My friend Andy is a lover of all things Japanese, especially anime. Me? I never quite understood it. It’s not that I actively dislike anime, it’s just that the appeal of it just doesn’t quite register with me. Maybe I’ve seen the wrong films or have been subjected to particularly bad dubbing. At Andy’s request, I’ve decided to give anime another shot in a feature called Anime Friday. Every week, I will be watching one feature-length anime film or a respectable portion of an anime TV series and recording my reactions here on Foreign Entertainment. I won’t be selecting films at random, either. I will strictly follow a list provided to me by a concurring panel of conversant anime fans. Also at their insistence, I will be watching everything with subtitles unless specifically encouraged to experience a well-acted dub.
Without further ado, let’s jump in with Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. This particular film was recommended to me as an introduction to the genre because it’s apparently specific enough to Japanese culture to be genuine, but not enough to confuse a neophyte gaijin like myself. In Andy’s words, “It’s like anime Disney.”
Spirited Away concerns the convoluted quest of a little girl named Chihiro to escape the spa-like castle of a witch named Yubaba. Along the way, Chihiro gets some help from a dragon named Haku and a series of odd creatures, like little black things I’ve been told are dust spirits. By far the most interesting and confounding character in the entire movie (which is saying a lot) is a spirit everyone calls No Face, on account of his being an amorphous black clot that wears a mask.
Right off the bat I can say that I enjoyed the surreal qualities of Spirited Away, like when Chihiro discovers that her parents have been transformed into pigs. I also liked how No Face spent most of the movie lurking around without any clear motives. It’s nice to see an anime that doesn’t have such a transparent good guy/bad guy dynamic.
Still, frustration set in for me when the clunky, nonsensical storytelling elements took center stage. When the movie started spouting bits about true names, river spirits and twin sisters, my mind shut down. I’m willing to go along for the ride of what basically plays like just another magical coming of age story, but when the oh-so-typical nature vs. civilization malarkey starts to poke its way in, it’s really more distracting than morally conscious. The Wizard of Oz this most certainly ain’t.
In the end, I think that’s going to be the running dialogue throughout this Anime Friday endeavor. Why is it that anime never really cliqued with me where so many other modes of storytelling beyond my own culture have so easily appealed to me? Watching Spirited Away, I’m inclined to say that the medium’s tendency to diverge from otherwise engaging, focused storytelling turns me off.
Final Assessment
Comprehension: 8/10- There were a few moments of confusion, but all in all I understood what was going on.
Enjoyment: 7/10- Miyazaki created a vivid world distinct from many lazy conventions of anime, but the third act really dragged and there were a lot of superfluous bits I could have done without.
Improvement of Understanding: 6/10- Spirited Away definitely gave me a better idea of anime as a genre, especially since it involved something more serious than giant robots. Still, I’ve got a long way to go before it’s easy to internalize a few thousand years of foreign folklore.
Next Week: Howl’s Moving Castle