Why Spirited Away Didn’t Spirit Me Away

Well, fabulous ladies and gents, Talkative Thursday was yesterday and there was no post...oops.  Yeah, I got caught up with work and completely forgot to post this.  But it's only Friday, and I'm still  kicking off Part 1 of my Autism Awareness event.  As I mentioned Monday, today is going to be a discussion post with ties to autism and Autism Awareness.  And I know what you’re thinking just by reading the title, what does Spirited Away have to do with autism?  Well, for those inquiring minds, let’s take a look-see.

Whether you’re otaku or just a casual anime watcher, Spirited Away is one of the most talked about and groundbreaking anime films of all time.  It’s regarded as an animation masterpiece and to this day is the first and only anime film to win an Academy Award.  So obviously, given the hype that people have for this film, I knew that I had to watch it sometime before I died, putting it on my line up for Miyazaki May last year.  And after finally watching the movie… I was kind of disappointed.  In fact, when the movie was over, I wondered how it won that Oscar in the first place. 

Now, before you light your torches and grab your pitchforks, I’m not saying I hated the movie.  I liked it just fine.  The animation was spectacular and the characters were likeable and engaging.  But where was the story?  Yeah, was I the only one that noticed that?  When I heard all the praises that people would give this film, I thought that there would not only be great animation, but a great story, too.  Well, at least it had the great animation.  And again, it was kind of disappointing for me to think that this film only gets the praises that it does just for its animation. I wasn’t incredibly negative in my review on it last year, but even so, I wouldn’t rank it as one of my best reviews.  In fact, if you noticed, I only recently added it to my list of Starred Reviews.  And that was purely out of obligation; I’d be an idiot not to include it.  Granted, this doesn’t mean it’ll be on a list of my favorite anime or Ghibli movies.  And more often than not, I tend to get a little defensive when people compare it to other Ghibli movies.  One of the best example came from one of my favorite YouTubers.

I found myself binge watching the Nostalgia Critic’s Disneycember reviews on the Studio Ghibli movies one day at work.  I was pretty shocked to find that Howl’s Moving Castle was his least favorite of the Ghibli movies and probably the one film he wasn’t looking forward to watching.  You could probably imagine the shock I felt hearing this given that Howl’s Moving Castle is not only one of my favorite Ghibli movies, but also one of my favorite anime films overall.  Plus having one of my favorite YouTubers kind of diss it was a little saddening, too- but at least it wasn’t as awkward as when he continually went down the list of favorite anime films only to find that he didn’t seem as interested in Akira as I was when I met him earlier this year at Kamicon.  Granted, his dislike of Howl’s Moving Castle was justified; among other things, both the main characters have very little motivation or focus.  In fact, the biggest problem the Nostalgia Critic had was that the film itself wasn’t focused.  Hearing this, my immediate quip was “at least it had a clear story!”  It seemed odd that his reaction to one of my favorite Ghibli films was exactly how I felt about Spirited Away.  Spirited Away was the Ghibli film that I thought had no focus.  The story is non-existent, and even though Chihiro has a clear motivation- saving her parents and getting out of the spirit world-, even that seems to get lost midway through the movie.  Remember the whole part with Yubaba’s twin sister, Zeniba?  Yeah, after that got forced in the movie, the motivation all of a sudden became saving Haku.

Ok, so for all this preaching that I’m doing, I know what you’re thinking: what does this have to do with autism?  Well, I thought about what bothered me about this film a lot after my review on it.  And there are two answers that I’ve recently come up with to explain my frustration towards the film.  Probably the first and foremost, well, is because I have Asperger’s Syndrome.  Now I know it sounds stupid to blame something like me not liking a film because of a developmental disorder.  But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

People with autism and ASD- including Asperger’s- crave structure in their everyday life.  We need rules and boundaries to help run our daily lives.  This might sound offensive, but to anyone who knows someone on the spectrum will probably agree with me on this.  Even I have to have some kind of routine or set of standards, even with this blog!  When I do my reviews, I have certain things that I look for to help me determine how good the show is.  The first things I look at are animation and plot.  If either one of these is missing, it’s not going to get look at very well.  And unfortunately, because Spirited Away had no clear plot, it got looked at negatively even though there were a lot of great things to it.  Now granted, I still respect the film for all that it has and all that it has accomplished, but because it’s missing that structured plot, it will never get looked at favorably by me.  Another concern that I have personally with it was the visuals.  Don’t get me wrong, they were great.  This movie has some of the best animation period!  But it was just very where.  From my personal experience in dealing with Asperger’s, I can only take so much in one sitting.  Spirited Away had too much eye candy to handle and would constantly throw that at me without letting up.  It made watching the film confusing more than fascinating sometimes.  Again, going back to Howl’s Moving Castle, while the movie seemed to go all over the place animation wise in some places, at least there was a concrete story to focus on if things were too overwhelming.

So obviously, you’d be hard pressed to get me to change my mind on my feelings about Spirited Away.  But while it may not be my favorite movie, like I mentioned earlier, I still respect the film for what it does give its audience.  And believe it or not, I actually found a unique way of looking at the film.  While I was binge watching the NC’s first set of very first Disneycember reviews, I had an epiphany.  In his review on the original Alice in Wonderland, he mentions how the movie, or story in general, “is not about the story, but the journey.  It’s what you see.”  That’s when it hit me; Spirited Away is almost a Japanese retelling of Alice in Wonderland!  When I used that logic, it made sense.    Both focus on what you see rather than what you’re told.  They focus on a series of experiences and events that don’t need a coherent narrative to guide them.  This approach has worked for both as they’re still talked about today; this is especially given that Alice in Wonderland is an almost two-hundred year old book!  Plus, you could make easy parallels between the two, like Yubaba being a parallel to the Queen of Hearts and Haku as the White Rabbit.  Granted, I’m not an avid fan of Alice and Wonderland- I enjoyed it, though-, but using the idea of looking at Spirited Away  as a variation of Alice in Wonderland definitely made me respect the film a lot more.  But again, I think you’d be hard pressed to make me a fan of it.

Yeah, I wasn’t completely blown away with Spirited Away.  But for as much as I can go against the grain and not praise it like everyone else does, there are some great things about this film that I can respect it for.  But in my opinion, as long as I have my own set of standards for looking at a show or movie, Spirited Away will never spirit me away. 

So what did you think?  Did you love Spirited Away?  Or are you like me and didn’t?  Is there another way to watch and enjoy this movie?  Oh, and by the way, remember the Nostalgia Critic cause his name will come up again later.  That’s all that I have for today!  Stay tuned this Sunday when I do my first review of April…even though I’m (not) that excited about the film I’ll be reviewing.

-Hanime on Anime