WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Spirited Away 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:08.160 Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is Rob 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.680 Lamb and today we are re airing our episode from 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.680 just last year. This published eleven eight, twenty twenty four. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.960 It is our discussion of Miyazaki's two thousand and one 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.840 fantasy classic Spirited Away. 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:28.920 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:30.120 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.479 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.440 This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.800 today on Weird House we're going to be talking about 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.879 the two thousand and one Japanese animated fantasy film Spirited Away, 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.640 directed by Hiau Miyazaki. This week, I really wanted to 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.600 talk about a weird movie with a good soul, and 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.320 I can hardly think of a better example. This is 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:02.880 not only one of my favorite films we've covered on 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:04.920 Weird House Cinema, this has got to be one of 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.640 my favorite films of all time. I just came back 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.199 to it for the first time in many years this week, 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:15.080 and I knew I was going to love it on rewatch, 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:19.160 but I think I was not prepared still for just 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:23.280 how lovely and exciting and wonderful this movie is. And 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:24.440 basically every way. 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.480 Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the all time greats. 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.840 This is a film I've seen multiple times over the years, 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:36.399 and yesterday, late in the afternoon, I asked my family's like, hey, 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.600 I've got to watch Spirit It Away again for work. 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.160 Who wants to watch it with me? And they were 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:44.480 both on board, my wife and my son. So we 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:46.800 all just sat in and sat in the living room 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.160 and watched the film all the way through again. And 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:51.440 it's one of those films where every time you watch it, yeah, 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:56.600 you make new discoveries. You find yourself re examining the 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.760 things you love about it and discovering new things to 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.400 love about it as well. And for a weird House 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.520 cinema purposes here, this film is also notable for in 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.960 a couple of ways. It's our second Miyazaki film, following NAUSICAA, 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:12.880 and it's only the fourth film out of Let's see 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.240 what have we done? We've done I believe one hundred 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.360 and eighty one pictures on Weird House Cinema and this 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.440 is the only fourth time we've looked at a film 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.960 from the two thousands, the early two thousands, the decade, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.359 the others being the year two thousand Psycho Beach Party. 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:28.760 That was one that had Seth as a co host, 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:31.800 and then we did two thousand and one's Jason X 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:33.760 in two thousand and fours, the Chronicles of Riddick. 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.160 What a selection, you know. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.000 It is interesting how those other films I just mentioned, 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.000 those are all very much in each film's own way, 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.240 an artifact of the time. Spirited Away is a film 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.560 that stands outside of time, though it does not feel 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.120 like something that exists just within the year two thousand 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.760 and one. It exists in all years, you know. It 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:58.239 just takes one of those films. 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:02.880 Yes, apart from the implied technology that we see on 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.280 display in some of the animation shots, this could have 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.640 been made any time in the history of color animated cinema. 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:12.520 It could have been from the seventies, It could have 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:14.720 been from this year. It really is out of time 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:16.000 in that way. Well, I don't know if it could 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.400 be from the seventies. We see some cars and technology 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:21.679 and stuff at the very beginning that, or maybe a 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.400 little beyond that. But really it is an out of 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:29.239 time kind of film. So sometimes on weird House Cinema 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:32.760 we like to pull out obscure gems from a dusty, 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.000 forgotten shelf on the video store. That obviously is not 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:38.240 the case here. Many of you probably know of this 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.400 movie already. Spirited Away was a big hit both in 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:46.520 Japan and internationally. You know, it was a box office success. 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.360 It won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:53.200 seventy fifth Academy Awards. Usually I don't pay a huge 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.440 amount of attention to award ceremonies, but in this case, 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:58.800 I'm glad to see the accolades going to something. I 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:03.000 think it is absolutely deserved, both as a story and 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:08.200 as an achievement in technical filmmaking. Spirited Away is just perfect. 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:09.960 It's the kind of object you just want to take 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:14.360 with you everywhere. It feels so weird and so wise 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.080 and so interesting and has such a good heart. 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:22.159 Absolutely yeah, I don't think it's very controversial to say 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:28.320 it absolutely deserved that Oscar over the movie Ice Age. 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.479 And I've never seen that, so I can't compare. 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:33.039 But not even any shame, you know, directed at the 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:34.720 makers of Ice Age. I'm sure the people who made 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.920 Ice Age are probably like, yeah, I mean yeah, Spirited 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.400 Away is a better films. Most films are not as 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.000 good as Spirited Away, it's just on its own level. 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.440 So yeah, this is easily one of my favorite Miyazaki 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.440 films as well. It really has no faults in my opinion, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.400 and to your point, has just such a pure heart. 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.000 I love all of Miyazaki's films and a number of 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.960 the films that I've seen in the studio Ghibli family 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.240 as well that he did not actually helm as a director, 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.000 But this one's a real gem. I hadn't watched it 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.320 in a few years. It's been very much on my 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.120 mind though, since my family and I visited Ghibli Park 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.560 in Japan earlier this year, which is a location loaded 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:20.160 with recreations and exhibits related to this and other films 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.800 from the Ghibli canon. I highly recommend that experience for 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:27.320 Ghibli fans if you happen to find yourself in Japan 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.800 and can set aside a day in Nagoya which will 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:33.440 get you close enough to take the train to the park, 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:35.320 just give those tickets in advance. 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.840 Now, there are so many fascinating ways that Spirited Away 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.200 stands out. I think maybe we'll save a lot of 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.839 those observations for the later part of the episode, where 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:48.279 we're just talking through the plot, and we can bring 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.919 things up as they come up in the story. I 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:52.919 will say upfront that, of course, in this episode we 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:54.960 are going to talk about the plot from the beginning 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.799 to the end. And you know, we often give spoiler warnings, 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.400 especially for films where it feels like the surprises are 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.760 very exciting to experience firsthand. This case, I would really 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.120 emphasize if you've never seen Spirited Away and you want to, 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.720 this is one where I would say, please please watch 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.320 the movie before you listen to this and hear us 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.360 explain the whole lot. It is worth it, definitely to 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.080 just go in knowing nothing and experience it for yourself. 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.520 And if you have no experience with Miyazaki films, if 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.320 you have little or no experience with the Japanese animated 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.400 pictures or TV in general, I still think that Spirited 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.719 Away is a wonderful starting place for you. You don't 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:38.839 need to know anything else before you go into this 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.719 picture other than you just need to be on board 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.280 for the journey. All right, Let's go ahead and throw 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.320 in just a little bit of trailer audio, probably not 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:48.480 the whole trailer here, but maybe just a taste so 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:52.920 you can get some idea of the audio involved. 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:58.080 Here, Honey, don't take a short cut. You always get us. 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.880 Lost from master filmmaker Ao Miyazaki. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.480 What is it? Come on, let's go in. I want 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.320 to see what's on the other side. Will you go? 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:10.200 Hey, you. 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:15.640 Shouldn't be here. 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:18.840 Get out of here, now, leave before it gets dark. 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.280 You've got to get across the river. Go I'll distract him. 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.840 Don't be afraid. I'm master Haku. I just want to 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:47.600 help you, all right. Well, if you want to go 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.040 watch Spirited Away again or for the first time before 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.280 you proceed with this episode, we encourage you to do so. 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.560 It is available wherever you get your studio Ghibli Films. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.640 I own this one on DVD from in the day, 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.040 but we ended up watching it on Max Streaming, which 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.800 as of this recording anyway, streams a number of Ghibli 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.160 films in the States, maybe all the major ones, but 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.040 like you know, certainly all the major Mimyazaki films are 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:17.680 on there. But if you reside or are traveling internationally, 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.480 you might find them streaming elsewhere like Netflix, you know, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.920 crossover international boundary, and then suddenly Netflix may have your 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.600 studio Ghibli Films. Just see what's up when you're there. 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.720 I guess Google Results falsely told me I could stream 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.079 them on Netflix. Oh it's not the case. 