for me, and
Speaker 2: I feel like we get a reference to that here
Speaker 2: a bit. You know, we're mentioning this big economic shift,
Speaker 2: real life economic shift in Japan, and here we do
Speaker 2: see very different attitudes between the parents and the child,
Speaker 2: you know, and we'll see some more of this here
Speaker 2: as well, where her dad especially is like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: just check it in. There's no reason not to go
Speaker 2: in and try this out. Let's do it. And she's
Speaker 2: a lot more reserved. She's a good kid, she's a
Speaker 2: rule follower. She has different and expectations about how things
Speaker 2: might turn out.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Chihiro's parents start exploring this other world
Speaker 3: at the opposite end of the tunnel, and che Hero
Speaker 3: has to follow them. And I want to say that
Speaker 3: I think there is an absolutely enchanting feeling of gradually
Speaker 3: moving from the mundane to the strange in the first
Speaker 3: few minutes of the film, passing through a literal tunnel,
Speaker 3: and yet the transition is subtle. There's nothing explicitly magical.
Speaker 3: Yet it's just a strange environment that you wouldn't expect
Speaker 3: to find here. What's going on and the kind of
Speaker 3: tension that it creates is so pleasing. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I even have the vocabulary for this, but you know,
Speaker 3: they're just there are different ways that a situation in
Speaker 3: a movie or in a story generally can be unexplained
Speaker 3: or mysterious, and for some reason, some of those mysteries
Speaker 3: or unexplained situations are more pleasing than others. And this
Speaker 3: is like a ten out of ten. It's just something
Speaker 3: is unusual, I don't know what's going on, and it
Speaker 3: feels the best it can.
Speaker 2: The pacing is also just so terrific. Here. I've seen
Speaker 2: and I imagine we've watched for weird how cinema films
Speaker 2: where the initial real world portion of the film before
Speaker 2: we descend into the other world is either too fast
Speaker 2: or it's too slow. Either the movie just really wants
Speaker 2: to ram you in there, or we're just waiting, We're
Speaker 2: just begging for the movie to get to the fantasy.
Speaker 2: And here I feel like Minazaki manages just the right
Speaker 2: pace where we learn everything we need to know about
Speaker 2: the real world circumstances and where the characters fit in there,
Speaker 2: but really waste no time at all transitioning us into
Speaker 2: that other world at just the right pace.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the characters are wandering around the streets of
Speaker 3: this seemingly empty village. They're going through these vendor stalls again,
Speaker 3: they're all empty, but Shahiro's father smells something. He smells food,
Speaker 3: and everybody's hungry, so they follow the smell and they
Speaker 3: come across a tent full of delicious looking foods in
Speaker 3: hot steamer baskets and serving platters lined up for the taking.
Speaker 3: Once again, they do a great job here of making
Speaker 3: animated food really look delicious. I was watching this and
Speaker 3: I was like, y, give me some of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When we went to Ghibli Park, they had a
Speaker 2: whole section built out. It was just devoted to the
Speaker 2: presentation of food in Miyazaki films, with examples of just
Speaker 2: how much attention goes into the presentation of the food,
Speaker 2: and also some like I think they had some models
Speaker 2: and some you know, physical representations of what the food
Speaker 2: would look like in real life. And I was talking
Speaker 2: about this with my wife and she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are people on Instagram whose whole thing is just
Speaker 2: cooking up little recipes that look like food from a
Speaker 2: Miyazaki film.
Speaker 3: That's funny, and it's especially funny given what actually happens
Speaker 3: when you eat his food. So Chi hero's father calls
Speaker 3: out to the vendor, but nobody answers the food sitting there.
Speaker 3: It's steaming hot, it looks really good, but there's nobody here.
Speaker 3: Kitchen looks empty. So father and mother are very hungry,
Speaker 3: and they just say, you know what, we can just
Speaker 3: dig in because we can pay the person who runs
Speaker 3: the stall whenever they come back. Surely they'll be back
Speaker 3: in a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, Daddy's got a credit card. Don't worry,
Speaker 2: dig in, honey, grab some soup bunts.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so they just start shoveling the food, but
Speaker 3: Chihiro doesn't trust it. Mom and Dad are eating, but
Speaker 3: she something feels wrong to her. She's kind of afraid
Speaker 3: and she thinks we're not supposed to do this, so
Speaker 3: she doesn't eat the food and wanders off on her own.
Speaker 3: Now she sees a number of things. She goes up
Speaker 3: this big stone staircase and sees sees some kind of landmarks,
Speaker 3: interesting looking buildings, but eventually comes across the bathhouse, the
Speaker 3: central location of the rest of the movie, which is
Speaker 3: an enormous complex, almost like a castle, which will we
Speaker 3: will later learn is a hospitality service that is a
Speaker 3: Japanese style bathhouse, but instead of serving human clients, it
Speaker 3: is for kami. It is for the spirits.
Speaker 2: And this is where we really begin to ramp up
Speaker 2: the tension, and the tension does not release for I mean,
Speaker 2: it doesn't let up for a very long.
Speaker 3: Time, that's right. So we don't know yet that it's
Speaker 3: a bathhouse for spirits. It's just this giant building. It's
Speaker 3: reached by crossing a bridge over a deep ravine with
Speaker 3: a river below. I think Chihiro, I believe, just wanders
Speaker 3: out onto the bridge, but then suddenly realizes there's somebody
Speaker 3: standing there next to her, and she meets a boy
Speaker 3: named Haku, who appears human, But Haku introduces sudden urgency.
Speaker 3: He's like, che hero, you should not be here. You
Speaker 3: need to leave immediately. The sun is about to set,
Speaker 3: and you've got to get back where you came from
Speaker 3: before dark. So Chihiro runs back to meet her parents
Speaker 3: at the food vendors doll, but discovers in a horrifying
Speaker 3: revelation that they are not her parents anymore. They have
Speaker 3: been magically transformed into pigs, presumably by eating cursed food.
Speaker 3: They no longer seem to recognize her or know who
Speaker 3: they are. They're just hogs at the trough, now disgustingly
Speaker 3: smashing through serving dishes and piles of food and rooting
Speaker 3: around in the mess.
Speaker 2: And then a frog starts slapping them around with a
Speaker 2: fly swatter. Yes, it's legitimately terrifying, to the point that
Speaker 2: we tried to show our son this movie when he
Speaker 2: was a little too young for it. I guess we'd forgotten.
Speaker 2: You know, we've watched it as adults, we had not
Speaker 2: really watched it as children. You know, it's in mind.
Speaker 2: So when we initially showed it to him. This was
Speaker 2: the point where he just could not take it. He's like,
Speaker 2: I can't watch this, you know, and got upset, and
Speaker 2: we're like, okay, we'll have to come back to this
Speaker 2: one later. So bear that in mind with this picture.
