Studio Ghibli

How does Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away represent distinctively Japanese Cultural Concerns and traditions and what does the film teach us about the challenges of human experience? In Spirited Away, the director Hayao Miyazaki provides a perspective of the conflict between traditional Japanese society and its modern counterpart. Furthermore, the film is also a commentary of the main characters efforts and challenges in growing up. It also comments on the cultural concerns that occur not only in…

Spirited Away, the anime film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, depicts a fantasy story of a young girl Chihiro accidentally enters a town ruled by witches and gods. Chihiro need to find a job in order to survive and save her parents who are turned into pigs. During her stay, Chihiro works hard and finally finds a way to save her parents and go back to the real world. In this essay, I want to discuss how does Spirited Away reflected issues of Japanese society in 1990s. Japan experienced strong…

Hayao Miyazaki, an influential Japanese film director who has produced animated films that still remain popular both in Japan and worldwide. Throughout this essay, one of his most famous animated films “My Neighbor Totoro” will be discussed, exploring the religious elements used in the film, based on a comparison of Shinto and Buddhism. This should help us understand how Miyazaki delivers the message that nature is sacred. To understand the religious elements of the film, we should discuss the…

Sasuke Uchiha is a character from the anime series Naruto. It is mainly set in the Hidden Leaf Village in the Land of Fire. It is about a boy named Naruto (Yes, the animes title is his name.) and his journey through the ninja world. It seems like a simple concept but it becomes much more complicated as the series progresses. Naruto becomes the best friend of the young ninja who I am analyzing, Sasuke Uchiha. Sasuke is a troubled young man due to his past. He is the last living member of his…

Exploring the Function of Music in Flying Sequences on Hayao Miyazaki’s Animation Film Hayao Miyazaki is a 73 year-old animation film director from Japan, who has directed 11 animation films and won lots of international awards. He deeply loves flying from his early age, so the flying sequences are quite common in his films. ("Hayao Miyazaki," 2004) There are 8 films containing “flying” in his total 11 films. These plots always come with background music, and these music becomes widespread.…

Have you ever imagined or thought about what if there existed another world; a world where magic, unknown creatures, dragons, and monsters existed? Howl’s Moving Castle is the perfect film to watch for family gatherings, especially for children or any adult who is feeling nostalgic about their childhood. What makes this film good has several factors: the plot, dialogue, music, scenery, animation, setting, story, and voice acting. Howl’s Moving Castle ,(ハウルの動く城, Hepburn: Hauru no Ugoku Shiro),…

Comparing the articles related to Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away, they not only share some similarities but also differentiate between each other. Three main similarities can be found in the articles. First of all, all the articles pay attention to interpreting characters and their references. The most popular characters are the witch Yubaba and No-face. Some interpretations are similar as well. Reider (2005) and Napier (2006) both link No-face with Noh, Japanese traditional art. The mask…

Over the past few years I have grown to better appreciate the world of film. I love watching movies from countries all over the globe. One of my favorite genera’s of film is animation, or anime. Debatably the best animation film director of all time is Hayao Miyazaki. Central Argument/ Thesis In the article Animating child activism: Environmentalism and Class Politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s Fern Gully (1992), Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons compare…

Spirited Away takes place in Japan. In the movie there is a human world and a spirit world. In order to get to the spirit world, one must arrive at an abandoned theme park and walk through it. When it gets dark, the spirits come out, and one is stuck in the spirit world until they find a way to get out. In the spirit world there is a bathhouse; this is where spirits are cleaned. The main character in Spirited Away is Chihiro, or Sen. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is shy and easily…

create Spirited Away after noticing that young girls don’t have much to look out to in the media other that romance, he wanted to create a film “in which they could be heroines” explains Miyazaki. “The film was translated by Walt Disney Studios and Pixar Animation Studios in 2003. It has also been translated in to eight other languages” (Dugdale). Within the context of this seminar paper, elements such as the narrative…