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:35.240 No, no, not unless you I think maybe if you 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.840 go to Mexico you can, but or at least at 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.000 one point that was the case. Anyway, the Shop Factory, 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.520 DVD and Blu Ray releases for this film are all 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.559 pretty excellent, So if you want to go physical media, 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:52.440 definitely go that direction. But also, Miyazaki films are periodically 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.760 re released on the big screen pretty much every summer. 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.880 I see some opportunities to see a Miyazaki film on 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:01.040 the big screen, and I haven't done it for one 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.120 of any of the classic films yet, but I have 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.720 gotten to see at least two or three of his 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.319 films when they were initially released in theaters. And it's 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:20.240 always a grand time. All right, Let's talk about at 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.600 least some of the people involved here, As is always 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:26.280 the case with any film, but especially the big animated 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.360 picture like this, So many people's work went into making it. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.600 We cannot list everybody. We're gonna list, you know, we're 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:34.920 going to talk briefly about the director. You know, we'll 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.160 hit the music and we'll hit some of the vocal 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.720 talent involved here. But yeah, at the top we have 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.800 Io Miyazaki, director, writer, story and storyboard artist born nineteen 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:49.520 forty one, the legendary Japanese animator and filmmaker. We previously 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:51.240 went into a lot of detail on him in our 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.000 Nasca episode, and we'll talk a good bit more about 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.680 him as we proceed here, but I'd largely say, well, 0:09:57.720 --> 0:09:59.719 you know, for our purposes here, refer back to that 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.640 previous episode, but suffice to say, towering figure not only 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.160 in the realm of Japanese animation, but global animation filmmaking. 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.360 He's one of the great living storytellers, and every single 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.400 one of his films deserves a look and speaks to 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:19.480 a universal audience on themes of childhood, environmentalism, the anti 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:23.559 war movement, cross generational conflict, and so many other themes 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:26.600 that should resonate with all of us today as much 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:30.520 as any other day throughout his decades of filmmaking. Plus, 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:34.920 if you like Miyazaki, love fantastic creatures, feelings of wonder 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.840 and discovery, and of course action packed flight sequences, then 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:40.480 his work is absolutely for you. 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.679 He did love flying. All of his movies I can 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.440 think of. Is there a single one I've seen that 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.319 doesn't have a major flight element. I think they all do. 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.440 If there's not a direct flight element, there is a 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.480 scene that like I think captures a feeling of flight, 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:00.920 you know. Yeah. In fact, at Gibli Park there, you know, 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.440 it's it's a full blown sort of theme park, and 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:05.880 it is a theme park. It's not as ride centric 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.520 as you know, something like six Flags. There's not six 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.680 Flags over Miyazaki or anything, but it has a number 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.240 of attractions. And there's one little corner that has a 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.680 scale model shop because Miyazaki of course famously a fan 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.359 of scale model building, especially when it comes to airplanes 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.760 and tanks of the World War II era. And so 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:29.840 you go into this little store as tiny and I'm like, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:34.199 one wall it's you know, you know, Japanese made classic 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.280 you know, World War two model kits, and then on 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:41.400 the other wall it's model kits of various robots, planes 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:45.480 and vehicles from Miyazaki movies. And it's it's really really nice. 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:47.520 It made me feel really good to go in there. 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.320 I bought something and then really cracked my head hard 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:52.600 as I was coming back out. I like having to 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.680 stoop through the doorframe because it, and and I thought 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:58.360 of that as we watched this film, because there are 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.760 several scenes where our main character cracks her head on 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:05.560 something or she's going through a little doorway, and I 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.440 was like, yep, that's that was for me the Ghibli 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:09.840 Park experience as well. 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.280 Correct me if I'm wrong. But you're a bit of 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:15.640 a model airplane enthusiast yourself, aren't you? Or are you not? 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:21.439 My dad was, I've always been. That was his level 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.120 of scale modeling. He did a lot of planes and 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.480 tanks of the World War two era. I'm more of 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:28.720 like maybe a fantasy tank, Like I'll do some Star 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.280 Wars tanks here and there, or maybe I'll be tempted 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:33.760 to pick up a Warhammer tank or something, but mostly 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.040 it's like fantasy figures, dungeons and dragons and so forth. 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.080 But yeah, I like painting little little dudes. 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.720 So I was looking a bit into the production process 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.880 behind Spirited Away, and one thing that really surprised me is, 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.840 I don't know, the final product of this movie feels 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:56.280 incredibly tight and polished and perfected. It is like there, 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.240 It's just it feels like somebody's life's work, you know 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.960 that they thought about this immensely and immense consideration went 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.960 into making it a perfect project. But I was reading 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.000 a bit in a book by a scholar named Susan 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.480 Napier called Miyazaki World, a Life in Art from Yale 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:16.640 University Press twenty eighteen that actually, behind the scenes, there 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.680 was a good bit of chaos that led to this movie. 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:24.640 So before this movie came out, Miyazaki had released the 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.360 very successful film called Princess Mononoke, which maybe one day 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.040 we'll talk about on the podcast in its own episode. 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:37.640 But after this, Miyazaki apparently quit the studio, quit Studio 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:41.600 Ghibli in January of nineteen ninety eight. But then he 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:46.880 had a successor, somebody who, in Napier's words, was deemed 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:53.440 Miyazaki's heir apparent, named Yoshifumi Kondo, who died suddenly less 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:57.080 than a week after Miyazaki left the studio, And so 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:01.280 Miyazaki was then brought back in. And so Napier writes, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.040 quote Spirited Away was thus born out of some turmoil 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.640 in the studio, which the movie sometimes chaotic structure seems 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.520 to reflect. And there are other parts in this book 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:17.240 that mention many people involved, saying that the chaotic kind 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.360 of frantic running about. Atmosphere of the bath House is 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.680 in many ways supposed to reflect the studio in which 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:26.200 the movie itself was made. 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.240 Oh wow, okay, I can imagine that, you know, because 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:34.160 the bath House, the onsen here is it is home 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:36.080 to a lot of chaos, but there's a lot of 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:42.520 very strategically minded management of that chaos. You know, we see, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:44.720 we see a lot of effort going in to figure 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:46.840 out what are we going to do about this sudden 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.120 change in our circumstances. Yeah, so I can see that. 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:53.000 There's another thing that comes up on that same frequency, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:58.040 which is that Miyazaki had some tendency to sort of 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.160 insert an avatar of himself for some kind of self 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:06.120 parody into his films, And so there's question over who 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:08.640 he was really thinking of or who should be thought 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.440 of as the Miyazaki parallel within the Bathhouse of the movie. 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:15.520 Is he the witch Yubaba running everything with you know, 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.000 with the kind of iron fist and with these these 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:22.280 chaotic enchantments, or is he Kamaji the boiler man? Or 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.480 is he you know, is he the stink spirit? You know? 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.360 Who knows? But they're they're I don't know. I thought 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.040 this was funny. The question of like, who is Miyazaki 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:30.800 in this movie? 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:35.120 I feel like he's Kamaji. I've also seen I've seen 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.920 reference to interviews where people have asked him, Hey, are 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.200 you no face in this? And I think when he's 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.360 been asked about like what no face is or what 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.360 no face represents, He's always like, no faces, no face. Yes, 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.840 some people are like no face, but I wasn't thinking 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.960 of anyone in particular. You mentioned Condo by the way, 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.320 he had directed the highly successful nineteen ninety five film 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:59.160 Whisper of the Heart that was his first and sadly 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.400 only feature film as a director. That one is also 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.400 readily available wherever you get your Ghibli films. It's a 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:09.440 sweet film with some fantastic elements to it, but it 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.440 is not in its entirety like an escape into a 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.760 fantasy realm. It has a great like sort of fantasy 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.680 sequence in it, but it's a sweet film. I recommend 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:23.760 it now. When we talked about NAUSICAA previously, that was 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:26.480 the case where we had the Japanese vocal talent and 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.120 then two different waves of English language vocal talent coming 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.400 along and doing the dub. In this case, we really 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:39.040 only have for the consideration of English speaking audiences, we 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.360 really only have the two. We have the original Japanese 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.520 cast and then we have the Disney produced English language cast. 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:47.720 And not going to go through all of these here, 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.040 but I wanted to touch on some of them. I 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:55.880 have never watched a Miyazaki film with its original Japanese 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.120 language track. I was tempted to do it on this one, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:00.120 and I might have done it if the family, a 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.040 whole family wasn't coming on the journey with me. And 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.280 then I was like, well, we should just do the dub. 