Speaker 2: It's tremendous. It's definitely were kids of a certain age.
Speaker 2: But if your if your kid's you know, super young,
Speaker 2: then you know it's it's more time for my neighbor totoro,
Speaker 2: which is terrific for all ages as well, but definitely
Speaker 2: has a little kids in mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Chihiro runs away in terror and tries to
Speaker 3: escape back in the direction she she came from, but
Speaker 3: discovers now that her way home is blocked. A field
Speaker 3: that they had crossed in order to reach the village
Speaker 3: is now flooded with water. It's a river now, and
Speaker 3: she watches as a ferry crosses the water, glowing with lamplight,
Speaker 3: and as the ferry reaches her side of the new river,
Speaker 3: sort of the landing, the disembarking ramp comes down, and
Speaker 3: weird spirit beings begin to unload and file into the village,
Speaker 3: all toward the bathhouse. So we don't see all of
Speaker 3: their forms yet, I think, uh, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of these spirits are at this point sort of covered
Speaker 3: in masks and cloaks, so we don't we don't see
Speaker 3: exactly what they are. But Chihiro is frightened and despairing,
Speaker 3: especially when she discovers that she is beginning to turn
Speaker 3: transparent her she can look through her own hands and arms.
Speaker 3: But she does get some help. Haku reappears and tells her, hey,
Speaker 3: you need to eat this small piece of food. He
Speaker 3: promises it will not turn her into a pig, and
Speaker 3: he explains that she's got to eat some food from
Speaker 3: this world or she's going to vanish. So Haku is
Speaker 3: not only helpful to Chehro, but he somehow seems to
Speaker 3: know her. He knows her name without her telling him,
Speaker 3: he knows about her parents, and he explains that he
Speaker 3: has known her from a long time ago, but we
Speaker 3: don't know how, and in fact, it seems maybe he
Speaker 3: doesn't know how he knows her. But there is also
Speaker 3: a form of danger established here, so time is of
Speaker 3: the there's no time to really hash everything out. Haku
Speaker 3: hides Chihiro from the gaze of a giant magical bird
Speaker 3: with a human face, which is circling menacingly over the
Speaker 3: head as if looking for her, and Haku tells Chehro
Speaker 3: that she is in danger. If they find her, it's
Speaker 3: not going to be good for her. So the only
Speaker 3: way she can protect herself and save her parents potentially
Speaker 3: is to get a job at the bathhouse. They will,
Speaker 3: he says, They're going to try to turn you away,
Speaker 3: but you cannot take no for an answer. You have
Speaker 3: to go ask for a job and don't leave until
Speaker 3: you get one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, the tension is just is just so excellent here
Speaker 2: and already, like the first challenge to hero is one
Speaker 2: of inner strength, like this is. I think it's one
Speaker 2: of the great things about this film. This is not
Speaker 2: a film where our hero engages in physical battles with
Speaker 2: monsters and fantasy creatures. Her challenges are largely one of
Speaker 2: will and inner strength and challenges to her moral compass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she is a rock. You know.
Speaker 2: When we first meet her, she seems maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: she's moody and maybe a little self obsessed, you know,
Speaker 2: but not in ways that are inappropriate for a ten
Speaker 2: year old child. But as the movie unrolls here we
Speaker 2: really get to see how strong she really is.
Speaker 3: We discover it as she discovers it about herself.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the place that Haku sendsch Hero to ask for
Speaker 3: a job is the boiler room. Which everything in this
Speaker 3: movie is great, but this is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: parts of the whole film. So he sends her down
Speaker 3: this very dangerous looking staircase along the side of the bathhouse,
Speaker 3: hanging over the ravine. There is some slapstick here as well.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, and it's so well executed. This is
Speaker 2: one of the things that I really noticed on this
Speaker 2: rewatch is that you have, you know, this great built
Speaker 2: up tension, and that allows some excellent space for humor.
Speaker 2: There are numerous parts in the film that are just
Speaker 2: tremendously funny, and this is one of those moments where she's,
Speaker 2: you know, she's trying to be really careful and then
Speaker 2: she gets scared and just runs down the side of
Speaker 2: the building and like smacks into a wall, very slapstick style,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's all the more humorous for being
Speaker 2: the punctuation on the end of all of this built
Speaker 2: up tension.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. But she finally makes it down to
Speaker 3: the boiler room. So it's a room deep underneath the
Speaker 3: bath house. Where a multi armed monster man named Kamagi
Speaker 3: operates a vast furnace powered by coal to heat water
Speaker 3: for the baths and then mixes potions and herbal infusions
Speaker 3: into the water before it is piped up into you know,
Speaker 3: piped up through a sort of thing inside the wall
Speaker 3: to reach the baths for the guests. Rob, do you
Speaker 3: have any descriptive thoughts Aboutkamaji. He's a wonderful character.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's awesome.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He has this big, bushy what I would think of
Speaker 2: is like an anime style mustache, you know, some of
Speaker 2: this kind of facial hair that you really only see
Speaker 2: in animation. But then you multiple limbs. What they each
Speaker 2: have I think three fingers, you know, and he's just
Speaker 2: constantly when he's working, he's constantly in motion, fetching little tags,
Speaker 2: fetching ingredients for the water, occasionally reaching back and getting
Speaker 2: what I assume is a picture of tea and drinking
Speaker 2: directly from the spout.
Speaker 3: It just puts the spout in his mouth.
Speaker 2: When he has little black sunglasses over his eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does, you know, except for the sunglasses. In
Speaker 3: a way, he kind of reminds me of Lord Yupa
Speaker 3: with the big bushy mustache.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, the facial hair for sure, and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the role here, like he's the you know,
Speaker 2: rough around the edges character that it is going to
Speaker 2: end up being, you know, very very benevolent and very
Speaker 2: helpful to our protagonist.
Speaker 3: But he is not working alone down here, because so
Speaker 3: while he's cranking all the levers and operating the furnace
Speaker 3: and then also grinding up the spices and the herbs
Speaker 3: for the infusions of the bathwater, also down below him
Speaker 3: there are these little black creatures, the soot sprites, that
Speaker 3: are carrying coal and tossing it into the oven. And
Speaker 3: these soot sprites are so cute, and I noticed from
Speaker 3: a there's a note in the Napier book that these
Speaker 3: are actually a recurring character type. They're a little monster
Speaker 3: that was invented for my neighbor Todoro, and they're showing
Speaker 3: up again here, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're in the house that the family moves
Speaker 2: to in the country in my neighbor Toto.
Speaker 3: But here they have a job, that's right though. It's funny.
