Miyazaki Recaptures Spirit of Animation
By Conor O'Rourke
Staff Writer

I began my discovery of the animated work of Japanese cinema as a conservative, mild-mannered youth of conservative upbringing during a visit to Uncle David’s home in rural Oregon. I enjoyed the occasional visits to my uncle’s house, not just for the abundance of sugary cereals but also for the cable TV and the possibilities of Saturday morning cartoon marathons.

Flipping through everything from the classics like The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show to the doomed seasonal offerings like a New Kids on the Block adventure series, I stumbled across something different.

Something not entirely American. And, whoa Mama! They were getting it on!

This is the novelty of Japanese anime (often nicknamed Japanime). Not entirely the G-rated innocence of Disney and not sufficiently explicit to be for mature adult audiences only (hey, I thought Ariel was hot, but a cartoon can only take the fascination so far), Japanimation lies in the ambiguous realm of PG-13 marginality.

While Disney has clearly delineated between the good and the bad with an obvious bias towards creatures with four limbs, fur and marketability as a loveable stuffed animals, all while upholding the sexual purity of its protagonists, the world of Japanese animation has blurred this line so thoroughly that even Bambi could potentially devour you whole and later go on to debauch Thumper.

It is this tone of darkness and moral ambiguity that has turned mainstream American audiences away from Japanese animation. The softening effects of Disney have made us unwilling to accept cartoons unless our kids can be distracted by them and perhaps even catch the stale virtues that are frequently preached.

However with the latest work of acclaimed Japanese animator and director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke), Spirited Away, America has taken notice. Ironically it is Disney that picked up the film and redistributed a flawlessly dubbed English-language version to major theaters under the supervision of John Lasseter (Toy Story). Of course, its qualifications were enough that even the most patriotic of movie-lovers would give it a second look. In addition to being the highest grossing film in Japanese history (surpassing Titanic) it won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival, becoming the first animated film to claim the award.

The story is envisioned by the ten-year old eyes of Chihiro. The movie begins as she and her family move to a new home, and her hubris filled father then takes a wrong turn that eventually lands them in an abandoned theme park. Suddenly struck by a case of the munchies, her parents follow their noses to a food kiosk and begin to gorge themselves.

Meanwhile Chihiro wanders off and finds a mysterious young boy who tells her to leave immediately. As night falls, she returns to her parents to discover in shock that they have transformed into pigs.

Thus begins her quest to return her parents to their human selves and to climb back out of the rabbit hole that she has unexpectedly fallen into.

Miyazaki’s story is clearly influenced by the fantastic adventures of Alice in Wonderland. Chihiro, like Alice, encounters various enigmatic characters that both guide and deter her in her journey, and Chihiro must in the end rely upon her courage and open-mindedness for salvation.

In arguably the most innovative and supernatural setting of recent memory, the movie transpires in a mythological bathhouse that offers a costly respite to weary earthly gods and spirits.

The complexity and themes of the film lie in the characters she meets here. As is common with Japanese myth, extravagant and often bizarre physical appearances are realized in the secondary characters in order to serve as a blunt manifestation of a deeper message. Miyazaki relentlessly draws upon powerful themes like the corrupting and dehumanizing power of greed, as with Chihiro’s altered parents, and the desperation and anxiety of loneliness, represented through the haunting phantom-like spirit named No-Face Man.

In addition Miyazaki incorporates his strong feelings on environmental destruction and Japanese politics.

In one powerful sequence, a weary river spirit named Okutaresuma is so absorbed with the junk that is thrown into the water that the spirit itself has lost all its brilliance and turned into an odorous, unwanted pile of sludge.

Politically, Miyazuki touches upon everything from the indigent plight of the proletariat to the currently unstable economic situation.

The youthful wonderment that Chihiro experiences on the other side of her metaphorical rabbit hole mirrors the wonderment with which I, as the viewer, witness this film.

Never one to trust computers or to delegate to lesser artists, Miyazuki draws nearly every frame himself and by hand. The result is a continuous flow of painterly convergence somewhere in between the softness of Monet and the dreaminess of Dali.

With such scrutiny to even the tiniest detail, such as surreal clarity of a pebble submerged beneath a crystal covering of water, Miyazaki’s achievement transcends the factory-produced paltriness of Disney and makes audiences rethink what they label a cartoon.