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.440 We all love the dub and it's a really well 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:11.239 done English I can't speak to the translation specifically, but 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:15.119 it's a really there's some really great vocal performances in it. 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.840 And for my taste, if I'm watching a Miyazaki film, 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:19.600 I want to be able to take in all of 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:22.919 the sites, and that works a little better for me 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:23.679 if I'm not reading. 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.560 You don't want your visual attention divided reading the subtitles. 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.000 Yeah, yeah, But I do want to acknowledge that this 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.320 is an area where Miyazaki fans definitely all have their 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.560 own preferences. Just talking about like English only fans here. 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.639 I know, some prefer the subtitles, some prefer a dub. 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:43.720 It's just going to vary depending on what your tastes are, 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:46.000 So at some point I really need to dig in, 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:50.159 probably with something like NAUSICAA and do subtitles so I 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:51.640 can absorb it that way as well. 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.480 I also watched this movie with the dub, and I 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.720 don't know. I see the appeal in general. I see 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.520 the appeal of both approaches, but in this case, the 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:03.960 experience of watching it with the dub is so nice. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:05.879 I can't really imagine it being improved. 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.040 Who knows, all right, So we're just going to take 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:11.639 it through a few of the main characters here to 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:14.159 discuss the vocal talent. First of all, we have our 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.640 ten year old protagonist. This is Shahiro, who also ends 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:20.879 up going by the name of Sin later on in 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:25.040 the picture, voiced in the original Japanese version by Rumihiraji 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.439 born nineteen eighty seven, who also voiced the mom in 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:31.480 two thousand and eight Sponio in the original Japanese language version. 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.119 Now in the English dub of Spirited Away, Chihiro is 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:39.480 voiced by Devey Chase born nineteen ninety I don't believe 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.679 Chase is currently active in show business, but she has 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.440 some pretty cool credits, both in animation and live action. 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.800 In addition to voicing Chihiro, she also voiced Lelo in 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.000 the two thousand and two Disney film Lelo and Stitch. 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.240 In live action, she played Samantha Darko in both of 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.720 the Donnie Darko films That's two thousand and one and 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.640 two thousand and nine, and she played Samara in two 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.399 thousand and two's The Ring, in addition to being a 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.280 cast member on HBO's Big Love. 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:09.520 That's the American remake of The Ring. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:15.880 Where yes, yes, she's definitely creepy in that quite yes. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.240 She actually she does have some lines and they're like 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:22.199 watching these old videotapes of her where she's like she's like, 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.400 I won't stop hurting people or something. 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:28.960 Yeah, yeah, kind of in some ways, Yeah, a very 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:32.560 dark reflection of the character. We have here, all right, 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.760 we also have the character Haku. Haku was voiced by 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.640 May you Know in the original. This actor was born 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:45.600 nineteen eighty eight, voiced here by Jason Marsden born nineteen 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.120 seventy five, who has done a fair amount of live 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.720 action in vocal performing over the years, and produced and 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.840 directed as well. His TV credits include the likes of 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.280 Boy Meets World, Tales from the Crypt, and Star Trek 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.840 The Next Generation. But I also have to mention that 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.880 he played Tommy in nineteen eighty nine's Robot Jocks hold 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:09.119 first feature film role. Wow, do you remember Tommy? I 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:10.919 did not remember Tommy. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.400 No idea, no idea who Tommy was. 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:16.320 Was there a child in Robot Jocks at all? I 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:18.840 guess there apparently was. Apparently was that there was a 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.720 twelve year old boy in it, and that's Tommy played 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:24.679 by Jason Marsden. Here. I'd have to go back and 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.560 watch it too know exactly which role this was or 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:29.199 Hallie factored into the plot. 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:32.800 That is a heck of a one degree connection spirited 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:34.240 away to Robot Jocks. 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:36.720 By the way, speaking of Robot Jocks, I want to 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:38.920 take it just a second to include a call out 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:43.480 to longtime listener Matt who designed a mech based combat 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.040 card game called Iron Future. He sent me a copy 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.000 to try out with my son a couple of months back, 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:50.960 and to be clear, did not ask me to mention 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.640 it on the podcast or anything. But it is a 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:58.840 really fun casual combat card game for two players, and 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.399 I'm happy to mention it. So if that sounds like 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:03.080 fun to you as well, go check it out at 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.639 ironfuturegame dot com. All right, up next, we have the 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:11.640 character Yubaba, voiced in the original by Mari Natsuki born 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.600 nineteen fifty two, a singer, dancer, and actress. In the 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:18.040 English dub, she is voiced by Susan Plachette, who lived 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.200 nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and eight, best known 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:23.040 for her role as Emily Hartley on the original The 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.480 Bob Newhart Show. Her other credits include nineteen sixty threes 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:28.919 The Birds and nineteen sixty eight's The Power. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.080 Plashette is very good in the English dub. 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.959 Now we mentioned Kamaji earlier, we'll get into him. He's 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.119 the boiler Master. That's kind of this. Oh, he's a 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:44.800 wonderfully strange being in his own right, voiced in the 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.120 original by Bunto Sugawara, who lived nineteen thirty three through 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:53.679 twenty fourteen. This actor also appeared in the Battles Without 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.320 Honor and Humanity film series and two thousand and five's 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:00.199 The Great Yukai War. I've seen that one, and in 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.600 the English dub, David Ogden Stiers does the voice. He 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:08.920 lived nineteen forty two through twenty eighteen, an actor best 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.000 known for his role as Charles Winchester. I think it's 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.360 major Charles Winchester on TV's Mash and he also did 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.800 some vocal work on Leelo and Stitch. We also have 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:21.879 the character Lynn that is pivotal to the plot, voiced 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.800 by Hume Tomai in the original She was born nineteen 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:30.480 seventy seven, and then in the English dub, voice by 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.719 Broadway TV and film actress Susan Egan. Her credits include 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.000 Disney's Hercules. I believe she sings one of the key 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.680 songs in that one. She was on Steven Universe. Oh, 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:43.439 and she also provided some vocal talents for the English 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:44.760 dub of Porco Rosso. 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:48.639 Oh nice, that's the one with the pig fighter pilot. Yeah. 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.840 Yeah, lots of flying action in that one. So that's 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:53.879 essentially it for the actors. But I will note that 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.120 the English dub also features the voices of Paul Iding. 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:00.480 This is a guy who you may not recognize the name, 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:02.160 but if you ever played any of those Metal Gear 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.640 Solid games like I did, he was the colonel that 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:09.040 was talking in your headphone the whole time and sometimes saying, 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:11.399 I don't know, Snake, I think you've been playing video 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:13.280 games a little too long, and you should maybe go 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.000 outside and run around a bit. I forget which one 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.760 that was, but if you played long enough, he would 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:19.920 give you that life advice. 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:22.440 So you'd be like crawling around at the feet of 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.440 an enemy soldier and he'd suddenly like, Snake, watch out for. 0:23:26.840 --> 0:23:30.200 Yeah, or indeed he would be like Snake, go touch 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.200 some grass, which was probably some good advice. 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:36.680 I've never finished a Metal Gear Solid game, but I 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:40.920 started playing Metal Gear Solid two years ago, and I 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:44.639 remember thinking, like, I am getting so many calls on 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.199 this radio. I cannot believe the volume of calls. It 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:50.280 was almost like spam at this point. 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:53.040 It really was. I also don't think I ever finished 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:56.000 one of them, but I always really enjoyed them before 0:23:56.160 --> 0:24:00.280 it got too hard. Let's see. Oh yeah, Roger Bumpus 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:03.760 is in this. If you don't recognize his name, he's 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:09.600 the voice of Squidward SpongeBob SquarePants. Lauren Hawley does one 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:13.000 of the voices, and Michael Chiklis provides the voice of 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:18.560 Tahiro's father, so really performance wise, a great overall English 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:21.119 language cast here, and of course once more, we have 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:25.800 Joe Hisashi providing the music. Born nineteen fifty Japanese composer, 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:29.400 musician noted for his work with Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:32.040 in particular, he has scored I believe, all but one 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:36.120 of Miyazaki's films, and that one was nineteen seventy Nine's 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:39.800 a Loop in the third. So to just go he 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:42.600 just goes with Miyazaki pictures. I mean it can find 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:43.280 no fault there. 0:24:44.040 --> 0:24:49.119 Miyazaki loves themes of wind, not just flying, but of 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:54.000 like breezes, blowing and wind lifting like moving objects. And 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:57.720 this score sounds like a wind. It's in like the 0:24:57.760 --> 0:25:00.679 exciting parts, it sounds like a rushing win and in 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:03.399 the contemplative parts it sounds like a gentle breeze. I 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:05.719 don't know how to explain that in sonic terms, but 0:25:05.760 --> 0:25:07.200 that is what it makes me feel. 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:09.760 Yeah, and this is a film where we definitely have 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:12.240 some flying sequences, but we also have some scenes that 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:15.399 are not quite flying sequences that have the feel of flight, 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:19.840 the feel of surging through the air or being pulled 0:25:19.920 --> 0:25:24.160 towards the object of your trajectory. 