Speaker 3: So they're enchanted pieces of soot and it's so wonderfully
Speaker 3: animated the way they approach the sort of the mouth
Speaker 3: of the furnace and they throw the coal in, and
Speaker 3: then these gusts of hot air that come out of
Speaker 3: the mouth of the furnace whenever it opens just sort
Speaker 3: of blow them back off of this ledge to where
Speaker 3: they came from so that they can retrieve another piece
Speaker 3: of coal and walk forward again. But as I said,
Speaker 3: the scene is so cute. One of these little sprites
Speaker 3: picks up a piece of coal that's too heavy and
Speaker 3: drops it on itself, and she hero picks up the
Speaker 3: piece of coal from on top of the sprite and
Speaker 3: she struggles with it at first. It's heavy, but Kamaji
Speaker 3: is like, well, you picked it up, so you know,
Speaker 3: carry on with what you started. So she takes it
Speaker 3: to the mouth of the furnace manages to throw it in,
Speaker 3: and when the soot sprites see her do that, they
Speaker 3: all drop their cold pieces on themselves. It's so good, yeah,
Speaker 3: but they start gathering around her feet like they think
Speaker 3: she's some kind of goddess, you know, they like pile
Speaker 3: up on her shoes and it's it's adorable. But anyway,
Speaker 3: a Chehro is persistent about asking for a job, so
Speaker 3: Kamaji is like okay, And so we meet another character
Speaker 3: named Lynn, who is a bathhouse worker who is cynical
Speaker 3: and brusque with Chee Hero at first, but later softens
Speaker 3: and becomes her main mentor and helper within the bathhouse.
Speaker 3: But when Lynn comes in to deliver some food to Kamachi,
Speaker 3: Kamachi is like, Hey, you know this girl here is
Speaker 3: asking for a job. You should take her up to
Speaker 3: you Baba. Now you Baba is the big boss of
Speaker 3: this establishment, the witch who lives at the top floor
Speaker 3: of the bathhouse for spirits, and so Lynn is not
Speaker 3: excited about this mission at first, but she she does
Speaker 3: try to help is she takes che Hero up in
Speaker 3: a series of elevator rides. One great weird encounter is
Speaker 3: with this gigantic thing called the Radish Spirit, which gets
Speaker 3: onto sort of like wanders around after them and gets
Speaker 3: on an elevator with them, and as we go up
Speaker 3: we get to see the different levels of the bathhouse
Speaker 3: with its many strange clients, the spirits and the creatures
Speaker 3: and so forth. But they make their way up to
Speaker 3: the top floor before we get to you Ubaba. Anything
Speaker 3: you want to talk about on the way.
Speaker 2: Rob Oh, I mean the bath House or the Hansen
Speaker 2: Here is such a fabulous world, and perhaps it reads
Speaker 2: as slightly more fabulous if you're not familiar with like
Speaker 2: Japanese bathhouse traditions or various other international bathhouse traditions. But
Speaker 2: even if you are, like, it's just stuffed with such
Speaker 2: a wild crew. I mean, it's staffed in large part
Speaker 2: by magical beings, and then it caters to an even
Speaker 2: wider range of creatures spirits, yo kai and deities. I
Speaker 2: just have so many favorites that keep reappearing. They're the ducklings, spirits,
Speaker 2: the yes Oi sama, and they make me smile every
Speaker 2: time we even just get a quick glimpse of them
Speaker 2: in the background.
Speaker 3: I would almost say that the many different characters needed
Speaker 3: the bath House are like on a sliding scale of
Speaker 3: Uncanny Valley similarity to humans, Like Lynn just looks like
Speaker 3: a human, right, but you have other things that look
Speaker 3: vaguely human but their proportions are weird. And then you
Speaker 3: have other things like the ducks that are like ducks
Speaker 3: but with kind of human faces. And then you've got
Speaker 3: just like you've got the no face and stuff that's
Speaker 3: not very human at all. But I like, oh so
Speaker 3: in the middle, You've got these frog men who are
Speaker 3: sort of all of the administrator roles within the bath house,
Speaker 3: and they are would you say? They are uniformly portrayed
Speaker 3: as kind of kind of mean and greedy, but I
Speaker 3: don't know. In the end, they kind of are won
Speaker 3: over by Chia heroespunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the Radish Spirit already or
Speaker 2: Oshiro Sama. This one is apparently based on a folkloreic
Speaker 2: household spirit and here in the film takes the form
Speaker 2: of a great walrus like Radish man with I believe
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be like a bowl on his head,
Speaker 2: but that's the way I've always read it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: A big fan of this guy. And when my family
Speaker 2: and I visited Ghibli Park, I had to grab a
Speaker 2: photo with this absolute superstar. Included a photograph here for you, Joe,
Speaker 2: if you want to see me standing next to the
Speaker 2: Ratish Spirit.
Speaker 3: Wait, is that a statue or somebody in a costume? Neither?
Speaker 2: It is the real Radish Spirit And I'll put I'll
Speaker 2: make sure I put this one on our Instagram. If
Speaker 2: you want to see this photo, I'll put it up
Speaker 2: at STBYM podcast on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Oh, but let's see. Yeah, I just love all the
Speaker 2: spirits that we see here, but Ratish spirit is my favorite.
Speaker 3: So from here we go on to meet you Baba,
Speaker 3: who is a powerful and frightening witch who runs the establishment.
Speaker 3: She's portrayed as treacherous and envious and greedy. She collects
Speaker 3: jewels and examines her riches with great relish, but she
Speaker 3: also shows flashes of a softer, or at least more
Speaker 3: comical side in the fact that she dotes upon her son,
Speaker 3: who is a giant, destructive baby named bo Oh.
Speaker 2: I love this baby, you know. I was just talking
Speaker 2: to my wife about this is like this week especially,
Speaker 2: I just want to be this character. I want to
Speaker 2: be a giant baby that crawls under a mountain of
Speaker 2: pillows and then you know, refuses to leave. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just such a weird cruise she's got. Because you
Speaker 2: got the baby, You've got the three heads rolling around.
Speaker 3: What's the deal with the heads? The bouncing green heads
Speaker 3: that look kind of look oh, I don't know, like
Speaker 3: any masks a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've digged it, dug into it a little bit,
Speaker 2: and I could not find a clear answer on what
Speaker 2: exactly they are. Other than because I mean, I think
Speaker 2: in this film you do see a mix of Miyazaki
Speaker 2: drawling on Japanese folklore and legend, drawing on international folklore
Speaker 2: and legend, but also just coming up with wild ideas.
Speaker 2: So I'm I'm still unclear exactly where the heads fall
Speaker 2: in here. But then you also have her strange harpie
Speaker 2: like familiar. Who else do we have? We have somebody
Speaker 2: else here in the mix too, right? Oh wait, we
Speaker 2: have another character that's coming in a bed.
