Film: 千と千尋の神隠し (English Title: Spirited Away)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Year: 2001

Synopsis: Coming-of-age story about a young girl, Chihiro, who is moving to a new neighbourhood with her family. On the way there, her parents decide to take a little detour to what they think is an abandoned amusement park, but in actuality, turns out to be the spirit world. After Chihiro’s parents disrespectfully eats the spirits’ food, they are turned into pigs and Chihiro is left alone to find a way to free herself and her parents, and return to the human world.

Characters (in the chosen scene): Chihiro/Sen starts off as a sullen and grumpy young girl who is upset that she has to leave her friends and move into a new neighbourhood. After being left alone, she has to learn to take care of herself, make challenging decisions, and undergo events that she has never experience before. The other character in this scene is Yubaba, an old witch who runs the bathhouse in this spirit world. She is the one that has control over majority of the characters in the film/spirit world, the one who turned Chihiro’s parents into pigs, and also the person who can send Chihiro back to the human world.

Rationale: I chose this film because it is one of my favourite films of all time. Personally, I love this film because it was a way for me to visualize and learn about certain aspects of Japanese culture that I did not have access to living outside of Japan. Miyazaki does a beautiful job with the amount of detail he puts in his animation that each time I watch this film, I am still able to notice something new. Also, there was just something about Chihiro that resonated with me, maybe because we have the same Japanese name 😛