0:25:24.600 --> 0:25:26.800 Yeah, there's some high speed, low altitude flight. 0:25:27.040 --> 0:25:30.600 Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm off and inside. 0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:40.879 All right, are we ready to talk about the plot? 0:25:41.320 --> 0:25:41.840 Let's do it. 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:45.719 Okay, last warning once again, this is one where I 0:25:45.760 --> 0:25:48.439 really really strongly recommend if you've never seen it before, 0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:50.880 and you do plan on seeing it at some point 0:25:50.880 --> 0:25:52.520 in your life, go ahead and watch it before we 0:25:52.520 --> 0:25:55.879 talk about it. Please. So the story begins with a 0:25:56.040 --> 0:26:00.840 road trip. Our protagonist is the ten year old and 0:26:01.240 --> 0:26:04.119 she and her parents are moving to a new house 0:26:04.280 --> 0:26:07.120 in a town out in the country, far away from 0:26:07.119 --> 0:26:11.479 their old life. And chi Hero is sulking because she 0:26:11.640 --> 0:26:14.680 has had to leave behind her school and her friends. 0:26:15.119 --> 0:26:17.240 But her parents are trying to They're trying to put 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:19.359 on a happy face about it. You get the sense 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:23.040 that maybe her mother is not one hundred percent thrilled 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:25.119 about the move, but she's telling her, you know, moving 0:26:25.160 --> 0:26:28.280 somewhere new can be fun, it's an adventure, so they're 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.440 trying to help her along with her attitude. But che 0:26:31.440 --> 0:26:34.359 Hero does not believe this. She spends her time in 0:26:34.400 --> 0:26:37.679 the car focused largely on a goodbye letter from her 0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:40.959 best friend at school. So they're driving through the country, 0:26:41.000 --> 0:26:43.520 they're passing by things that they pass by a building, 0:26:43.520 --> 0:26:45.800 they're like, oh, look, that's your new school, and she's 0:26:45.880 --> 0:26:50.160 just like, yak, don't. And so they're on their way 0:26:50.359 --> 0:26:52.520 to the new house to meet the movers and get 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:55.880 settled in. But on the way, che Hero's father takes 0:26:55.920 --> 0:26:58.639 a wrong turn somewhere and they're going up these winding 0:26:59.080 --> 0:27:02.840 mountain roads, and at some point they find themselves driving 0:27:02.920 --> 0:27:07.520 down an unpaved road through a deep, dark forest, and 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:11.280 along the way they see shrines, these little tiny box 0:27:11.480 --> 0:27:14.440 like houses in a sort of piled in a jumble, 0:27:14.920 --> 0:27:17.400 and she heroes like, what are those? And her mother 0:27:17.480 --> 0:27:21.280 tells her some people believe that spirits live there, and 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:24.240 they also while they're driving through the forest, they see 0:27:24.280 --> 0:27:28.000 these round stone statues of these spirit beings or kami 0:27:28.160 --> 0:27:30.720 that seem to be living in the forest. She looks 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:33.119 out and to be clear, they're not animated or anything, 0:27:33.280 --> 0:27:35.640 or they're not alive or anything. At this point, it's 0:27:35.680 --> 0:27:40.240 a totally mundane atmosphere. But as they drive through the forest, 0:27:40.400 --> 0:27:43.680 the feeling of something kind of mysterious starts to mount 0:27:44.359 --> 0:27:48.359 and the road ends at a tunnel, just a wall 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:52.040 and a tunnel, and ch Hero's father parks the car, 0:27:52.359 --> 0:27:54.480 gets out and wants to explore to see where the 0:27:54.520 --> 0:27:57.440 tunnel leads. So I would say Chihiro at this point 0:27:57.480 --> 0:27:59.960 is both annoyed and afraid. She doesn't want to be here, 0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:03.400 She doesn't want to be moving. She is frightened by 0:28:03.400 --> 0:28:05.600 the idea of going into this tunnel, like just not 0:28:05.760 --> 0:28:09.439 interested at any level. But her parents walk into the tunnel, 0:28:09.480 --> 0:28:11.760 and she's also afraid to be left behind at the car, 0:28:11.920 --> 0:28:13.280 so she runs after them. 0:28:13.600 --> 0:28:17.600 This is kind of an interesting turnaround if you compare 0:28:17.600 --> 0:28:22.159 it to My neighbor Totoro, in which May and sask 0:28:23.720 --> 0:28:26.400 are very adventurous and really want to get in there 0:28:26.440 --> 0:28:30.800 and explore the mysteries. You know, to Hero is a 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:31.760 lot more reserved. 0:28:32.280 --> 0:28:35.399 Yes, yes, and you know that actually brought up a 0:28:35.440 --> 0:28:38.120 point that I wanted to talk about. In a lot 0:28:38.160 --> 0:28:43.200 of stories, like fantasy stories with child protagonists about children 0:28:43.360 --> 0:28:46.920 escaping to or encountering a world of spirits and the imagination, 0:28:47.720 --> 0:28:51.239 the young protagonist is presented either as somebody with an 0:28:51.320 --> 0:28:55.600 adventurous spirit or like a day dreamer, a creative personality 0:28:55.840 --> 0:28:59.400 who does not fit in with their peers and wants 0:28:59.440 --> 0:29:02.080 to seek reft huge in a different world of the imagination. 0:29:02.640 --> 0:29:05.800 Think of time bandits or the never ending Story, et cetera, 0:29:05.880 --> 0:29:09.800 et cetera, very common dynamic. I think this seems to 0:29:09.840 --> 0:29:12.520 me to not be the case at all with Chihiro, 0:29:12.680 --> 0:29:15.000 and I still think she's a wonderful character, but a 0:29:15.040 --> 0:29:20.080 different kind than this other familiar type of childhood fantasy protagonist. 0:29:20.480 --> 0:29:23.760 She is initially not presented as a dreamer who wishes 0:29:23.800 --> 0:29:27.040 to escape from the humdrum life of in her social environment. 0:29:27.520 --> 0:29:31.240 She's shown feeling frustration with her parents, but she explicitly 0:29:31.320 --> 0:29:34.680 misses her school and her friends, and there's no indication 0:29:34.800 --> 0:29:38.080 that she's dissatisfied with living in the mundane world. So 0:29:38.240 --> 0:29:40.560 it's a different kind of character and a different kind 0:29:40.560 --> 0:29:44.680 of relationship between that character and the fantasy that's about 0:29:44.720 --> 0:29:49.160 to unfold. Chihro is not looking for a magical adventure. Instead, 0:29:49.240 --> 0:29:52.840 she is forced to adapt when the adventure is unavoidable. 0:29:53.680 --> 0:29:57.239 Yeah. Yeah, she's dealing with more than enough already. She 0:29:57.280 --> 0:30:01.640 doesn't really want to take a potentially gary side trip 0:30:02.240 --> 0:30:03.040 into the other. 0:30:02.920 --> 0:30:07.440 World anyway, so she follows her parents into the tunnel 0:30:08.000 --> 0:30:10.520 and they emerge in what seems like at first, the 0:30:10.840 --> 0:30:13.800 waiting area of a long abandoned train station. There are 0:30:13.840 --> 0:30:17.800 these benches and it just seems like disused and nobody's around, 0:30:18.320 --> 0:30:20.040 and that's kind of odd. And then they come out 0:30:20.080 --> 0:30:24.600 the other side into the open again and find weird 0:30:24.880 --> 0:30:29.360 empty buildings and vendor stalls, a courtyard with a clock tower, 0:30:29.800 --> 0:30:34.160 all nestled in a landscape of these gorgeous green rolling hills, 0:30:34.800 --> 0:30:37.440 and the father concludes, I know what this is. This 0:30:37.520 --> 0:30:40.960 is an abandoned amusement park. He says. They built places 0:30:41.000 --> 0:30:43.360 like this. I think, he says, in the early nineties, 0:30:43.640 --> 0:30:46.040 but then there was an economic recession and they all 0:30:46.040 --> 0:30:48.800 went out of business, and they've found one that nobody 0:30:48.880 --> 0:30:50.320 goes to anymore. It's just empty. 0:30:50.720 --> 0:30:54.120 You know, I mentioned cross generational conflict. I think tension 0:30:54.120 --> 0:30:56.240 would have been a better word choice for me, and 0:30:56.280 --> 0:30:58.000 I feel like we get a reference to that here 0:30:58.040 --> 0:31:03.120 a bit. You know, we're mentioning this big economic shift, 0:31:03.520 --> 0:31:07.200 real life economic shift in Japan, and here we do 0:31:07.280 --> 0:31:11.000 see very different attitudes between the parents and the child, 0:31:11.120 --> 0:31:13.240 you know, and we'll see some more of this here 0:31:13.280 --> 0:31:17.440 as well, where her dad especially is like, hey, let's 0:31:17.440 --> 0:31:20.360 just check it in there's no reason not to go 0:31:20.400 --> 0:31:22.200 in and try this out. Let's do it. And she's 0:31:22.240 --> 0:31:24.680 a lot more reserved. She's a good kid, she's a 0:31:24.720 --> 0:31:27.920 rule follower, she has different expectations about how things might 0:31:27.960 --> 0:31:28.400 turn out. 0:31:28.680 --> 0:31:32.200 That's right. So Chihiro's parents start exploring this other world 0:31:32.280 --> 0:31:34.840 at the opposite end of the tunnel, and Chihiro has 0:31:34.880 --> 0:31:37.920 to follow them. And I want to say that I 0:31:37.920 --> 0:31:43.880 think there is an absolutely enchanting feeling of gradually moving 0:31:44.000 --> 0:31:46.800 from the mundane to the strange in the first few 0:31:46.840 --> 0:31:50.600 minutes of the film, passing through a literal tunnel, and 0:31:50.680 --> 0:31:55.000 yet the transition is subtle, there's nothing explicitly magical. Yet 0:31:55.080 --> 0:31:58.560 it's just a strange environment that you wouldn't expect to 0:31:58.640 --> 0:32:03.880 find here. What's going on and the kind of tension 0:32:03.920 --> 0:32:07.920 that it creates is so pleasing. I don't know if 0:32:07.960 --> 0:32:10.000 I even have the vocabulary for this, but you know, 0:32:10.160 --> 0:32:13.760 they're just there are different ways that a situation in 0:32:13.800 --> 0:32:17.800 a movie or in a story generally can be unexplained 0:32:17.880 --> 0:32:21.560 or mysterious, and for some reason, some of those mysteries 0:32:21.640 --> 0:32:24.560 or unexplained situations are more pleasing than others. And this 0:32:24.640 --> 0:32:27.160 is like a ten out of ten it's just something 0:32:27.240 --> 0:32:29.160 is unusual. I don't know what's going on, and it 0:32:29.160 --> 0:32:30.520 feels the best it can. 0:32:31.000 --> 0:32:34.960 The pacing is also just so terrific here. I've seen, 0:32:35.000 --> 0:32:37.680 and I imagine we've watched for weird how cinema films 0:32:37.720 --> 0:32:42.720 where the initial real world portion of the film before 0:32:42.720 --> 0:32:46.680 we descend into the other world is either too fast 0:32:47.080 --> 0:32:50.080 or it's too slow. Either the movie just really wants 0:32:50.120 --> 0:32:52.760 to ram you in there, or we're just waiting, we're 0:32:52.800 --> 0:32:54.800 just begging for the movie to get to the fantasy. 0:32:55.080 --> 0:32:57.920 And in here, I feel like Minazaki manages just the 0:32:58.000 --> 0:33:00.680 right pace where we learn everything we need to know 0:33:00.720 --> 0:33:05.560 about the real world circumstances and where the characters fit 0:33:05.600 --> 0:33:10.000 in there, but really waste no time at all transitioning 0:33:10.080 --> 0:33:13.680 us into that other world at just the right pace. 0:33:14.160 --> 0:33:17.560 Yeah. So the characters are wandering around the streets of 0:33:17.600 --> 0:33:21.840 this seemingly empty village. They're going through these vendor stalls again, 0:33:21.880 --> 0:33:26.120 they're all empty, but Shahiro's father smells something. He smells food, 0:33:26.640 --> 0:33:29.920 and everybody's hungry, so they follow the smell and they 0:33:29.920 --> 0:33:33.440 come across a tent full of delicious looking foods in 0:33:33.480 --> 0:33:37.280 hot steamer baskets and serving platters lined up for the taking. 0:33:37.480 --> 0:33:40.360 Once again, they do a great job here of making 0:33:40.440 --> 0:33:43.960 animated food really look delicious. I was watching this and 0:33:44.000 --> 0:33:45.520 I was like, y, give me some of that. 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:49.800 Yeah. When we went to Ghibli Park, they had a 0:33:49.880 --> 0:33:54.200 whole section built out. It was just devoted to the 0:33:54.240 --> 0:33:59.520 presentation of food in Miyazaki films, with examples of just 0:33:59.560 --> 0:34:02.280 how much tension goes into the presentation of the food, 0:34:02.920 --> 0:34:04.880 and also some like I think they had some models 0:34:04.880 --> 0:34:07.240 and some you know, physical representations of what the food 0:34:07.240 --> 0:34:10.360 would look like in real life. And I was talking 0:34:10.360 --> 0:34:11.879 about this with my wife and she said, oh, yeah, 0:34:11.920 --> 0:34:14.440 there are people on Instagram whose whole thing is just 0:34:15.400 --> 0:34:19.360 cooking up little recipes that look like food from a 0:34:19.400 --> 0:34:20.320 Miyazaki film. 0:34:20.680 --> 0:34:24.440 That's funny, and it's especially funny given what actually happens 0:34:24.480 --> 0:34:28.200 when you eat his food. So Chi hero's father calls 0:34:28.239 --> 0:34:31.960 out to the vendor, but nobody answers the food sitting there. 0:34:31.960 --> 0:34:34.720 It's steaming hot, it looks really good, but there's nobody here. 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:39.240 Kitchen looks empty. So father and mother are very hungry 0:34:39.760 --> 0:34:41.600 and they just say, you know what, we can just 0:34:41.640 --> 0:34:44.520 dig in because we can pay the person who runs 0:34:44.520 --> 0:34:46.440 the stall whenever they come back. Surely they'll be back 0:34:46.480 --> 0:34:47.239 in a minute. 0:34:47.320 --> 0:34:49.799 It's like, Daddy's got a credit card. Don't worry, dig in, honey, 0:34:49.880 --> 0:34:50.840 grab some soup bunts. 0:34:51.160 --> 0:34:54.120 Yes, And so they just start shoveling the food, but 0:34:54.280 --> 0:34:58.040 Chihiro doesn't trust it. Mom and dad are eating, but 0:34:58.160 --> 0:35:01.040 she something feels wrong to her. She's kind of afraid, 0:35:01.320 --> 0:35:04.120 and she thinks we're not supposed to do this, so 0:35:04.280 --> 0:35:06.799 she doesn't eat the food and wanders off on her own. 0:35:08.080 --> 0:35:10.640 Now she sees a number of things. She goes up 0:35:10.640 --> 0:35:15.600 this big stone staircase and see some kind of landmarks, 0:35:15.640 --> 0:35:19.880 interesting looking buildings, but eventually comes across the bathhouse, the 0:35:20.480 --> 0:35:24.439 central location of the rest of the movie, which is 0:35:24.480 --> 0:35:28.600 an enormous complex, almost like a castle, which will we 0:35:28.640 --> 0:35:32.400 will later learn is a hospitality service that is a 0:35:32.480 --> 0:35:36.560 Japanese style bathhouse, but instead of serving human clients, it 0:35:36.640 --> 0:35:38.960 is for kami. It is for the spirits. 0:35:39.640 --> 0:35:41.680 And this is where we really begin to ramp up 0:35:41.719 --> 0:35:46.480 the tension, and the tension does not release for I mean, 0:35:46.520 --> 0:35:48.240 it doesn't let up for a very long. 0:35:48.080 --> 0:35:50.440 Time, that's right. So we don't know yet that it's 0:35:50.480 --> 0:35:53.359 a bathhouse for spirits. It's just this giant building. It's 0:35:53.400 --> 0:35:55.920 reached by crossing a bridge over a deep ravine with 0:35:55.960 --> 0:36:00.000 a river below. I think. Chihiro, I believe, just wanders 0:36:00.080 --> 0:36:03.480 out onto the bridge, but then suddenly realizes there's somebody 0:36:03.520 --> 0:36:06.440 standing there next to her, and she meets a boy 0:36:06.719 --> 0:36:12.520 named Haku, who appears human. But Haku introduces sudden urgency. 