Speaker 3: Yes, we'll come back. Are you thinking of the foot lamp?
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, there's a foot lamp too. Yes it is.
Speaker 2: You never know what's gonna show up in this picture.
Speaker 3: But the footlamp doesn't work for you, Baba.
Speaker 2: They show up later independent independent contractor.
Speaker 3: So che Hero's like, hey, I'm here for a job,
Speaker 3: and Ubaba threatens. Chehiro tries to refuse her request, but
Speaker 3: it turns out that this this terrifying witch actually is
Speaker 3: bound by some rules of her own. She is bound
Speaker 3: by a magical oath she took at some point that
Speaker 3: she must give a job to anyone who asks. So uh,
Speaker 3: che Hero, through her persistence, forces her to offer her
Speaker 3: a contract, and che Hero signs the contract to work
Speaker 3: for you Baba. So now che Hero is protected against
Speaker 3: you Baba's whims to an extent, though Ubaba and still
Speaker 3: be a pretty nasty boss to work for. Except it
Speaker 3: gets even worse. Whoops. When she Hero signs her name
Speaker 3: on the page of this magical contract, the witch lifts
Speaker 3: away the writing for most her signatures, so like the
Speaker 3: writing magically comes up off the page, and Ubaba is
Speaker 3: able to steal Chi Hero's name, telling her that now
Speaker 3: she will be known only as Sen And we will
Speaker 3: later learn that Eubaba does this to everyone who works
Speaker 3: for her, she steals their name. So she did the
Speaker 3: same thing to Haku. We don't know what his original
Speaker 3: name was, at least not until later, but now Haku
Speaker 3: serves as Eubaba's second in command and sort of her
Speaker 3: her commando, her like special Missions guy. Haku has forgotten
Speaker 3: what his real name was, and it turns out if
Speaker 3: you forget your original name, you can never escape Eubaba's spell.
Speaker 3: And there is a day I think they're shown the
Speaker 3: next morning going out and Sin is talking to Haku
Speaker 3: and she's forgotten what her name was, but Haku helps
Speaker 3: her he can remind her because he knows her name,
Speaker 3: and also she can keep it in mind because Haku
Speaker 3: returns her belongings to her, which includes the note from
Speaker 3: her friend at school which she was reading in the
Speaker 3: car earlier that says Chihiro w it. So she keeps
Speaker 3: the notes dashed away in secret. And I like something
Speaker 3: about this little detail that's like, you know, part she's
Speaker 3: able to keep something of the place where she came from.
Speaker 3: It's not one of these stories about going to another
Speaker 3: world or a fantasy world that is a rejection of
Speaker 3: the mundane world or the world you came from. An
Speaker 3: important part of her surviving this whole experience is her
Speaker 3: note from her friend that reminds her of her name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a very sweet, sweet moment. I think
Speaker 2: it's one of the great things about Spirited Away is
Speaker 2: you have these big scenes that definitely stick with you,
Speaker 2: you know, fantastic sequences, and then these very small moments
Speaker 2: that have oversized heart to them.
Speaker 3: So Sen understands that she must now become an ideal
Speaker 3: worker in you Baba's bathhouse or she has no hope
Speaker 3: of ever escaping and rescuing her parents from their magical transformation.
Speaker 3: It's sort of not established exactly how she will save them,
Speaker 3: but in order to have any chance of saving them,
Speaker 3: she's got to do a good job at work. And
Speaker 3: in the background there is this looming threat that they could,
Speaker 3: at some point in pig form, be turned into bacon,
Speaker 3: and eton is mentioned by the frog men sometimes. Now
Speaker 3: Sen has help from Kamaji and especially from Lynn in
Speaker 3: learning how to do everything at the bathhouse, but most
Speaker 3: of the people who work there, again, this odd collection
Speaker 3: of kind of serving ladies and frog like men, are
Speaker 3: mean and unhelpful to her, and they mock her and
Speaker 3: and give her difficult jobs out of spite. Now there
Speaker 3: is a scene I wanted to talk about because it
Speaker 3: establishes an important sort of b plot that runs for
Speaker 3: a while and then becomes an a plot. And it's
Speaker 3: the scene where she first meets No Face. I think
Speaker 3: we've seen No Face already at one point where while
Speaker 3: she was while Haku was sneaking her into the bathhouse earlier,
Speaker 3: like the scene where she has to hold her breath
Speaker 3: and go across the bridge, I believe No Face is
Speaker 3: just standing there, hovering on the bridge and watching her.
Speaker 3: But at some point we have an actual encounter. So
Speaker 3: while Sin is working. She at one point opens a
Speaker 3: kind of sliding door to a garden outside and she
Speaker 3: sees this strange creature unlike any of the others really
Speaker 3: standing outside the bathhouse in the rain. It is shadowy, dark,
Speaker 3: it's a kind of translucent mound with a white mask
Speaker 3: for a face, and Sen being polite, leaves the door
Speaker 3: open and invites the creature to come in out of
Speaker 3: the rain, and it does. More will come of this,
Speaker 3: But then we get to one of the big turning
Speaker 3: points in the movie, which is that Sin is working.
Speaker 3: She's she's trying to help U with all the tasks
Speaker 3: at the bathhouse, and suddenly the bath house receives an
Speaker 3: extremely difficult client, which is the Stink Spirit. Rob How
Speaker 3: would you introduce the Stink Spirit scene?
Speaker 2: Oh, just you know, they see him and eventually smell
Speaker 2: him coming from a ways off. Just this this blob,
Speaker 2: this sludge monster that's I think has some you know,
Speaker 2: you can compare it to various other sort of pollution
Speaker 2: based blob creatures from from other cinematic visions, perhaps even
Speaker 2: to one of Godzilla's adversaries, who is We talked about
Speaker 2: this one on Weird House.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Hold, on a second oh JJ, just chimed in to
Speaker 3: remind us that it's hetero. That's the one we watched,
Speaker 3: isn't it. It's the smog Monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so some hetero vibes here to this again, just
Speaker 2: this sludgy blob creature that is slowly making its stinky
Speaker 2: way to the bathhouse, and they're just all like in tear, like, oh,
Speaker 2: we've got to we've got to get the we've got
Speaker 2: to get the big tub ready for this.
Speaker 3: Guy, right uh. And and it's hilarious the way they're
Speaker 3: all like trying to turn him away as he's like
Speaker 3: he's coming across the bridge into the bathhouse and all
Speaker 3: these frogmen are in front of him being like we're closed,
Speaker 3: and we're closed, yeh. But he just kind of slimes
Speaker 3: his way in and and they, of course they're trying
Speaker 3: to give che Hero all of the worst jobs. So yeah,
Speaker 3: they're like, you've got to wash him. Fortunately, che Hero
Speaker 3: has a little bit of magical help. So in order
Speaker 3: to wash this this filthy beast, sin has to get
Speaker 3: special water with the use of bath tokens, which are
Speaker 3: normally handed out by the frogman boss of the main staff.
