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