0:36:13.000 --> 0:36:15.919 He's like, Chehro, you should not be here. You need 0:36:15.920 --> 0:36:18.560 to leave immediately. The sun is about to set, and 0:36:18.600 --> 0:36:20.920 you've got to get back where you came from before dark. 0:36:22.440 --> 0:36:25.200 So Chihiro runs back to meet her parents at the 0:36:25.560 --> 0:36:30.239 food vendorstall, but discovers in a horrifying revelation that they 0:36:30.239 --> 0:36:34.040 are not her parents anymore. They have been magically transformed 0:36:34.160 --> 0:36:39.320 into pigs, presumably by eating cursed food. They no longer 0:36:39.320 --> 0:36:42.600 seem to recognize her or know who they are. They're 0:36:42.640 --> 0:36:46.440 just hogs at the trough, now disgustingly smashing through serving 0:36:46.480 --> 0:36:49.520 dishes and piles of food and rooting around in the mess. 0:36:49.800 --> 0:36:52.000 And then a frog starts slapping them around with a 0:36:52.080 --> 0:36:58.680 fly swatter. Yes, it's legitimately terrifying, to the point that 0:36:59.320 --> 0:37:01.719 we tried to show our son this movie when he 0:37:01.800 --> 0:37:05.240 was a little too young for it. I guess we'd forgotten, 0:37:05.280 --> 0:37:07.000 you know, we'd watched it as adults, we had not 0:37:07.239 --> 0:37:11.200 really watched it as children. You know, it's in mind. 0:37:11.360 --> 0:37:13.520 So when we initially showed it to him, this was 0:37:13.560 --> 0:37:15.400 the point where he just could not take it. He's like, 0:37:15.440 --> 0:37:18.319 I can't watch this, you know, and got upset, and 0:37:18.320 --> 0:37:19.920 we're like, okay, we'll have to come back to this 0:37:19.960 --> 0:37:23.520 one later. So bear that in mind with this picture. 0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:27.480 It's tremendous. It's definitely four kids of a certain age. 0:37:27.520 --> 0:37:30.920 But if your kid's you know, super young, then you 0:37:30.920 --> 0:37:33.479 know it's it's more time for my neighbor Totoro, which 0:37:33.520 --> 0:37:36.719 is terrific for all ages as well, but definitely has 0:37:36.880 --> 0:37:37.960 a little kids in mind. 0:37:38.320 --> 0:37:41.840 Yeah. So Chihiro runs away in terror and tries to 0:37:41.960 --> 0:37:45.160 escape back in the direction she came from, but discovers 0:37:45.200 --> 0:37:48.719 now that her way home is blocked. A field that 0:37:48.760 --> 0:37:51.080 they had crossed in order to reach the village is 0:37:51.120 --> 0:37:54.680 now flooded with water. It's a river now, and she 0:37:54.800 --> 0:37:58.360 watches as a ferry crosses the water, glowing with lamplight, 0:37:59.000 --> 0:38:02.320 and as the fairy reaches her side of the new river, 0:38:02.800 --> 0:38:06.759 sort of the landing the disembarking ramp comes down, and 0:38:07.360 --> 0:38:11.920 weird spirit beings begin to unload and file into the village, 0:38:12.000 --> 0:38:16.160 all toward the bathhouse. So we don't see all of 0:38:16.200 --> 0:38:18.400 their forms yet. I think I think a lot of 0:38:18.400 --> 0:38:20.200 these spirits are at this point sort of covered in 0:38:20.360 --> 0:38:24.279 masks and cloaks, so we don't see exactly what they are. 0:38:25.280 --> 0:38:29.120 But che Hero is frightened and despairing, especially when she 0:38:29.239 --> 0:38:33.040 discovers that she is beginning to turn transparent she can 0:38:33.120 --> 0:38:36.440 like look through her own hands and arms. But she 0:38:36.600 --> 0:38:40.520 does get some help. Hakou reappears and it tells her, hey, 0:38:40.680 --> 0:38:42.759 you need to eat this small piece of food. He 0:38:42.840 --> 0:38:45.640 promises it will not turn her into a pig, and 0:38:45.719 --> 0:38:48.319 he explains that she's got to eat some food from 0:38:48.320 --> 0:38:51.839 this world or she's going to vanish. So Haku is 0:38:51.880 --> 0:38:56.120 not only helpful to che Hero, but he somehow seems 0:38:56.239 --> 0:38:59.120 to know her. He knows her name without her telling 0:38:59.200 --> 0:39:03.160 him about her parents, and he explains that he has 0:39:03.280 --> 0:39:05.479 known her from a long time ago, but we don't 0:39:05.520 --> 0:39:08.960 know how, and in fact, it seems maybe he doesn't 0:39:09.000 --> 0:39:11.920 know how he knows her. But there is also a 0:39:11.920 --> 0:39:14.600 form of danger established here, so time is of the 0:39:14.840 --> 0:39:18.760 there's no time to really hash everything out. Haku hides 0:39:18.840 --> 0:39:23.080 Chihiro from the gaze of a giant, magical bird with 0:39:23.120 --> 0:39:26.880 a human face, which is circling menacingly over the head 0:39:26.920 --> 0:39:30.799 as if looking for her, and Haku tells Chehro that 0:39:30.880 --> 0:39:33.560 she is in danger. If they find her, it's not 0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:35.799 going to be good for her. So the only way 0:39:35.840 --> 0:39:39.520 she can protect herself and save her parents potentially is 0:39:39.600 --> 0:39:43.879 to get a job at the bathhouse. They will, he says, 0:39:43.920 --> 0:39:46.400 They're going to try to turn you away, but you 0:39:46.520 --> 0:39:48.759 cannot take no for an answer. You have to go 0:39:48.840 --> 0:39:51.120 ask for a job and don't leave until you get one. 0:39:51.600 --> 0:39:55.280 Yeah. Again, the tension is just is just so excellent 0:39:55.360 --> 0:39:58.960 here and already, like the first challenge to j hero 0:39:59.560 --> 0:40:02.920 is is one of inner strength, like this is. I 0:40:02.920 --> 0:40:04.399 think it's one of the great things about this film. 0:40:04.440 --> 0:40:07.319 This is not a film where our hero engages in 0:40:07.360 --> 0:40:12.879 physical battles with monsters and fantasy creatures. Her challenges are 0:40:12.960 --> 0:40:18.040 largely one of will and inner strength and challenges to 0:40:18.080 --> 0:40:21.279 her moral compass. Yeah, and she is a rock. You know, 0:40:21.360 --> 0:40:23.200 when we first meet her, she seems maybe you know, 0:40:23.239 --> 0:40:26.600 she's moody and maybe a little self obsessed or you know, 0:40:26.800 --> 0:40:28.799 but not in ways that are inappropriate for a ten 0:40:28.840 --> 0:40:32.120 year old child. But as the movie enrolls here we 0:40:32.200 --> 0:40:34.600 really get to see how strong she really is. 0:40:35.280 --> 0:40:37.960 We discover it as she discovers it about herself. 0:40:38.080 --> 0:40:48.600 Yeah. 0:40:48.640 --> 0:40:52.239 So the place that Haku sends to Hero to ask 0:40:52.320 --> 0:40:56.799 for a job is the boiler room. Which everything in 0:40:56.800 --> 0:40:58.440 this movie is great, but this is one of my 0:40:58.520 --> 0:41:01.680 favorite parts of the whole film. So he sends her 0:41:01.719 --> 0:41:06.759 down this very dangerous looking staircase along the side of 0:41:06.840 --> 0:41:12.040 the bathhouse, hanging over the ravine. There is some slapstick 0:41:12.040 --> 0:41:12.920 here as well. 0:41:13.200 --> 0:41:15.359 And it's yeah, and it's so well executed. This is 0:41:15.480 --> 0:41:17.600 this is one of the things that I really noticed 0:41:17.680 --> 0:41:20.759 on this rewatch is that you have, you know, this 0:41:20.840 --> 0:41:24.600 great built up tension and that allows some excellent space 0:41:25.200 --> 0:41:28.200 for humor. There are numerous parts in the film that 0:41:28.239 --> 0:41:31.439 are just tremendously funny, and this is one of those 0:41:31.480 --> 0:41:33.279 moments where she's, you know, she's trying to be really 0:41:33.320 --> 0:41:37.120 careful and then she gets scared and just runs down 0:41:37.160 --> 0:41:39.400 the side of the building and like smacks into a wall, 0:41:39.520 --> 0:41:43.600 very slapstick style, but you know, it's all the more 0:41:43.719 --> 0:41:47.239 humorous for being the punctuation on the end of all 0:41:47.280 --> 0:41:48.240 of this built up tension. 0:41:48.560 --> 0:41:51.360 Yeah, that's right. But she finally makes it down to 0:41:51.680 --> 0:41:54.759 the boiler room. So it's a room deep underneath the 0:41:54.760 --> 0:42:00.839 bathhouse where a multi armed monster man named Camagie operates 0:42:00.880 --> 0:42:05.520 a vast furnace powered by coal to heat water for 0:42:05.640 --> 0:42:09.920 the baths and then mixes potions and herbal infusions into 0:42:09.920 --> 0:42:13.640 the water before it is piped up into you know, 0:42:13.719 --> 0:42:16.000 piped up through a sort of thing inside the wall 0:42:16.520 --> 0:42:20.120 to reach the baths for the guests. Rob, do you 0:42:20.160 --> 0:42:23.360 have any descriptive thoughts Aboutkamaji. He's wonderful character. 0:42:23.480 --> 0:42:25.399 Oh, yeah, he's awesome. You know. He has this big, 0:42:25.440 --> 0:42:27.760 bushy what I would think of is like an anime 0:42:27.880 --> 0:42:30.960 style mustache, you know, some of this kind of facial 0:42:31.000 --> 0:42:34.399 hair that you really only see in animation. But then yeah, 0:42:34.520 --> 0:42:37.880 multiple limbs, what they each have I think three fingers, 0:42:39.680 --> 0:42:42.839 you know, and he's just constantly when he's working, he's 0:42:42.880 --> 0:42:49.760 constantly in motion, fetching little tags, fetching ingredients for the water, 0:42:50.120 --> 0:42:53.319 occasionally reaching back and getting what I assume is a 0:42:53.360 --> 0:42:56.279 picture of tea and drinking directly from the spout. 0:42:56.680 --> 0:42:58.839 It just puts the spout in his mouth. 0:42:59.440 --> 0:43:02.920 When he has little black sunglasses over his eyes. 0:43:03.560 --> 0:43:06.360 Yeah, he does, you know, except for the sunglasses. In 0:43:06.400 --> 0:43:08.800 a way, he kind of reminds me of lord Yupa 0:43:08.880 --> 0:43:10.719 with the big bushy mustache. 0:43:10.800 --> 0:43:13.920 Yeah yeah, yeah, the facial hair for sure. And you know, 0:43:14.160 --> 0:43:17.400 kind of the role here, like he's the you know, 0:43:17.480 --> 0:43:20.080 rough around the edges character that it is going to 0:43:20.200 --> 0:43:24.319 end up being, you know, very very benevolent and very 0:43:24.320 --> 0:43:25.640 helpful to our protagonist. 0:43:27.040 --> 0:43:29.680 But he is not working alone down here, because so 0:43:29.719 --> 0:43:33.040 while he's cranking all the levers and operating the furnace 0:43:33.120 --> 0:43:36.760 and then also grinding up the spices and the herbs 0:43:36.760 --> 0:43:42.040 for the infusions of the bathwater, also down below him 0:43:42.520 --> 0:43:46.759 there are these little black creatures, the soot sprites, that 0:43:46.840 --> 0:43:50.839 are carrying coal and tossing it into the oven. And 0:43:51.400 --> 0:43:55.560 these soot sprites are so cute. And I noticed from 0:43:55.560 --> 0:43:58.320 a there's a note in the Napier book that these 0:43:58.360 --> 0:44:02.480 are actually a recurring character type. They're a little monster 0:44:02.560 --> 0:44:05.760 that was invented for my neighbor Totoro, and they're showing 0:44:05.800 --> 0:44:06.760 up again here. 0:44:07.040 --> 0:44:10.160 That's right. Yeah, Yeah, they're in the house that the 0:44:10.200 --> 0:44:13.040 family moves to in the country. In my neighbor Toto. 0:44:13.760 --> 0:44:14.440 But here they have. 0:44:14.400 --> 0:44:19.520 A job that's right, though it's funny. So they're enchanted 0:44:19.719 --> 0:44:23.440 pieces of soot, and it's so wonderfully animated the way 0:44:23.280 --> 0:44:27.360 they approach the sort of the mouth of the furnace 0:44:27.400 --> 0:44:30.000 and they throw the coal in, and then these gusts 0:44:30.000 --> 0:44:31.759 of hot air that come out of the mouth of 0:44:31.760 --> 0:44:34.560 the furnace whenever it opens just sort of blow them 0:44:34.640 --> 0:44:37.640 back off of this ledge to where they came from 0:44:37.680 --> 0:44:39.680 so that they can retrieve another piece of coal and 0:44:40.080 --> 0:44:43.040 walk forward again. But as I said, the scene is 0:44:43.080 --> 0:44:46.239 so cute. One of these little sprites picks up a 0:44:46.239 --> 0:44:48.960 piece of coal that's too heavy and drops it on itself, 0:44:49.600 --> 0:44:51.919 and she hero picks up the piece of coal from 0:44:52.040 --> 0:44:54.840 on top of the sprite and she struggles with it 0:44:54.880 --> 0:44:59.200 at first it's heavy, but Kamaji is like, well you 0:44:59.280 --> 0:45:02.640 picked it up, you know, carry on with what you started. 0:45:03.040 --> 0:45:05.880 So she takes it to the mouth of the furnace 0:45:05.920 --> 0:45:08.200 manages to throw it in, and when the soot sprites 0:45:08.239 --> 0:45:10.600 see her do that, they all drop their cold pieces 0:45:10.640 --> 0:45:15.200 on themselves. It's so good, yeah, but they they start 0:45:15.520 --> 0:45:18.000 gathering around her feet like they think she's some kind 0:45:18.040 --> 0:45:21.400 of goddess. You know they they they like pile up 0:45:21.400 --> 0:45:26.839 on her shoes and it's it's adorable. But anyway, chi 0:45:26.920 --> 0:45:30.920 Hero is persistent about asking for a job, so Kamaji 0:45:31.040 --> 0:45:35.880 is like, okay, And so we meet another character named Lynn, 0:45:36.000 --> 0:45:39.680 who is a bathhouse worker who is cynical and brusque 0:45:39.680 --> 0:45:43.040 with Chee Hero at first, but later softens and becomes 0:45:43.080 --> 0:45:46.880 her main mentor and help her within the bathhouse. But 0:45:47.040 --> 0:45:49.720 when Lynn comes in to deliver some food to Kamachi, 0:45:50.640 --> 0:45:54.320 Kamachi is like, hey, you know, this girl here is 0:45:54.360 --> 0:45:56.600 asking for a job. You should take her up to 0:45:56.760 --> 0:46:00.960 you Baba. Now you Baba is the big boss of 0:46:01.000 --> 0:46:04.440 this establishment, the witch who lives at the top floor 0:46:04.640 --> 0:46:08.200 of the bathhouse for spirits, and so Lynn is not 0:46:08.280 --> 0:46:11.319 excited about this mission at first, but she does try 0:46:11.360 --> 0:46:13.359 to help is she takes to Hero up in a 0:46:13.400 --> 0:46:17.839 series of elevator rides. One great weird encounter is with 0:46:17.880 --> 0:46:21.799 this gigantic thing called the Radish Spirit, which gets onto 0:46:21.800 --> 0:46:24.040 it sort of like wanders around after them and gets 0:46:24.040 --> 0:46:27.840 on an elevator with them, but they and as we 0:46:27.880 --> 0:46:29.840 go up, we get to see the different levels of 0:46:29.880 --> 0:46:33.279 the bathhouse with its many strange clients, the spirits and 0:46:33.280 --> 0:46:35.719 the creatures and so forth. But they make their way 0:46:35.800 --> 0:46:38.680 up to the top floor before we get to you, Baba, 0:46:38.760 --> 0:46:40.680 anything you want to talk about on the way, rob. 0:46:40.840 --> 0:46:43.959 Oh, I mean the bath house or the Hansen Here 0:46:44.200 --> 0:46:47.279 is such a fabulous world, and perhaps it reads as 0:46:47.320 --> 0:46:50.480 slightly more fabulous if you're not familiar with like Japanese 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:55.759 bathhouse traditions or various other international bathhouse traditions. But even 0:46:55.800 --> 0:46:59.720 if you are, like, it's just stuffed with such a 0:46:59.760 --> 0:47:02.319 why crew. I mean, it's staffed in large part by 0:47:02.360 --> 0:47:06.120 magical beings, and then it caters to an even wider 0:47:06.239 --> 0:47:10.560 range of creature spirits, yo kai and deities. I just 0:47:10.560 --> 0:47:15.239 have so many favorites that keep reappearing. They're the duckling spirits, 0:47:15.280 --> 0:47:19.000 the yes O Tori sama, and they make me smile 0:47:19.040 --> 0:47:21.520 every time we even just get a quick glimpse of 0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:22.440 them in the background. 0:47:22.920 --> 0:47:26.200 I would almost say that the many different characters we 0:47:26.280 --> 0:47:28.680 meet at the bath house are like on a sliding 0:47:28.800 --> 0:47:33.279 scale of uncanny Valley similarity to humans, Like Lynn just 0:47:33.320 --> 0:47:36.680 looks like a human, right, but you have other things 0:47:36.719 --> 0:47:40.960 that look vaguely human, but their proportions are weird. And 0:47:41.000 --> 0:47:43.480 then you have other things like the ducks that are 0:47:43.520 --> 0:47:45.799 like ducks but with kind of human faces, and then 0:47:45.880 --> 0:47:47.759 you've got just like you've got the no face and 0:47:47.800 --> 0:47:51.200 stuff that's not very human at all. But I like, Oh, 0:47:51.560 --> 0:47:53.959 so in the middle, you've got these frog men who 0:47:54.080 --> 0:47:57.880 are sort of all of the administrator roles within the 0:47:57.920 --> 0:48:01.319 bath house, and they are would you say, they are 0:48:01.440 --> 0:48:05.320 uniformly portrayed as kind of kind of mean and greedy, 0:48:05.440 --> 0:48:07.239 but I don't know, in the end, they kind of 0:48:07.239 --> 0:48:09.040 are won over by Chia hero spunk. 