Speaker 3: And these bath tokens or I guess a kind of
Speaker 3: like internal currency. You've got to use them and get
Speaker 3: them with permission, and then use them, send them down
Speaker 3: to Camachi and he'll send up your powerful herbal infusions
Speaker 3: of hot bathwater to clean off all the filth. So
Speaker 3: the foreman, who is holding on to all these tries
Speaker 3: to refuse to help you hero. He's like, you can't
Speaker 3: have any bath tokens. But then the no Face creature
Speaker 3: whom Sin earlier invited into the building, witnesses this interaction,
Speaker 3: and then he steals a bath token for her, and
Speaker 3: then later shows up with lots of bath tokens, just
Speaker 3: tons of them for Sin, more than she needed. And
Speaker 3: so Sin is able to use these that she got
Speaker 3: from the no Face to clean up the stink spirit.
Speaker 3: And while she's cleaning it up and dousing it with
Speaker 3: all of this urban fuse hot water, she discovers there
Speaker 3: is quote a thorn in its side, which looks strangely
Speaker 3: like a man made object, and so she starts pulling
Speaker 3: on it and realizes that it is not a thorn,
Speaker 3: It is the handle of a bicycle, handlebar of a bicycle,
Speaker 3: and so they start pulling on it. Youbaba realizes what's
Speaker 3: going on, and she organizes all of the people in
Speaker 3: the bathouse together to like pull on everything together, and
Speaker 3: it ends up all coming out like a giant hairball
Speaker 3: clog out of a drain, except it's just trash, revealing
Speaker 3: that this was not a stink spirit after all, but
Speaker 3: a river spirit, the dragon shaped spirit of a river
Speaker 3: that had been choked with pollution and garbage. It's full
Speaker 3: of old bicycles, tires out takeout containers, toilets, just pieces
Speaker 3: of machinery, pieces of construction, you know, building stuff, and
Speaker 3: just household trash, forming a mountain that comes out of
Speaker 3: the side of it and then leaves behind the clean
Speaker 3: water spirit in its wake.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I've read that Niyazaki was inspired in
Speaker 2: this part based on a river cleanup he was involved
Speaker 2: in where they found a bicycle and some stuff. But oh,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's everything about the sequence is tremendous, all
Speaker 2: of the big fantasy elements like wading through the sludge
Speaker 2: and all. But I have to say I was really
Speaker 2: impressed this on this viewing with the sequence where we
Speaker 2: see Sin's hands underwater trying to tie the knot around
Speaker 2: the bicycle handle so they can all pull it out
Speaker 2: and like it slips twice before is it who is
Speaker 2: it that helps her? Well, they help her, but eventually
Speaker 2: on the third try, the not is a success. But
Speaker 2: there's something about the way that they just so realistically
Speaker 2: animate that rope slipping and not quite nodding. You can
Speaker 2: just feel it in your bones, like it is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent real. And I mean those kind of touches
Speaker 2: are I think essential in live action filmmaking as well,
Speaker 2: you know, because they allow us to connect with it
Speaker 2: with what's happening on the screen in a real way.
Speaker 2: But you know, all the more important in a film
Speaker 2: of animated fantasy ground us with those little moments that
Speaker 2: we can feel and then overwhelm us with those visions
Speaker 2: of the fantastic.
Speaker 3: It's actually full of excellent little physical tactle details like
Speaker 3: that zooming in farther than you would expect a movie
Speaker 3: of this kind, too, to show little ways that you know,
Speaker 3: maybe your foot doesn't catch on the stair right the
Speaker 3: first time and you take another step, or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the hand of trying to grasp something and needing to
Speaker 3: readjust there's a lot of that in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing you see in a lot of Miyazaki
Speaker 2: films is a lot of attention paid to how children move,
Speaker 2: how young people move, and we definitely see that with
Speaker 2: your hero, like the way that she moves around a
Speaker 2: little awkwardly at times. She's always bumping her head and
Speaker 2: falling down and you know, dramatic fashion, and it's just
Speaker 2: so well executed.
Speaker 3: So Sen did good here, She did a real good job.
Speaker 3: She's doing great at work. But next we come to
Speaker 3: Haku the Dragon and the scene of sin versus Eubaba's creatures.
Speaker 3: So there's a scene eventually where Sen sees a white
Speaker 3: dragon flying out over the water as she's looking out
Speaker 3: the window over the side of the bathhouse, and she
Speaker 3: realizes that the dragon is Haku. Haku has been a
Speaker 3: boy before this, but now she sees him in dragon form,
Speaker 3: and Haku is in trouble. He's being attacked by a
Speaker 3: swarm of these enchanted paper birds and greatly injured. Hako
Speaker 3: crashes into Eubaba's residence in the in the upper part
Speaker 3: of the bathhouse, and Sen rushes to help him. Somewhere
Speaker 3: Here along the way, I think she eavesdrops and learns
Speaker 3: that Ubaba sent him out on a special mission, and
Speaker 3: this mission is how he became injured. Ubaba expects Haku
Speaker 3: will die, and she doesn't seem all that bothered about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like, I'll hop you that sane happens.
Speaker 3: So Sin sneaks into Eubaba's apartment to help Haku, but
Speaker 3: ends up meeting Bo, the Giant Baby, Ebaba's son, and
Speaker 3: we learn when we actually hear Bo talking and interacting
Speaker 3: with Chihiro or with Sin. Here there's clearly some kind
Speaker 3: of unhealthy lock on Bo's maturation, both magical and psychological,
Speaker 3: Like the way he talks and his body don't really
Speaker 3: like match upright, and he's kind of paranoid, Like he's
Speaker 3: a paranoid pathological brat. There's a lot of play with
Speaker 3: me now where I will crush.
Speaker 2: You yeah, or I will break your arm. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: like the big baby is terrifying here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Sin gets away from Bo temporarily, and while
Speaker 3: trying to help Haku, Sin meets a witch who looks
Speaker 3: exactly like you Baba. But here is a big reveal.
