My little sister who has a penchant for watching animes (aside from the common ones that fill our televisions and local cable cartoon networks these days) told me that she had a new movie that she liked.  My curiousity was piqued since her tastes are quite good for her age. I decided to go take a look at this movie she has been raving about to which she said, “I really liked it, I can’t stop thinking about it even when I’m in school.” Turning on the DVD player, she motioned me to play, “Spirited Away“.

Spirited Away is a story of a girl named Chihiro who is quite a bit whiny child. She, along with her Mom and Dad, would be moving to a new town and while taking a shortcut, they end up towards a mysterious tunnel which it turns out was an abandoned theme park with restaurants that are oddly filled with many foods. Her parents start eating up and they get turned into pigs. Then Chihiro who was quite overwhelmed with everything started telling herself that it was all a dream and that she wanted to dissapear. Oddly enough, she started to fade, luckily she meets this boy Haku (called Master Haku by most of the mysterious and  bit weird inhabitants of the realm they were in which is a spirit world) who saves her from vanishing and smuggles her into the bath house ran by Yababa, an “evil” sorceress. Haku is her apprentice and he does many jobs for her.

Chihiro’s name is changed into Sen, because that was the way Yababa binds her captives to her. Once her captives forget their name they can never leave the spirit world so Haku makes a note to remind Sen of her real name. While working in the bath house, Sen (Chihiro) meets many characters which helped turn her into an individual that cares for those around her despite the unfortunate circumstances that she seems to be in all of the time. Those characters were Haku, the River God, No Face, Zeniba, Boh and even Yababa herself. Sen started to mature and change for she has learned how to have compassion for others. The events that took place in the spirit world helped transform her from a self-centered individual into a hard-working and compassionate person. Though in the end she was seperated from Haku, who finally lost Yababa’s bind to him when Chihiro remembered his real name which was Kohaku because of the river’s name where she fell into when she was a little girl, Haku promised Chihiro that they will meet again someday.

I really loved the way the story went since I love stories that show how much compassion there is inside people, and sometimes it takes a bit of adversity for it to finally shine through. The movie also carry a lot of themes such as maturity, greed and environmental issues which were subtly presented. Its one of the movies I’ll be sure to watch over and over again not just because of the beautiful graphics but because of its rich story and characters.

If you are interested to learn more about it, you can check out the following websites that talk about Spirited Away:

Spirited Away
Wikipedia: Spirited Away
IMDb: Spirited Away