0:48:09.440 --> 0:48:14.239 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the Radish Spirit already or 0:48:14.719 --> 0:48:18.239 Oshiro Sama. This one is apparently based on a folkloric 0:48:18.280 --> 0:48:21.919 household spirit and here in the film takes the form 0:48:21.960 --> 0:48:24.959 of a great walrus like Radish man with I believe 0:48:24.960 --> 0:48:26.680 it's supposed to be like a bowl on his head, 0:48:27.000 --> 0:48:30.680 for that's the way I've always read it. But yeah, 0:48:30.680 --> 0:48:32.960 A big fan of this guy, and when my family 0:48:33.000 --> 0:48:35.440 and I visited Ghibli Park, I had to grab a 0:48:35.480 --> 0:48:40.080 photo with this absolute superstar. Included a photograph here for you, Joe, 0:48:40.120 --> 0:48:41.640 if you want to see me standing next to the 0:48:41.719 --> 0:48:42.360 Radish Spirit. 0:48:42.600 --> 0:48:45.320 Wait, is that a statue or somebody in a costume? 0:48:45.760 --> 0:48:49.680 Neither it is the real Radish Spirit, and I'll put 0:48:49.719 --> 0:48:51.320 I'll make sure I put this one on our Instagram. 0:48:51.360 --> 0:48:52.840 If you want to see this photo, I'll put it 0:48:52.920 --> 0:48:59.919 up at STBYM podcast on Instagram. Nice. Oh, but let's see. Yeah. 0:49:00.360 --> 0:49:02.080 I just love all the spirits that we see here, 0:49:02.320 --> 0:49:04.000 but Radish Spirit is my favorite. 0:49:04.440 --> 0:49:06.680 So from here we go on to meet you Baba, 0:49:06.800 --> 0:49:11.359 who is a powerful and frightening witch who runs the establishment. 0:49:11.880 --> 0:49:16.640 She's portrayed as treacherous and envious and greedy. She collects 0:49:16.800 --> 0:49:20.719 jewels and examines her riches with great relish, but she 0:49:20.760 --> 0:49:23.359 also shows flashes of a softer, or at least more 0:49:23.400 --> 0:49:27.200 comical side in the fact that she dotes upon her son, 0:49:27.400 --> 0:49:31.239 who is a giant, destructive baby named bo Oh. 0:49:31.320 --> 0:49:33.319 I love this baby, you know, I was just talking 0:49:33.360 --> 0:49:35.240 to my wife about this. It's like this week especially, 0:49:35.280 --> 0:49:37.040 I just want to be this character. I want to 0:49:37.040 --> 0:49:40.080 be a giant baby that crawls under a mountain of 0:49:40.120 --> 0:49:45.680 pillows and then you know, refuses to leave. Yeah. But yeah, 0:49:45.719 --> 0:49:49.279 it's just such a weird cruise she's got because you 0:49:49.360 --> 0:49:52.280 got the baby, You've got the three heads rolling around. 0:49:52.520 --> 0:49:55.920 What's the deal with the heads? The bouncing green heads 0:49:55.920 --> 0:49:58.920 that look kind of look oh, I don't know, like 0:49:59.000 --> 0:50:00.399 any masks a little bit. 0:50:00.840 --> 0:50:03.520 Yeah, I've digged it, dug into it a little bit, 0:50:03.520 --> 0:50:05.799 and I could not find a clear answer on what 0:50:06.000 --> 0:50:08.759 exactly they are other than because I mean, I think 0:50:08.800 --> 0:50:11.520 in this film you do see a mix of Miyazaki 0:50:11.640 --> 0:50:17.400 drawling on Japanese folklore and legend, drawing on international folklore 0:50:17.400 --> 0:50:20.440 and legend, but also just coming up with wild ideas. 0:50:20.480 --> 0:50:24.399 So I'm I'm still unclear exactly where the heads fall 0:50:24.480 --> 0:50:27.920 in here. But then you also have her strange harpie 0:50:28.000 --> 0:50:31.160 like familiar. Who else do we have? We have somebody 0:50:31.160 --> 0:50:33.480 else here in the mix too, right? Oh wait, we 0:50:33.520 --> 0:50:35.080 have another character that's coming into bed. 0:50:35.320 --> 0:50:37.040 Yes, we'll come back to Are you thinking of the 0:50:37.080 --> 0:50:37.640 foot lamp? 0:50:38.520 --> 0:50:41.880 Oh, yes, there's a foot lamp too. Yes, it's you 0:50:42.040 --> 0:50:44.320 never know what's going to show up in this picture. 0:50:44.560 --> 0:50:46.320 But the footlamp doesn't work for you, Boba. 0:50:46.960 --> 0:50:50.560 They show up later independent independent contractor. 0:50:51.080 --> 0:50:54.240 So Chihiro's like, hey, I'm here for a job, and 0:50:54.560 --> 0:50:58.560 Ubaba threatens. Chahiro tries to refuse her request, but it 0:50:58.640 --> 0:51:02.200 turns out that this, this terrifying witch actually is bound 0:51:02.200 --> 0:51:05.080 by some rules of her own. She is bound by 0:51:05.120 --> 0:51:07.560 a magical oath she took at some point that she 0:51:07.719 --> 0:51:12.120 must give a job to anyone who asks, so chi Hero, 0:51:12.280 --> 0:51:16.319 through her persistence, forces her to offer her a contract, 0:51:16.760 --> 0:51:19.840 and che Hero signs the contract to work for you Baba. 0:51:20.280 --> 0:51:24.400 So now chi Hero is protected against you Baba's whims 0:51:24.480 --> 0:51:27.040 to an extent, though Ubaba can still be a pretty 0:51:27.080 --> 0:51:31.200 nasty boss to work for. Except it gets even worse. Whoops. 0:51:31.200 --> 0:51:33.560 When chi Hero signs her name on the page of 0:51:33.600 --> 0:51:38.160 this magical contract, the witch lifts away the writing form 0:51:38.200 --> 0:51:42.160 most her signatures, so like the writing magically comes up 0:51:42.200 --> 0:51:45.759 off the page and Ubaba is able to steal chi 0:51:45.880 --> 0:51:49.439 Hero's name, telling her that now she will be known 0:51:49.520 --> 0:51:54.160 only as Sen And we will later learn that Eubaba 0:51:54.239 --> 0:51:57.080 does this to everyone who works for her, she steals 0:51:57.160 --> 0:51:59.719 their name. So she did the same thing to Ha, 0:52:00.080 --> 0:52:03.359 who we don't know what his original name was, at 0:52:03.480 --> 0:52:06.520 least not until later. But now Haku serves as you 0:52:06.600 --> 0:52:09.880 Baba's second in command and sort of her her commando. 0:52:10.040 --> 0:52:14.920 Her like Special Missions Guy, Haku has forgotten what his 0:52:15.080 --> 0:52:18.560 real name was, and it turns out if you forget 0:52:18.600 --> 0:52:22.120 your original name, you can never escape you Baba's spell, 0:52:22.760 --> 0:52:25.520 and there there is a day I think they're shown 0:52:25.560 --> 0:52:28.799 the next morning going out and Sin is talking to 0:52:28.840 --> 0:52:32.120 Haku and she's forgotten what her name was, but Haku 0:52:32.360 --> 0:52:34.799 helps her. He can remind her because he knows her name, 0:52:35.120 --> 0:52:37.520 and also she can keep it in mind because Haku 0:52:37.680 --> 0:52:41.239 returns her belongings to her, which includes the note from 0:52:41.280 --> 0:52:43.719 her friend at school which she was reading in the 0:52:43.760 --> 0:52:46.959 car earlier that says Chihiro on it. So she keeps 0:52:47.000 --> 0:52:50.200 the notes dashed away in secret. And I like something 0:52:50.200 --> 0:52:54.279 about this little detail that's like, you know, part she's 0:52:54.320 --> 0:52:57.280 able to keep something of the place where she came from. 0:52:57.719 --> 0:53:00.400 It's not one of these story stories about going to 0:53:00.440 --> 0:53:04.480 another world or a fantasy world that is a rejection 0:53:04.719 --> 0:53:07.560 of the mundane world or the world you came from. 0:53:08.120 --> 0:53:11.719 An important part of her surviving this whole experience is 0:53:11.960 --> 0:53:14.520 her note from her friend that reminds her of her name. 0:53:15.040 --> 0:53:17.759 Yeah. Yeah, it's a very sweet, sweet moment. I think 0:53:17.800 --> 0:53:19.840 it's one of the great things about Spirited Away is 0:53:19.880 --> 0:53:22.319 you have these big scenes that definitely stick with you, 0:53:22.320 --> 0:53:26.760 you know, fantastic sequences, and then these very small moments 0:53:27.320 --> 0:53:45.360 that have oversized heart to them. 0:53:37.880 --> 0:53:42.080 So Sen understands that she must now become an ideal 0:53:42.320 --> 0:53:45.240 worker in you Baba's bathhouse or she has no hope 0:53:45.239 --> 0:53:49.319 of ever escaping and rescuing her parents from their magical transformation. 0:53:49.480 --> 0:53:53.040 It's sort of not established exactly how she will save them, 0:53:53.440 --> 0:53:55.600 but in order to have any chance of saving them, 0:53:55.600 --> 0:53:58.080 she's got to do a good job at work. And 0:53:58.120 --> 0:54:00.800 in the background there is this looming threat that they could, 0:54:01.000 --> 0:54:04.000 at some point in pig form, be turned into bacon, 0:54:04.160 --> 0:54:08.919 and it is mentioned by the frog men sometimes. Now 0:54:09.400 --> 0:54:13.799 Sen has help from Kamaji and especially from Lynn in 0:54:14.000 --> 0:54:17.640 learning how to do everything at the bathhouse, but most 0:54:17.680 --> 0:54:20.240 of the people who work there, again, this odd collection 0:54:20.360 --> 0:54:23.120 of kind of serving ladies and frog like men, are 0:54:23.600 --> 0:54:25.920 mean and unhelpful to her, and they mock her and 0:54:26.840 --> 0:54:29.680 give her difficult jobs out of spite. Now there is 0:54:29.719 --> 0:54:32.480 a scene I wanted to talk about because it establishes 0:54:32.520 --> 0:54:34.480 an important sort of b plot that runs for a 0:54:34.480 --> 0:54:38.279 while and then becomes an a plot. And it's the 0:54:38.280 --> 0:54:42.080 scene where she first meets No Face. I think we've 0:54:42.120 --> 0:54:45.120 seen No Face already at one point where while she 0:54:45.320 --> 0:54:49.000 was while Haku was sneaking her into the bath house, earlier, 0:54:49.040 --> 0:54:50.720 like the scene where she has to hold her breath 0:54:50.719 --> 0:54:53.520 and go across the bridge. I believe no face is 0:54:53.560 --> 0:54:56.040 just standing there, hovering on the bridge and watching her. 0:54:56.480 --> 0:55:00.440 But at some point we have an actual encounter. While 0:55:00.520 --> 0:55:03.960 Sin is working. She at one point opens a kind 0:55:03.960 --> 0:55:07.200 of sliding door to a garden outside and she sees 0:55:07.280 --> 0:55:10.840 this strange creature unlike any of the others really standing 0:55:10.840 --> 0:55:14.720 outside the bathhouse in the rain. It is shadowy, dark, 0:55:15.080 --> 0:55:19.400 It's a kind of translucent mound with a white mask 0:55:19.520 --> 0:55:23.359 for a face, and Sin, being polite, leaves the door 0:55:23.400 --> 0:55:25.680 open and invites the creature to come in out of 0:55:25.719 --> 0:55:28.680 the rain, and it does. More will come of this, 0:55:29.400 --> 0:55:31.360 But then we get to one of the big turning 0:55:31.440 --> 0:55:33.800 points in the movie, which is that Sin is working. 0:55:33.880 --> 0:55:36.600 She's trying to help out with all the tasks at 0:55:36.640 --> 0:55:42.000 the bathhouse, and suddenly the bathhouse receives an extremely difficult client, 0:55:42.480 --> 0:55:46.520 which is the Stink Spirit. Rob how would you introduce 0:55:46.560 --> 0:55:48.320 the stink Spirit scene? 0:55:48.520 --> 0:55:52.040 Oh, just you know, they see him and eventually smell 0:55:52.120 --> 0:55:57.520 him coming from a ways off. Just this blob, this 0:55:57.680 --> 0:56:02.120 sludge monster that's I think has some you know, you 0:56:02.160 --> 0:56:05.640 can compare it to various other sort of pollution based 0:56:05.719 --> 0:56:12.319 blob creatures from from from other cinematic visions, perhaps even 0:56:12.360 --> 0:56:15.960 to one of Godzilla's adversaries. Who is that We talked 0:56:16.000 --> 0:56:17.320 about this one on Weird House. 0:56:18.120 --> 0:56:21.600 Oh hold on a second, Oh JJ just chimed in 0:56:21.640 --> 0:56:24.240 to remind us that it's Hetera. That's the song we watched, 0:56:24.280 --> 0:56:25.920 isn't it. It's the smog Monster. 0:56:26.320 --> 0:56:29.600 Yeah, so some hetero vibes here to this again, just 0:56:29.680 --> 0:56:33.800 this sludgy blob creature that is slowly making it stinky 0:56:33.840 --> 0:56:37.680 way to the bathhouse and they're just all like in tear, like, oh, 0:56:37.719 --> 0:56:39.719 we've got to we've got to get the we've got 0:56:39.760 --> 0:56:41.800 to get the big tub ready for this guy. 0:56:42.440 --> 0:56:46.000 Right, And it's hilarious the way they're all like trying 0:56:46.000 --> 0:56:48.800 to turn him away as he's like he's coming across 0:56:48.840 --> 0:56:51.400 the bridge into the bathhouse and all these frogmen are 0:56:51.400 --> 0:56:54.000 in front of him being like we're closed and we're closed, 0:56:55.800 --> 0:57:00.560 but he just kind of slimes his way in. Yeah, 0:57:00.000 --> 0:57:03.200 and they, of course they're trying to give che Hero 0:57:03.400 --> 0:57:06.440 all of the worst jobs, so yeah, they're like, you've 0:57:06.480 --> 0:57:09.959 got to wash him. Fortunately, chi Hero has a little 0:57:09.960 --> 0:57:13.200 bit of magical help, so in order to wash this 0:57:13.960 --> 0:57:18.800 filthy beast. Sin has to get special water with the 0:57:18.920 --> 0:57:22.439 use of bath tokens, which are normally handed out by 0:57:22.920 --> 0:57:26.800 the Frogman, boss of the main staff. And these bath 0:57:26.800 --> 0:57:29.280 tokens are, I guess, a kind of like internal currency. 0:57:29.360 --> 0:57:31.400 You've got to use them and get them with permission 0:57:31.440 --> 0:57:33.920 and then use them, send them down to Camachi and 0:57:34.000 --> 0:57:37.320 he'll send up your powerful herbal infusions of hot bathwater 0:57:37.440 --> 0:57:42.240 to clean off all the filth. So the foreman, who 0:57:42.560 --> 0:57:45.040 is holding on to all these tries to refuse to 0:57:45.080 --> 0:57:47.360 help che Hero. He's like, you can't have any bath tokens. 0:57:47.680 --> 0:57:51.280 But then the no Face creature whom Sin earlier invited 0:57:51.360 --> 0:57:55.360 into the building, witnesses this interaction, and then he steals 0:57:55.400 --> 0:57:57.840 a bath token for her, and then later shows up 0:57:57.880 --> 0:58:01.160 with lots of bath tokens, tons of them for Sin, 0:58:01.640 --> 0:58:04.360 more than she needed. And so Sin is able to 0:58:04.480 --> 0:58:07.520 use these that she got from the no Face to 0:58:07.600 --> 0:58:10.000 clean up the stink spirit. And while she's cleaning it 0:58:10.080 --> 0:58:13.160 up and dousing it with all of this urban fuse 0:58:13.200 --> 0:58:16.400 hot water, she discovers there is quote a thorn in 0:58:16.440 --> 0:58:21.080 its side, which looks strangely like a man made object, 0:58:21.480 --> 0:58:25.320 and so she starts pulling on it and realizes that 0:58:25.520 --> 0:58:29.520 it is not a thorn, it is the handle of 0:58:29.560 --> 0:58:33.040 a bicycle, handlebar of a bicycle, and so they start 0:58:33.080 --> 0:58:36.720 pulling on it. Youbaba realizes what's going on, and she 0:58:37.080 --> 0:58:40.000 organizes all of the people in the bathhouse together to 0:58:40.120 --> 0:58:43.200 like pull on everything together, and it ends up all 0:58:43.240 --> 0:58:46.560 coming out like a giant hairball clag out of a drain, 0:58:46.760 --> 0:58:51.280 except it's just trash, revealing that this was not a 0:58:51.360 --> 0:58:56.400 stink spirit after all, but a river spirit, the dragon 0:58:56.480 --> 0:58:59.400 shaped spirit of a river that had been choked with 0:58:59.520 --> 0:59:05.400 pollution and garbage. It's full of old bicycles, tires out 0:59:05.600 --> 0:59:10.680 takeout containers, toilets, just pieces of machinery, pieces of construction, 0:59:11.880 --> 0:59:15.920 you know, building stuff, and just household trash, forming a 0:59:16.080 --> 0:59:18.360 mountain that comes out of the side of it and 0:59:18.400 --> 0:59:21.640 then leaves behind the clean water spirit in its wake. 0:59:22.280 --> 0:59:25.600 Oh yeah, and I've read that Nyazaki was inspired in 0:59:25.640 --> 0:59:28.240 this part based on a river cleanup he was involved 0:59:28.280 --> 0:59:31.360 in where they found a bicycle and some stuff. But oh, 0:59:31.440 --> 0:59:34.160 I mean, it's everything about the sequence is tremendous, All 0:59:34.160 --> 0:59:37.360 of the big fantasy elements like wading through the sludge 0:59:37.400 --> 0:59:39.960 and all. But I have to say, I was really 0:59:39.960 --> 0:59:43.600 impressed this on this viewing, with the sequence where we 0:59:43.640 --> 0:59:50.040 see Sin's hands underwater trying to tie the knot around 0:59:50.080 --> 0:59:52.120 the bicycle handle so they can all pull it out, 0:59:52.160 --> 0:59:56.120 and like it slips twice before it who is it 0:59:56.120 --> 0:59:56.760 that helps her? 0:59:58.320 --> 0:59:59.480 Well? 0:59:59.120 --> 1:00:03.040 It help yeah, But eventually on the third try not 1:00:04.200 --> 1:00:08.360 is a success. But there's something about the way that 1:00:08.400 --> 1:00:11.600 they just so realistically animate that rope slipping and not 1:00:11.720 --> 1:00:14.920 quite nodding. You can just feel it in your bones, 1:00:15.040 --> 1:00:18.320 like it is one hundred percent real. And I mean 1:00:18.520 --> 1:00:21.560 those kind of touches are I think essential in live 1:00:21.600 --> 1:00:24.280 action filmmaking as well, you know, because they allow us 1:00:24.280 --> 1:00:26.920 to connect with it with what's happening on the screen 1:00:27.040 --> 1:00:29.080 in a real way. But you know, all the more 1:00:29.120 --> 1:00:32.400 important in a film of animated fantasy ground us with 1:00:32.440 --> 1:00:34.880 those little moments that we can feel and then overwhelm 1:00:34.960 --> 1:00:37.680 us with those visions of the fantastic. 