Speaker 3: This is not you Baba, this is you Baba's twin sister, Zeniba,
Speaker 3: who they're at odds. You know, they don't get along,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that you Baba sent Haku to
Speaker 3: steal a special magical item from her sister to steal
Speaker 3: it from Zeneba. It was a golden seal, and unfortunately
Speaker 3: for Haku, this magical golden seal was cursed, and she
Speaker 3: says the fact that Haku stole it is what is
Speaker 3: now killing him. Now. While in you Baba's house, Zaneba
Speaker 3: happens to just play some pranks, including transforming e Baba's
Speaker 3: son Bo the Giant Baby into a mouse, transforming the
Speaker 3: weird jump the three green jumping heads into a fake
Speaker 3: version of Bo the baby, so now there's a thing
Speaker 3: that looks like the baby but is actually these three heads,
Speaker 3: and transforming you Baba's demon bird Minion into a fly.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Now, At some point here, Zaniba gets gets banished by
Speaker 3: having her little paper avatar damaged. But they but Sin
Speaker 3: and Haku end up falling through a pit in the
Speaker 3: floor or and crashing down into Camaggi's domain in the
Speaker 3: boiler room, where Sen decides to give Haku half of
Speaker 3: Oh did did I even mention that the river spirit
Speaker 3: gave Sen a magic dumpling in reward for helping him?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this becomes important.
Speaker 3: So she has this important magic dumpling. She gives half
Speaker 3: of it to Haku and closes his mouth over it
Speaker 3: forces him to eat it, and this makes Haku vomit
Speaker 3: up the cursed golden seal, but also this kind of
Speaker 3: horrible mud slug, the physical embodiment of the curse, which
Speaker 3: Sin then stomps on. Meanwhile, there's some trouble in the
Speaker 3: bath house because remember that no face monster. It is
Speaker 3: getting up to no good. It has It has started
Speaker 3: going around offering things to people, like it can make
Speaker 3: stuff appear in its hands that looks like gold, Like
Speaker 3: it just got a big pile of gold in its hand.
Speaker 3: It's like, you want some. It actually doesn't talk at
Speaker 3: first in its natural form. All it really seems to
Speaker 3: say is like uh uh huh, And it'll offer gold
Speaker 3: to people and the people are like, yeah, yeah, give
Speaker 3: me that gold. But then yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It starts eating people like it eats a frog guy,
Speaker 2: eats a frog guy, and as and as it's offering
Speaker 2: gold to the other workers in the bathhouse, they're all
Speaker 2: frantically saying like, oh yeah, let's feed this guy as
Speaker 2: much as we can. He's giving us tips. We want tips,
Speaker 2: so they're all fighting for the tips from the whale,
Speaker 2: the big customer, and along the way it gets more
Speaker 2: and more destructive as it gets bigger and bigger and
Speaker 2: eats some more workers. Yeah, there's some strong horror vibes
Speaker 2: to a lot of this, because, yeah, we have this
Speaker 2: shape shifting monster that keeps eating servants and in doing so,
Speaker 2: like stealing their voice or even aspects of their personality. Yes,
Speaker 2: because otherwise, Yeah, no Face just makes these little kind
Speaker 2: of like it kind of sounds. I was no Face
Speaker 2: for Halloween one year, so I got to like do
Speaker 2: those noises whilst we were out triggered treating this year,
Speaker 2: I was, how by the way from how.
Speaker 3: You know, I was wondering why the no Face seems
Speaker 3: the most interested in sin, because it's like asking for her,
Speaker 3: you know, It's like, I don't want any of you want.
Speaker 3: I want sin brings sin to me. And it seems
Speaker 3: that maybe it's because she's the one who led it
Speaker 3: into the bathhouse, but also it seems that she's unique
Speaker 3: in that she's the only person who's not interested in
Speaker 3: the gold that it makes. It keeps making the gold
Speaker 3: and trying to give it to people, and they're all like, gimme, gimme, gimmy,
Speaker 3: and it wants to give gold to sin, but she's
Speaker 3: just not interested. She's just like, no, thanks, I thank you,
Speaker 3: but I don't want any.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's incorruptible when it comes to these temptations. And yeah,
Speaker 2: No Face is very fascinating because on one hand, you know,
Speaker 2: very much a hungry ghost sort of a scenario, like
Speaker 2: it's you know, its natural form is one of kind
Speaker 2: of hollowness and is very transparent, just has this mask
Speaker 2: that seems to you know, serve as its face. Then
Speaker 2: as it eats, we see its mouth more, we see
Speaker 2: its great lolling tongue. So it's, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: creature of vast appetite, but it's not just food at once.
Speaker 2: And I've seen Yazaki discuss this in some translated interviews
Speaker 2: where he's talking about like it also needs to absorb
Speaker 2: other people, like certainly in the sense that it's eating people,
Speaker 2: but also like is in no face, truly has no face,
Speaker 2: no identity, and it must take identity from others. So
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's a weird monster to try and unravel.
Speaker 3: That's right, And it just keeps becoming more and more threatening.
Speaker 3: Eventually Sin comes to it to try to fix what's
Speaker 3: going on, but by this point it's just a rampaging monster.
Speaker 3: It's trying to it's trying to eat everything. It's threatening
Speaker 3: her also, and so Sin ends up feeding this monster
Speaker 3: the other half of the river Spirit's dumpling, causing it
Speaker 3: to start vomiting up evil black sludge and shrinking in size.
Speaker 3: Was this part of your costume, Rob.
Speaker 2: No, luckily not. But it is such a fantastic sequence.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rampaging through the onsen here. Love it,
Speaker 2: love it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's running all over the place, chasing Sin, smashing
Speaker 3: everything everywhere it goes, and it keeps chasing her, but
Speaker 3: she tries to lead it outside where strangely, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's losing mass as it goes, because it keeps vomiting,
Speaker 3: and it does vomit up. Some of the people to it,
Speaker 3: eight or the frogmen and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all okay, everybody's fine.
Speaker 3: But as it gets outside, she leads it outside where
Speaker 3: for some reason it seems to calm down and kind
Speaker 3: of lose its violent temper. And we never get a
Speaker 3: full explanation of this, but sin into its something about it.
Speaker 3: She's like, it's not bad. The bathhouse makes it crazy,
Speaker 3: and so it raises the interesting idea that this is
Speaker 3: not a monster in not a monster in principle. It's
Speaker 3: not a monster in its own world. It only becomes
Speaker 3: a monster when it enters a place it does not belong.
Speaker 2: That's right, Like it's a There are no bad spirits.
Speaker 2: There are just spirits that are misaligned. There are spirits
Speaker 2: out of place or that you know, something has happened
Speaker 2: to set them on the wrong course, such as we
Speaker 2: saw with the river spirit earlier. So yeah, it's another
Speaker 2: part of the great heart of this picture. No evil spirits,
Speaker 2: just misaligned spirits.
Speaker 3: So we start leading up to the climax where Sen
Speaker 3: realizes that she needs to she needs to take a
Speaker 3: train to a place called Swamp Bottom, and there's a
Speaker 3: reason for this. She thinks that she can help things
Speaker 3: if she takes the golden seal that Hakousto back to
Speaker 3: Zeniba and apologize for the theft. If she does that,
Speaker 3: she thinks things can be patched over, and to do
Speaker 3: this she's going to have to take a train. We
Speaker 3: see a train coming and going throughout the world of
Speaker 3: Spirited Away. It's beautiful and strange in that the place
Speaker 3: it cuts through is flooded with water, so it's just
Speaker 3: a train on top of the water. And she's told,
Speaker 3: I think, by Kamaji that she'll have to go to
Speaker 3: a place called Swamp Bottom, where Zeniba lives. So after
Speaker 3: she leads the No Face monster outside, this is the
Speaker 3: next place she's going to go. She's been given a
Speaker 3: series of tickets for the train as a gift by Camaji.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting the way that the train is kind
Speaker 3: of looked on with envy by the other bathhouse workers,
Speaker 3: Like there's this idea among many of them that if
Speaker 3: they had enough money one day, they would buy a
Speaker 3: ticket on the train and go somewhere far away again
Speaker 3: a kind of inversion of the escape to a fantasy
Speaker 3: world plot. The workers here they dream of going elsewhere
Speaker 3: on the train. Sin Actually she doesn't go by herself.
Speaker 3: She is followed by a retinue. She's followed by No
Speaker 3: Face reverted to its original non threatening form, and by
Speaker 3: the mouse form of Bo the giant baby, remember, was
Speaker 3: transformed by Zeniba into a little else and the fly
Speaker 3: form of you Baba's evil bird. So I like that
Speaker 3: all of her companions on this journey are beings that
Speaker 3: in some other form were monstrous, dangerous and mint her harm,
Speaker 3: but now they're informs which are none of those things
Speaker 3: and seem mainly motivated by curiosity about sin and about
Speaker 3: what she's going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, that the train they're on,
Speaker 2: there was a build out of this at Ghibli Park,
Speaker 2: And I also have a photo here that I'll show you, Joe,
Speaker 2: where you can see me and my son sitting on
Speaker 2: either side of No Face on the train and you
Speaker 2: can see through the windows there you see the flooded
Speaker 2: landscape that it's traversing. It's gorgeous and it is just
Speaker 2: like in the movie where Yeah, she sits on the
Speaker 2: train and No Face just sits down next to her
Speaker 2: on the red cushioned bench. Yeah, very you know, meek
Speaker 2: and peaceful.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing about this journey that the characters have
Speaker 3: discussed is that there is no guarantee of return because
Speaker 3: the ticket gifted by Camaji is to take the train
Speaker 3: to this place, but it's a one way trip. How
Speaker 3: will they get back, that's unclear, But they eventually get
Speaker 3: to swamp bottom and they get off the train under
Speaker 3: the platform. She's still being followed by her formerly monstrous companions,
Speaker 3: and there's a wonderful encounter on the way to the
Speaker 3: witch Zaniba's house, which is the foot lamp. How would
Speaker 3: you describe this rob.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's strong Yokai sensibilities to this thing's designed.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hopping along on one leg. It reminds
Speaker 2: me actually a lot of the lamp from the Pixar logo,
Speaker 2: you know, the way it's kind of like hopping about
Speaker 2: as if on one leg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good comparison. But eventually our characters here
Speaker 3: do make it to Zaniba's house, where there is there
Speaker 3: is sort of a reconciliation and a discovery of information.
Speaker 3: So what do we learn in this scene?
Speaker 2: Let's see, this is the scene where we learn a
Speaker 2: little bit more about the slug, right, Yeah, in the
Speaker 2: inner workings of the curses that are in play here. Now.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'm trying to remember what it is in the scene.
Speaker 3: Is it the case that we learned that Haku was
Speaker 3: being controlled by Ubaba through the slug, that she made
Speaker 3: him barf up by giving him the dumpling and he's
Speaker 3: now free of that, yes, But also Zeniba has as
Speaker 3: a magical item for Sin as well. It's a magical
Speaker 3: hair band, yes, yeah, And so there's that, and then
Speaker 3: there's a reunion with the restored Haku, who in dragon
Speaker 3: form is carrying Sin back to the bathhouse. Later, so
Speaker 3: they've resolved like how she'll get home and hopefully rescue
Speaker 3: her parents. But on the way there's a big revelation.
Speaker 3: Remember there's been this mystery the whole time. How did
Speaker 3: Haku know Chihiro from before? How did he already know
Speaker 3: her name? And how was he familiar with her before
Speaker 3: she arrived. She has a memory, and we've seen flats
Speaker 3: of this memory sort of dotted throughout the story of
Speaker 3: her falling into the water, being underwater and seeing something,
Speaker 3: seeing a kind of friendly face. We learned that once
Speaker 3: as a child she fell into a river. It was
Speaker 3: the Cohaku River, and I think she said, what was
Speaker 3: she was trying to do? She was trying to reach
Speaker 3: in from the bank for something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I believe so. And then we get these
Speaker 2: these sequences underwater. They are, in an interesting way, kind
Speaker 2: of a sign of things to come with Ponyo later on,
Speaker 2: which is going to be very concerned with a lot
Speaker 2: of underwater action and surging waters and so forth.
Speaker 3: So she fell into the water of the Coohaku River
Speaker 3: and she thought she would drown, but she didn't drown. Instead,
Speaker 3: she was carried gently to the bank. And it turns
Speaker 3: out that's where she knows Haku from. Haku was a spirit,
Speaker 3: was a being in the river that helped her to
Speaker 3: the bank, And Haku was originally like the stink spirit
Speaker 3: from earlier, a river spirit, a dragon formed river spirit,
Speaker 3: and his real name is the Cohaku River. Remembering his
Speaker 3: real name, Haku can now potentially be free of you
Speaker 3: Baba's magic. Now when they get back, there's there's sort
Speaker 3: of an epilogue where Ubaba says that Sin has to
Speaker 3: pass one final test before she and her parents can
Speaker 3: go free, and I like that. At this point, Sin
Speaker 3: has completely won over the people at the bathhouse, like
Speaker 3: they're all like bad form, bad form. Sin's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll do I'll do the test. And the test is
Speaker 3: there's a lineup of pigs and she's supposed to from
Speaker 3: this lineup of pigs pick out, okay, which ones are
Speaker 3: your parents? And Sin accepts the challenge and correctly guesses
Speaker 3: that none of them are her parents. It was a trick,
Speaker 3: trick question, but she she outsmarts it, and thus the
Speaker 3: magic is broken. Sin is chi hero once again and
Speaker 3: she can return home.
Speaker 2: All of her coworkers celebrate. They are all know again
Speaker 2: she's completely won them over, so they're cheering her on
Speaker 2: the whole way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a.