1:00:38.280 --> 1:00:43.040 It's actually full of excellent little physical tactle details like 1:00:43.080 --> 1:00:48.160 that zooming in farther than you would expect a movie 1:00:48.200 --> 1:00:51.280 of this kind, too, to show little ways that you know, 1:00:51.320 --> 1:00:53.760 maybe your foot doesn't catch on the stair right the 1:00:53.760 --> 1:00:57.000 first time, and you take another step or yeah, yeah, 1:00:57.000 --> 1:00:59.440 the hand to trying to grasp something and needing to 1:00:59.480 --> 1:01:02.080 Readjust there's a lot of that in this film. 1:01:02.360 --> 1:01:05.880 Yeah. One thing you see in a lot of Miyazaki 1:01:05.880 --> 1:01:09.800 films is a lot of attention paid to how children move, 1:01:10.120 --> 1:01:12.920 how young people move, and we definitely see that with Shahro, 1:01:13.160 --> 1:01:15.240 like the way that she moves around a little awkwardly 1:01:15.280 --> 1:01:18.280 at times. She's always bumping her head and falling down 1:01:18.400 --> 1:01:21.880 and you know, dramatic fashion, and it's just so well executed. 1:01:22.240 --> 1:01:25.040 So Sen did good here, She did a real good job. 1:01:25.080 --> 1:01:29.920 She's doing great at work. But next we come to 1:01:30.360 --> 1:01:34.920 Haku the Dragon and the scene of sin versus Ubaba's creatures. 1:01:35.160 --> 1:01:38.800 So there's a scene eventually where Sen sees a white 1:01:39.040 --> 1:01:42.000 dragon flying out over the water as she's looking out 1:01:42.000 --> 1:01:44.800 the window over the side of the bathhouse, and she 1:01:45.000 --> 1:01:49.680 realizes that the dragon is Haku. Haku has been a 1:01:49.760 --> 1:01:53.520 boy before this, but now she sees him in dragon form, 1:01:53.880 --> 1:01:56.240 and Haku is in trouble. He's being attacked by a 1:01:56.280 --> 1:02:01.280 swarm of these enchanted paper birds, and a greatly injured 1:02:01.320 --> 1:02:05.000 Haku crashes into Eubaba's residence in the in the upper 1:02:05.000 --> 1:02:08.520 part of the bathhouse, and Sen rushes to help him. 1:02:08.960 --> 1:02:12.560 Somewhere here along the way, I think she eavesdrops and 1:02:12.640 --> 1:02:15.400 learns that Ubaba sent him out on a special mission, 1:02:15.840 --> 1:02:19.320 and this mission is how he became injured. Ubaba expects 1:02:19.400 --> 1:02:21.840 Haku will die, and she doesn't seem all that bothered 1:02:21.880 --> 1:02:22.280 about it. 1:02:22.720 --> 1:02:24.320 Yeah, She's like, I'll hope you that Sin. 1:02:26.040 --> 1:02:32.040 It happens. So Sen sneaks into Eubaba's apartment to help Haku, 1:02:32.160 --> 1:02:36.600 but ends up meeting Bo, the Giant Baby, Ebaba's son, 1:02:37.760 --> 1:02:41.960 and we learn when we actually hear Bo talking and 1:02:42.040 --> 1:02:46.240 interacting with Chihiro or with Sen. Here, there's clearly some 1:02:46.320 --> 1:02:52.640 kind of unhealthy lock on Bo's maturation, both magical and psychological, 1:02:53.160 --> 1:02:56.040 Like the way he talks and his body don't really 1:02:56.120 --> 1:02:59.520 like match upright, and he's kind of paranoid, Like he's 1:02:59.520 --> 1:03:02.840 a paranoid pathological brat. There's a lot of play with 1:03:02.920 --> 1:03:04.520 me now where I will crush. 1:03:04.200 --> 1:03:06.840 You, yeah, or I will break your arm and yeah, 1:03:06.960 --> 1:03:09.400 that's like the big baby is terrifying here. 1:03:09.680 --> 1:03:13.720 Yeah. So Sin gets away from Bo temporarily, and while 1:03:13.720 --> 1:03:17.000 trying to help Haku, Sin meets a witch who looks 1:03:17.040 --> 1:03:19.920 exactly like you Baba. But here is a big reveal. 1:03:20.600 --> 1:03:22.960 This is not you Baba, this is u Baba's twin 1:03:23.160 --> 1:03:27.360 sister Zeniba. Who uh. They're at odds, you know, they 1:03:27.360 --> 1:03:30.600 don't get along. And it turns out that you Baba 1:03:30.960 --> 1:03:35.360 sent Haku to steal a special magical item from her sister, 1:03:35.480 --> 1:03:38.320 to steal it from Zeneba. It was a golden seal, 1:03:38.800 --> 1:03:42.800 and unfortunately for Haku, this magical golden seal was cursed, 1:03:42.960 --> 1:03:45.440 and she says the fact that Haku stole it is 1:03:45.480 --> 1:03:49.560 what is now killing him. Now. While in e Baba's house, 1:03:49.880 --> 1:03:54.440 Zeneba happens to just play some pranks, including transforming you 1:03:54.560 --> 1:03:59.439 Baba's son Bo the Giant Baby into a mouse, transforming 1:03:59.520 --> 1:04:02.600 the weird to jump the three green jumping heads into 1:04:02.640 --> 1:04:05.600 a fake version of Bo the Baby, so now there's 1:04:05.600 --> 1:04:08.280 the thing that looks like the baby but is actually 1:04:08.320 --> 1:04:12.360 these three heads, and transforming you Baba's demon bird Minion 1:04:12.480 --> 1:04:13.040 into a fly. 1:04:13.680 --> 1:04:13.880 Yes. 1:04:15.240 --> 1:04:18.320 Now, at some point here, Zeniba gets gets banished by 1:04:18.360 --> 1:04:23.480 having her little paper avatar damaged. But the but Sen 1:04:23.760 --> 1:04:26.080 and Haku end up falling through a pit in the 1:04:26.080 --> 1:04:29.520 floor and crashing down into Camagi's domain in the boiler room, 1:04:30.000 --> 1:04:33.680 where Sen decides to give Haku half of Oh did 1:04:33.720 --> 1:04:36.520 I did I even mention that the river spirit gave 1:04:36.880 --> 1:04:40.800 Sen a magic dumpling in reward for helping him? 1:04:40.920 --> 1:04:43.760 Oh yeah, yeah, this becomes important because. 1:04:44.760 --> 1:04:47.720 So she has this important magic dumpling. She gives half 1:04:47.720 --> 1:04:50.480 of it to Haku and closes his mouth over it, 1:04:50.520 --> 1:04:53.080 forces him to eat it, and this makes Haku vomit 1:04:53.280 --> 1:04:56.560 up the cursed golden seal, but also this kind of 1:04:56.640 --> 1:05:00.360 horrible mud slug, the physical embodiment of the curse sin 1:05:00.480 --> 1:05:04.800 then stomps on. Meanwhile, there's some trouble in the bath 1:05:04.880 --> 1:05:08.000 house because remember that no face monster. It is getting 1:05:08.080 --> 1:05:12.160 up to no good. It has started going around offering 1:05:12.280 --> 1:05:15.200 things to people, like it can make stuff appear in 1:05:15.240 --> 1:05:18.400 its hands that looks like gold, Like it just got 1:05:18.440 --> 1:05:20.480 a big pile of gold in its hand. It's like, 1:05:20.800 --> 1:05:23.560 you want some. It actually doesn't talk at first in 1:05:23.640 --> 1:05:26.480 its natural form. All it really seems to say is 1:05:26.520 --> 1:05:31.200 like uh uh huh, And it'll offer gold to people 1:05:31.280 --> 1:05:33.720 and the people are like, yeah, yeah, give me that gold. 1:05:33.800 --> 1:05:36.440 But then I don't know. It starts eating people like 1:05:36.480 --> 1:05:41.439 it eats a frog guy, eats a frog guys and 1:05:41.480 --> 1:05:44.040 as it's offering gold to the other workers in the bathhouse. 1:05:44.160 --> 1:05:46.960 They're all frantically saying like, oh, yeah, let's feed this 1:05:47.040 --> 1:05:49.000 guy as much as we can. He's giving us tips. 1:05:49.040 --> 1:05:51.880 We want tips, So they're all fighting for the tips 1:05:51.920 --> 1:05:55.880 from the whale, the big customer. And along the way 1:05:56.000 --> 1:05:58.760 it gets more and more destructive as it gets bigger 1:05:58.760 --> 1:06:01.080 and bigger and some more workers. 1:06:01.480 --> 1:06:04.880 Yeah, there's some strong horror vibes to a lot of this, because, yeah, 1:06:04.880 --> 1:06:09.080 we have this shape shifting monster that keeps eating servants 1:06:09.560 --> 1:06:12.919 and in doing so, like stealing their voice or even 1:06:12.960 --> 1:06:17.240 aspects of their personality. Yes, because otherwise, Yeah, no Face 1:06:17.320 --> 1:06:21.280 just makes these little kind of like this kind of sounds. 1:06:21.840 --> 1:06:23.880 I was no Face for Halloween one year, so I 1:06:23.920 --> 1:06:27.680 got to like do those noises whilst we were out 1:06:27.680 --> 1:06:30.720 triggered treating this year, I was how by the way from. 1:06:30.520 --> 1:06:34.680 How you know, I was wondering why the no Face 1:06:34.720 --> 1:06:39.080 seems the most interested in Sin, because it's like asking 1:06:39.120 --> 1:06:41.640 for her, you know, It's like, I don't want any 1:06:41.680 --> 1:06:43.560 of you want. I want Sin bring Sin to me. 1:06:44.280 --> 1:06:47.240 And it seems that maybe it's because she's the one 1:06:47.240 --> 1:06:49.800 who led it into the bathhouse, but also it seems 1:06:49.920 --> 1:06:53.080 that she's unique in that she's the only person who's 1:06:53.120 --> 1:06:56.040 not interested in the gold that it makes. It keeps 1:06:56.120 --> 1:06:58.000 making the gold and trying to give it to people, 1:06:58.040 --> 1:07:00.680 and they're all like, gimme, gimme, gimmy, and it wants 1:07:00.720 --> 1:07:03.080 to give gold to sin, but she's just not interested. 1:07:03.120 --> 1:07:05.760 She's just like, no, thanks, thank you, but I don't 1:07:05.760 --> 1:07:06.160 want any. 1:07:06.480 --> 1:07:10.840 Yeah, she's incorruptible when it comes to these temptations. And yeah, 1:07:10.880 --> 1:07:13.720 No Face is very fascinating because on one hand, you know, 1:07:13.840 --> 1:07:16.520 very much a hungry ghost sort of a scenario, like 1:07:16.960 --> 1:07:19.800 it's you know, its natural form is one of kind 1:07:19.840 --> 1:07:23.320 of hollowness and is very transparent, just has this mask 1:07:24.320 --> 1:07:26.280 that seems to you know, serve as its face. But 1:07:26.320 --> 1:07:28.200 then as it eats, we see its mouth more, we 1:07:28.240 --> 1:07:31.160 see its great lolling tongue. So it's, you know, it's 1:07:31.160 --> 1:07:34.320 a creature of vast appetite, but it's not just food 1:07:34.360 --> 1:07:38.240 at once. And I've seen Miyazaki discuss this in some 1:07:38.240 --> 1:07:41.640 translated interviews where he's talking about like it also it 1:07:41.760 --> 1:07:45.960 needs to absorb other people, like certainly in the sense 1:07:46.000 --> 1:07:48.440 that it's eating people, but also like, is in No 1:07:48.520 --> 1:07:51.840 Face truly has no face, no identity, and it must 1:07:51.880 --> 1:07:57.040 take identity from others. So it's it's it's a weird 1:07:57.160 --> 1:08:00.040 monster to try and unravel. 1:08:00.240 --> 1:08:02.840 Right, and it just keeps becoming more and more threatening. 1:08:02.880 --> 1:08:06.320 Eventually Sin comes to it to try to fix what's 1:08:06.360 --> 1:08:09.360 going on, but by this point it's just a rampaging monster. 1:08:09.480 --> 1:08:13.400 It's trying to eat everything. It's threatening her also, and 1:08:13.440 --> 1:08:16.880 so Sin ends up feeding this monster the other half 1:08:16.920 --> 1:08:20.599 of the river Spirit's dumpling, causing it to start vomiting 1:08:20.720 --> 1:08:24.519 up evil black sludge and shrinking in size. Was this 1:08:24.600 --> 1:08:26.000 part of your costume, Rob. 1:08:26.040 --> 1:08:30.679 No, luckily not. But it is such a fantastic sequence. 1:08:30.720 --> 1:08:34.439 There's a lot of rampaging through the onsen here. Love it, 1:08:34.640 --> 1:08:35.280 love it? Yeah? 1:08:35.360 --> 1:08:35.559 Yeah. 1:08:35.680 --> 1:08:39.320 So it's running all over the place, chasing Sin, smashing 1:08:39.320 --> 1:08:41.880 everything everywhere it goes, and it keeps chasing her, but 1:08:41.960 --> 1:08:45.519 she tries to lead it outside, where strangely, I mean, 1:08:45.560 --> 1:08:48.160 it's losing mass as it goes because it keeps vomiting, 1:08:48.200 --> 1:08:50.040 and it does vomit up some of the people to 1:08:50.120 --> 1:08:52.000 it ate, or the frogmen and stuff. 1:08:52.080 --> 1:08:53.960 Yeah, they're all okay, everybody's fine. 1:08:54.240 --> 1:08:57.759 But as it gets outside, she leads it outside where 1:08:57.840 --> 1:09:00.200 for some reason it seems to calm down and kind 1:09:00.200 --> 1:09:03.800 of lose its violent temper. And we never get a 1:09:03.840 --> 1:09:07.920 full explanation of this, but Sen into it, something about it. 1:09:08.400 --> 1:09:12.160 She's like, it's not bad. The bathhouse makes it crazy, 1:09:12.960 --> 1:09:15.960 and so it raises the interesting idea that this is 1:09:16.000 --> 1:09:20.320 not a monster in not a monster in principle. It's 1:09:20.320 --> 1:09:23.760 not a monster in its own world. It only becomes 1:09:23.800 --> 1:09:26.839 a monster when it enters a place it does not belong. 1:09:27.439 --> 1:09:30.200 That's right, Like it's a There are no bad spirits. 1:09:30.240 --> 1:09:32.759 There are just spirits that are misaligned. There are spirits 1:09:32.760 --> 1:09:36.400 out of place or that you know, something has happened 1:09:36.479 --> 1:09:39.439 to set them on the wrong course, such as we 1:09:39.479 --> 1:09:44.080 saw with the River Spirit earlier. So yeah, it's another 1:09:44.160 --> 1:09:47.479 part of the great heart of this picture. No evil spirits, 1:09:47.640 --> 1:09:49.520 just misaligned spirits. 1:09:50.000 --> 1:09:53.080 So we start leading up to the climax where Sen 1:09:53.200 --> 1:09:57.080 realizes that she needs to she needs to take a 1:09:57.200 --> 1:10:01.000 train to a place called swamp Boy, and there's a 1:10:01.040 --> 1:10:03.840 reason for this. She thinks that she can help things 1:10:03.880 --> 1:10:07.080 if she takes the golden seal that Hakus stole back 1:10:07.120 --> 1:10:10.720 to Zeniba and apologize for the theft. If she does that, 1:10:11.080 --> 1:10:14.599 she thinks things can be patched over, and to do this, 1:10:14.720 --> 1:10:16.679 she's going to have to take a train. We see 1:10:16.680 --> 1:10:19.759 a train coming and going throughout the world of Spirited Away. 1:10:20.360 --> 1:10:23.559 It's beautiful and strange in that the place it cuts 1:10:23.600 --> 1:10:26.240 through is flooded with water, so it's just a train 1:10:26.360 --> 1:10:29.800 on top of the water. And she's told, I think, 1:10:29.840 --> 1:10:31.679 by Kamaji that she'll have to go to a place 1:10:31.680 --> 1:10:36.840 called swamp Bottom, where's Aniba lives. So after she leads 1:10:36.880 --> 1:10:39.040 the No Face monster outside, this is the next place 1:10:39.040 --> 1:10:41.760 she's going to go. She's been given a series of 1:10:41.760 --> 1:10:45.640 tickets for the train as a gift by Camaji. And 1:10:45.680 --> 1:10:48.200 it's interesting the way that the train is kind of 1:10:48.200 --> 1:10:51.280 looked on with envy by the other bathhouse workers, Like 1:10:51.840 --> 1:10:54.200 there's this idea among many of them that if they 1:10:54.280 --> 1:10:56.679 had enough money one day, they would buy a ticket 1:10:56.720 --> 1:10:59.479 on the train and go somewhere far away. Again. It 1:10:59.560 --> 1:11:04.280 kind of inversion of the escape to a fantasy world plot. 1:11:04.600 --> 1:11:08.679 The workers here they dream of going elsewhere on the train. 1:11:09.000 --> 1:11:12.360 Sin Actually she doesn't go by herself. She is followed 1:11:12.840 --> 1:11:16.760 by a retinue. She's followed by No Face reverted to 1:11:17.000 --> 1:11:21.759 its original non threatening form, and by the mouse form 1:11:21.960 --> 1:11:25.559 of bo the giant baby, remember, was transformed by Zeneba 1:11:25.600 --> 1:11:28.200 into a little mouse, and the fly form of you 1:11:28.280 --> 1:11:33.400 Baba's evil bird. So I like that all of her 1:11:33.400 --> 1:11:37.400 companions on this journey are beings that in some other 1:11:37.600 --> 1:11:42.479 form were monstrous, dangerous and mint her harm. But now 1:11:42.520 --> 1:11:46.080 they're informs which are none of those things and seem 1:11:46.200 --> 1:11:50.040 mainly motivated by curiosity about sin and about what she's 1:11:50.080 --> 1:11:50.639 going to do. 1:11:51.280 --> 1:11:54.599 Yeah, that's true. That's true. Oh and by the way, 1:11:54.720 --> 1:11:56.400 that the train they're on, there was a build out 1:11:56.439 --> 1:11:59.240 of this at Ghibli Park, And I also have a 1:11:59.240 --> 1:12:02.160 photo here that I'll show you, Joe, where you can 1:12:02.200 --> 1:12:04.720 see me and my son sitting on either side of 1:12:04.760 --> 1:12:07.439 No Face on the train and you can see through 1:12:07.439 --> 1:12:11.280 the windows there you see the flooded landscape that it's traversing. 