Speaker 2: Sweet ending, though we're not quite to the complete ending yet,
Speaker 2: but a sweet resolve of what's going on in the
Speaker 2: fantasy realm here, that's right.
Speaker 3: So she has her goodbyes with Haku, and she's told
Speaker 3: that her parents will be restored back at the tunnel
Speaker 3: where they first entered the spirit world. She goes back
Speaker 3: to meet them, and indeed they are safe and sound again,
Speaker 3: and she returns to the mundane world with her parents.
Speaker 3: And now I think having a more balanced attitude about life.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of interesting that I don't know
Speaker 3: unless I'm missing something. It's not a movie where the
Speaker 3: character learned one specific moral like I thought X, but
Speaker 3: it's actually the opposite. It's why she's just more mature
Speaker 3: in many different ways, in ways that are hard to
Speaker 3: pin down, rather than being like a single semantic lesson
Speaker 3: of the plot.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like in the real world something clicked, you know,
Speaker 2: and there was this change in her, and then we
Speaker 2: see that click expanded out into this fantasy adventure here, like,
Speaker 2: you know, a change that may have you know, many
Speaker 2: different working parts, but is kind of hard to really
Speaker 2: put your finger on. Well that here is is brought
Speaker 2: to us through the lens of fantasy. Yeah, so she's
Speaker 2: she's changed, but not in some like simplistic way where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I realized that the magic being wasn't magic,
Speaker 2: the magic was in me the whole time or anything
Speaker 2: like that, you know. Yeah, but she is she is
Speaker 2: different now, she's a little more mature and she she
Speaker 2: is she's ready for this to go through, with this
Speaker 2: change that's occurring in her real life.
Speaker 3: But I also like that the return to the mundane
Speaker 3: world is not and it was all a dream ending. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not like a reset on. You can
Speaker 3: view everything that came before as purely metaphorical. There if
Speaker 3: you do view it as metaphorical, part of the metaphor
Speaker 3: or is that something of the magic world is real
Speaker 3: and follows you home. Because when she's changed by her experiences,
Speaker 3: and she goes back out of the tunnel and she
Speaker 3: and her parents find the car again, and you might think,
Speaker 3: if it was the more kind of it was all
Speaker 3: a dream ending, everything would be just as they left it,
Speaker 3: and they would just drive home. But instead they get
Speaker 3: to the car and it's like covered in leaves and brush,
Speaker 3: and her parents are like, wow, it's all dusty inside.
Speaker 3: So clearly they've been gone a long time. And not
Speaker 3: only that, but chi Hero has an artifact from the
Speaker 3: magic world with her, the hairband that Zeneba gave her.
Speaker 2: Ah. As we were watching this, my wife did comment,
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, yeah, there's no way mom and dad
Speaker 2: aren't fired from their jobs at this point, Like it's
Speaker 2: then what weeks? Yeah again, through all these changes to
Speaker 2: Hero perseveres and the ending is super sweet. It's like
Speaker 2: victory is achieved not through violence but through sheer strength
Speaker 2: of character, you know. And yeah, it's just a nice ending.
Speaker 2: It's a film that definitely has its has tension, has
Speaker 2: a little bit of fear, you know. It's it's it is,
Speaker 2: in its own way, a roller coaster ride, but such
Speaker 2: a sweet landing here at the close of the picture.
Speaker 3: I love the balance found in the narrative of movies
Speaker 3: like this and like NAUSICAA where like it's a movie
Speaker 3: that feels very moral but not moralizing, you know. Instead,
Speaker 3: there like there is a good sense of right and
Speaker 3: wrong at the heart of it. But it's not preachy
Speaker 3: or anything. It's it's just it's just kind of like
Speaker 3: telling a story. In a similar sense there is. I
Speaker 3: love the way like you say that the characters are
Speaker 3: able to to find victory without violence, mostly that they're
Speaker 3: not fighters. They don't they don't use violence even really
Speaker 3: in defense much. They instead they try to find compromises
Speaker 3: and solutions mentally and and and uh, you know, find
Speaker 3: their way around problems. And yet at the same time
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel un realistic about like ignoring the reality
Speaker 3: of threats. It's just such a great storytelling sensibility and
Speaker 3: the perfect art to match it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's a Miyazaki film
Speaker 2: like this is it's like a it's like looking at
Speaker 2: a zen garden or something. You know, it's like, just
Speaker 2: like what is it telling you? What is the vibe
Speaker 2: that it is delivering? What is the message? Well, like
Speaker 2: the message is in the structure, you know, you kind
Speaker 2: of look at it, contemplate it and absorb it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just yeah, so well executed, entertaining. But indeed it
Speaker 2: does give you a lot to think about afterwards, if
Speaker 2: you want to go there, if you want to just
Speaker 2: enjoy it as a ride, it delivers that as well.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the reasons that a
Speaker 2: film like this it achieves a real lasting place in
Speaker 2: your heart, because, like a lot of great films, every
Speaker 2: time you see it it says something to you a
Speaker 2: little differently, like it speaks to you at different ages
Speaker 2: and during different challengees and in different celebrations as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just a great picture overall.
Speaker 3: Well said.
Speaker 2: So that's what we have to say about Spirited Away,
Speaker 2: But we'd love to hear what you have to say
Speaker 2: about Spirited Away or other Miyazaki films. You can write
Speaker 2: into us. We'd love to hear from you about this
Speaker 2: as well as any other film we've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show, or if you have recommendations for the future.
Speaker 2: If you want to see a complete list of all
Speaker 2: the films we've covered over the years, we have a
Speaker 2: great list going over at letterbox dot com.
Speaker 3: This L E. T.
Speaker 2: T E R. B o x D dot com. I
Speaker 2: feel like most film fans know about this website at
Speaker 2: this point. I think I saw John Carpenter on Instagram
Speaker 2: recently say what is a letterbox? So, like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like everybody is on some level aware of it
Speaker 2: now and getting in on how fun it can be
Speaker 2: a great way to organize your your two C lists
Speaker 2: as well as lists of favorite films. Yeah, anyway, we're
Speaker 2: on there as weird House Again. If you're on Instagram,
Speaker 2: look us up at st b ym podcast. We'll keep
Speaker 2: you abreast of what's going on with Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: there as well.
Speaker 3: Also a great place to find funny reviews.
Speaker 2: Funny, some funny, some not funny, but there are some.
Speaker 2: There are some real hands on there and also some
Speaker 2: real insightful reviews. You'll also find, i think some unofficial
Speaker 2: uploads of like famous film reviews. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: name any names but because I don't want them taken
Speaker 2: down because I really like reading them there. But you'll
Speaker 2: find some some of those reviews there as well.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other. To suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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