1:12:11.640 --> 1:12:14.439 It's gorgeous and it is just like in the movie 1:12:14.479 --> 1:12:16.360 where Yeah, she sits on the train and No Face 1:12:16.439 --> 1:12:18.719 just sits down next to her on the red cushion bench. 1:12:19.280 --> 1:12:22.479 M Yeah, very you know, meek and and peaceful. 1:12:23.080 --> 1:12:25.320 Now, one thing about this journey that the characters have 1:12:25.439 --> 1:12:28.479 discussed is that there is no guarantee of return because 1:12:28.520 --> 1:12:32.719 the ticket gifted by Camaji is to take the train 1:12:32.840 --> 1:12:35.320 to this place, but it's a one way trip. How 1:12:35.360 --> 1:12:39.040 will they get back, that's unclear, But they eventually get 1:12:39.080 --> 1:12:42.160 to Swamp Bottom and they get off the train under 1:12:42.200 --> 1:12:46.880 the platform. She's still being followed by her formerly monstrous companions, 1:12:47.439 --> 1:12:50.519 and there's a wonderful encounter on the way to the 1:12:50.520 --> 1:12:53.840 witch Zinniba's house, which is the foot lamp. How would 1:12:53.840 --> 1:12:55.240 you describe this rob. 1:12:55.439 --> 1:12:59.320 I mean, there's there's strong Yokai sensibilities to this thing's 1:12:59.360 --> 1:13:02.000 design of hopping along on one leg. It reminds me 1:13:02.040 --> 1:13:06.160 actually a lot of the lamp from the Pixar logo, 1:13:06.280 --> 1:13:08.639 you know, the way it's kind of like hopping about 1:13:08.680 --> 1:13:09.559 as if on one leg. 1:13:10.240 --> 1:13:13.559 Yeah, that's a good comparison. But eventually this our characters 1:13:13.560 --> 1:13:17.040 here do make it to Zaneva's house, where there is 1:13:17.600 --> 1:13:22.280 there is sort of a reconciliation and a discovery of information. 1:13:22.520 --> 1:13:24.040 So what do we learn in this scene? 1:13:24.840 --> 1:13:26.840 Let's see, this is the scene where we learn a 1:13:26.840 --> 1:13:29.519 little bit more about the slug right, Yeah, in the 1:13:29.520 --> 1:13:32.680 inner workings of the curses that are in play here now. 1:13:32.680 --> 1:13:34.719 Actually, I'm trying to remember what it is in the scene. 1:13:34.760 --> 1:13:37.519 Is it the case that we learned that Haku was 1:13:37.600 --> 1:13:42.559 being controlled by Ubaba through the slug that she made 1:13:42.640 --> 1:13:45.439 him barf up by giving him the dumpling, and he's 1:13:45.439 --> 1:13:49.240 now free of that. Yes, But also Zeniba has as 1:13:49.280 --> 1:13:52.479 a magical item for Sin as well. It's a magical 1:13:52.600 --> 1:13:57.960 hair band, yes, yeah, And so there's that, and then 1:13:58.439 --> 1:14:02.320 there's a reunion with the restored Haku, who in dragon 1:14:02.400 --> 1:14:05.680 form is carrying Sin back to the bathhouse. Later, so 1:14:05.800 --> 1:14:09.120 they've resolved like how she'll get home and hopefully rescue 1:14:09.160 --> 1:14:12.320 her parents. But on the way there is a big revelation. 1:14:12.600 --> 1:14:15.840 Remember there's been this mystery the whole time. How did 1:14:15.920 --> 1:14:20.240 Haku know Chihiro from before? How did he already know 1:14:20.360 --> 1:14:22.920 her name? And how was he familiar with her before 1:14:22.920 --> 1:14:26.600 she arrived. She has a memory, and we've seen flashes 1:14:26.640 --> 1:14:29.360 of this memory sort of dotted throughout the story of 1:14:29.400 --> 1:14:34.160 her falling into the water, being underwater and seeing something, 1:14:34.320 --> 1:14:37.240 seeing a kind of friendly face. We learned that once 1:14:37.400 --> 1:14:40.680 as a child she fell into a river. It was 1:14:40.800 --> 1:14:44.280 the Kohaku River, and I think she said, what was 1:14:44.320 --> 1:14:46.160 she was trying to do? She was trying to reach 1:14:46.200 --> 1:14:47.679 in from the bank for something. 1:14:48.439 --> 1:14:50.519 Yeah, yeah, I believe so, and then we get these 1:14:50.840 --> 1:14:54.479 these sequences underwater. They are an interesting way kind of 1:14:55.640 --> 1:14:58.479 a sign of things to come with Ponyo later on, 1:14:58.520 --> 1:15:00.320 which is going to be very concerned with a lot 1:15:00.320 --> 1:15:03.639 of underwater action and surging waters and so forth. 1:15:04.160 --> 1:15:07.400 So she fell into the water of the Coohaku River, 1:15:07.720 --> 1:15:11.280 and she thought she would drown, but she didn't drown. Instead, 1:15:11.760 --> 1:15:15.040 she was carried gently to the bank. And it turns 1:15:15.080 --> 1:15:19.120 out that's where she knows Haku from. Haku was a spirit, 1:15:19.400 --> 1:15:22.920 was a being in the river that helped her to 1:15:23.160 --> 1:15:27.360 the bank, And Haku was originally like the stink spirit 1:15:27.400 --> 1:15:31.240 from earlier, a river spirit, a dragon formed river spirit, 1:15:31.600 --> 1:15:35.600 and his real name is the Cohaku River. Remembering his 1:15:35.720 --> 1:15:39.880 real name, Haku can now potentially be free of Eubaba's magic. 1:15:41.000 --> 1:15:43.160 Now when they get back, there's there's sort of an 1:15:43.160 --> 1:15:46.360 epilogue where Ubaba says that Sin has to pass one 1:15:46.439 --> 1:15:49.479 final test before she and her parents can go free. 1:15:49.760 --> 1:15:52.400 And I like that at this point, Sin has completely 1:15:52.479 --> 1:15:55.160 won over the people at the bathhouse, like they're all 1:15:55.200 --> 1:15:59.240 like bad form, bad form. Sin's like, okay, I'll do 1:15:59.320 --> 1:16:02.800 I'll do the test. And the test is there's a 1:16:02.840 --> 1:16:05.559 lineup of pigs, and she's supposed to from this lineup 1:16:05.560 --> 1:16:08.240 of pigs pick out, okay, which ones are your parents? 1:16:08.760 --> 1:16:12.439 And Sin accepts the challenge and correctly guesses that none 1:16:12.520 --> 1:16:15.240 of them are her parents. It was a trick, trick question, 1:16:15.400 --> 1:16:19.599 but she outsmarts it, and thus the magic is broken. 1:16:19.960 --> 1:16:23.280 Sin is chi hero once again, and she can return home. 1:16:23.840 --> 1:16:26.880 All of her coworkers celebrate. They are all you know again, 1:16:27.160 --> 1:16:29.320 She's completely won them over, so they're cheering her on 1:16:29.400 --> 1:16:33.680 the whole way. Yeah, just a sweet ending, though we're 1:16:33.720 --> 1:16:36.400 not quite to the complete ending yet, but a sweet 1:16:36.720 --> 1:16:38.360 resolve of what's. 1:16:38.160 --> 1:16:40.639 Going on in the fantasy realm here, that's right. So 1:16:40.760 --> 1:16:44.599 she has her goodbyes with haku uh and she's told 1:16:44.640 --> 1:16:46.799 that her parents will be restored back at the tunnel 1:16:46.800 --> 1:16:49.360 where they first entered the spirit world. She goes back 1:16:49.400 --> 1:16:51.840 to meet them, and indeed they are safe and sound again, 1:16:52.360 --> 1:16:55.320 and she returns to the mundane world with her parents, 1:16:55.520 --> 1:17:00.519 and now I think having a more balanced attitude a life. 1:17:00.600 --> 1:17:04.840 I mean, it's kind of interesting that I don't know 1:17:05.080 --> 1:17:08.280 unless I'm missing something. It's not a movie where the 1:17:08.400 --> 1:17:13.640 character learned one specific moral like I thought X, But 1:17:13.720 --> 1:17:18.479 it's actually the opposite. It's why she's just more mature 1:17:18.600 --> 1:17:20.960 in many different ways, in ways that are hard to 1:17:20.960 --> 1:17:24.040 pin down, rather than being like a single semantic lesson 1:17:24.120 --> 1:17:25.200 of the plot. You know. 1:17:25.760 --> 1:17:30.599 Yeah, it's like in the real world something clicked, you know, 1:17:31.000 --> 1:17:33.439 and there was this change in her, and then we 1:17:33.479 --> 1:17:38.240 see that click expanded out into this fantasy adventure here, like, 1:17:38.560 --> 1:17:41.200 you know, a change that may have you know, many 1:17:41.240 --> 1:17:43.560 different working parts, but it is kind of hard to 1:17:43.600 --> 1:17:46.960 really put your finger on, well that here is is 1:17:47.000 --> 1:17:49.920 brought to us through the lens of fantasy. Yeah, so's 1:17:50.360 --> 1:17:53.320 she's changed, but not in some like simplistic way where 1:17:53.360 --> 1:17:56.840 it's like, oh, I realized that the magic being wasn't magic, 1:17:56.840 --> 1:17:58.599 the magic was in me the whole time, or anything 1:17:58.640 --> 1:18:01.200 like that, you know. Yeah, but she is she is 1:18:01.240 --> 1:18:04.120 different now, she's a little more mature, and she is 1:18:04.439 --> 1:18:07.040 she's ready for this to go through, with this change 1:18:07.080 --> 1:18:08.599 that's occurring in her real life. 1:18:09.000 --> 1:18:12.360 But I also like that the return to the mundane 1:18:12.360 --> 1:18:15.880 world is not and it was all a dream ending. Yeah, 1:18:15.920 --> 1:18:18.519 you know, it's not like a reset on. You can 1:18:18.760 --> 1:18:23.599 view everything that came before as purely metaphorical there if 1:18:23.640 --> 1:18:26.360 you do view it as metaphorical. Part of the metaphor 1:18:26.600 --> 1:18:30.200 is that something of the magic world is real and 1:18:30.240 --> 1:18:34.160 follows you home, because when she she's changed by her 1:18:34.200 --> 1:18:37.080 experiences and she goes back out of the tunnel and 1:18:37.120 --> 1:18:39.360 she and her parents find the car again, and you 1:18:39.439 --> 1:18:41.040 might think, if it was the more kind of it 1:18:41.080 --> 1:18:43.760 was all a dream ending, everything would be just as 1:18:43.800 --> 1:18:46.000 they left it, and they would just drive home. But 1:18:46.040 --> 1:18:47.840 instead they get to the car and it's like covered 1:18:47.840 --> 1:18:50.280 in leaves and brush, and her parents are like, wow, 1:18:50.320 --> 1:18:52.680 it's all dusty inside. So clearly they've been gone a 1:18:52.720 --> 1:18:56.439 long time. And not only that, but chi Hero has 1:18:56.560 --> 1:18:58.920 has an artifact from the magic world with her, the 1:18:58.960 --> 1:19:00.559 hairband that Zenebe gave her. 1:19:01.040 --> 1:19:05.040 As we were watching this, my wife did comment, She's like, oh, yeah, 1:19:05.040 --> 1:19:06.680 there's no way mom and dad aren't fired from their 1:19:06.760 --> 1:19:12.639 jobs at this point. Like it's then what weeks? Yeah again, 1:19:12.680 --> 1:19:17.120 through all these changes to Hero perseveres and the ending 1:19:17.680 --> 1:19:20.680 is super sweet. It's like victory is achieved not through 1:19:20.840 --> 1:19:25.679 violence but through sheer strength of character, you know, And yeah, 1:19:25.680 --> 1:19:27.800 it's it's just a nice ending. It's a film that 1:19:27.840 --> 1:19:31.160 definitely has its has tension. It has a little bit 1:19:31.160 --> 1:19:34.519 of fear. You know, it's it's it is, in its 1:19:34.560 --> 1:19:37.320 own way, a roller coaster ride, but such a sweet 1:19:37.360 --> 1:19:39.240 landing here at the close of the picture. 1:19:39.920 --> 1:19:43.000 I love the balance found in the narrative of movies 1:19:43.040 --> 1:19:46.599 like this and like NAUSICAA where like it's a movie 1:19:46.600 --> 1:19:50.759 that feels very moral but not moralizing, you know. Instead 1:19:50.840 --> 1:19:53.840 there like there is a good sense of right and 1:19:53.880 --> 1:19:56.000 wrong at the heart of it. But it's not preachy 1:19:56.120 --> 1:19:58.880 or anything. It's it's just it's just kind of like 1:19:59.000 --> 1:20:02.400 telling a story. In a similar sense there is. I 1:20:02.439 --> 1:20:04.439 love the way, like you say that the characters are 1:20:04.479 --> 1:20:08.880 able to to find victory without violence, mostly that they're 1:20:08.920 --> 1:20:13.439 not fighters. They don't they don't use violence even really 1:20:13.479 --> 1:20:18.760 in defense much. They Instead they try to find compromises 1:20:18.800 --> 1:20:22.720 and solutions mentally and and and you know, find their 1:20:22.720 --> 1:20:25.240 way around problems. And yet at the same time it 1:20:25.280 --> 1:20:29.879 doesn't feel unrealistic about like ignoring the reality of threats. 1:20:30.360 --> 1:20:34.559 It's just such a great storytelling sensibility and the perfect 1:20:34.680 --> 1:20:35.400 art to match it. 1:20:36.120 --> 1:20:38.680 Yeah, I mean, in a way it's Miyazaki film like 1:20:38.720 --> 1:20:40.640 this is it's like a it's like looking at a 1:20:40.720 --> 1:20:43.519 zen garden or something. You know, It's like just like, 1:20:43.600 --> 1:20:46.439 what is it telling you? What is the vibe that 1:20:46.520 --> 1:20:48.920 it is delivering? What is the message? Well, like the 1:20:48.960 --> 1:20:51.000 message is in the structure, you know, you kind of 1:20:51.360 --> 1:20:54.800 look at it, contemplate it and absorb it. You know. 1:20:55.920 --> 1:21:00.720 It's just yeah, so well executed, entertaining, but indeed does 1:21:00.760 --> 1:21:02.920 give you a lot to think about afterwards, if you 1:21:02.960 --> 1:21:04.519 want to go there, if you want to just enjoy 1:21:04.560 --> 1:21:06.880 it as a ride, it delivers that as well. And 1:21:06.920 --> 1:21:08.880 I think that's one of the reasons that a film 1:21:08.960 --> 1:21:15.280 like this it achieves a real lasting place in your heart, because, 1:21:16.240 --> 1:21:19.680 like a lot of great films, every time you see it, 1:21:19.680 --> 1:21:21.880 it says something to you a little differently, like it 1:21:22.240 --> 1:21:26.600 speaks to you at different ages and during different challenges 1:21:27.040 --> 1:21:30.439 and in different celebrations as well. Yeah, just a great 1:21:30.520 --> 1:21:31.439 picture overall. 1:21:32.040 --> 1:21:32.599 Well said. 1:21:33.000 --> 1:21:35.240 So that's what we have to say about Spirited Away. 1:21:35.280 --> 1:21:37.439 But we'd love to hear what you have to say 1:21:37.439 --> 1:21:41.120 about Spirited Away or other Miyazaki films. You can write 1:21:41.160 --> 1:21:43.479 into us. We'd love to hear from you about this 1:21:44.479 --> 1:21:46.479 as well as any other film we've talked about on 1:21:46.479 --> 1:21:48.919 the show, or if you have recommendations for the future, 1:21:49.720 --> 1:21:51.240 if you want to see a complete list of all 1:21:51.240 --> 1:21:53.640 the films we've covered over the years. We have a 1:21:53.640 --> 1:21:56.120 great list going over at letterbox dot com. This's L 1:21:56.200 --> 1:21:58.479 E T T E R B O x D dot com. 1:21:58.520 --> 1:22:00.960 I feel like most film fans know this website at 1:22:00.960 --> 1:22:04.560 this point. I think I saw John Carpenter on Instagram 1:22:05.240 --> 1:22:07.559 recently say what is a letterbox? So, like, you know, 1:22:07.560 --> 1:22:10.800 it's like everybody is on some level aware of it 1:22:10.840 --> 1:22:13.680 now and getting in on how fun it can be 1:22:13.800 --> 1:22:17.919 a great way to organize your your two C lists 1:22:17.960 --> 1:22:20.960 as well as lists of favorite films. Yeah, anyway, we're 1:22:21.000 --> 1:22:23.679 on there as weird House again. If you're on Instagram, 1:22:23.760 --> 1:22:26.920 look us up at st b ym podcast. We'll keep 1:22:26.960 --> 1:22:29.000 you abreast of what's going on with Weird House Cinema 1:22:29.040 --> 1:22:29.800 there as well. 1:22:30.200 --> 1:22:32.680 Also a great place to find funny reviews. 1:22:33.280 --> 1:22:37.040 Funny, some funny, some not funny, but there are some. 1:22:37.200 --> 1:22:39.599 There are some some real hands on there and also 1:22:39.640 --> 1:22:42.880 some real insightful reviews. You'll also find i think some 1:22:43.040 --> 1:22:47.000 unofficial uploads of like famous film reviews. I'm not going 1:22:47.040 --> 1:22:49.160 to name any names but because I don't want them 1:22:49.200 --> 1:22:51.400 taken down because I really like reading them there. But 1:22:52.560 --> 1:22:54.760 you'll find some some of those reviews there as well. 1:22:55.240 --> 1:22:59.080 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. 1:22:59.400 --> 1:23:01.000 If you would like to get in touch with us 1:23:01.000 --> 1:23:03.400 with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 1:23:03.439 --> 1:23:05.519 a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 1:23:05.640 --> 1:23:08.160 you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow 1:23:08.200 --> 1:23:15.560 your Mind dot com. 1:23:15.680 --> 1:23:18.640 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 1:23:18.720 --> 1:23:21.519 more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 1:23:21.640 --> 1:23:24.400 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.