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Spirited Away stands apart from other animated movies because it is hand-drawn—not computer-generated—a method of animation that is nearly extinct in the United States. In early filmmaking, all animation was hand-drawn and was almost as simple as the flip books from which animation evolved. Because moving pictures were in their infancy, animated films of this time often looked jerky. The characters bobbed along awkwardly, and backgrounds were jumpy or nonexistent. As film and filming techniques became more sophisticated, so did animation. However, the basic technique of drawing animation has remained the same. Artists draw and paint single pictures, called frames, which are then filmed in order. The work is tedious, time consuming, and tends to be expensive because of its high labor costs. Just as with other labor-intensive industries, technology seemed an answer to the rising costs of production.
In the early
While CGI can be impressive because the image it produces is three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional, its look is very different from hand-drawn animation. In fact, the two are actually different mediums. The difference between them is comparable to the difference between hand-drawn illustrations and Clip Art, or between oil paintings and photographs. Japanese animation studios have begun using some CGI technology, but hand-drawn animation remains the primary medium of anime.
<r>The artists behind Spirited Away paid close attention to the consistency of setting and character and the relationship between them. Yubaba has a sense of richness about her even when she’s just sitting in a towel with a simple white turban wrapped around her head. Chihiro, even when she is Sen, always appears plain and straightforward, from her ponytail to her humble clothing. She works in the elaborately appointed bathhouse, but the background always suggests simplicity and quiet. In spite of the lushness of the bathhouse, Sen must clean the big tub that sits alone in a nearly bare room. In that room she transforms a huge, ungainly, polluted spirit into the essence of simplicity: First he appears as a skeletal head, then as a sleek serpent. Even her meals are simple affairs. She nibbles a dumpling on her balcony far from the multi-course hubbub of the main house. The scenery, which tends to be of secondary importance in animated films, is as impressive as any exquisitely filmed landscape in a live-action movie.
The minor characters are rendered just as flawlessly as the setting, with expressions and movements that range from the subtle to the garish. The different techniques the characters use in trying to reach No-Face in the bathhouse make for a powerful contrast. After No-Face becomes the rich, gold-making spirit, the assistant manager uses exaggerated songs and dances, including a fan dance, to ingratiate himself to No-Face. Later, after No-Face has practically wrecked the bathhouse, Sen confronts him with a still, silent dignity that is profoundly effective.
<r>After releasing Spirited Away in
When the hubbub over his feared retirement died down, Miyazaki explained that he was not planning to quit but merely to delegate more duties to his younger staff members. Delegation had been difficult in Spirited Away because of the sheltered upbringings of many of his young staffers. Miyazaki could explain what he wanted, but they couldn’t adequately picture what he requested because of their limited life experiences. For example, Miyazaki wanted the white dragon to have a snout like a dog’s, and to react as a dog would when something was forced into its mouth. However, none of his young artists had ever owned a dog, and they had no idea what he meant. Miyazaki took them on a field trip to a veterinarian’s office and had them videotape a dog being handled by a veterinarian’s assistant so they could watch it back at the office until they captured Miyazaki’s vision.
Miyazaki’s difficulty with his staff is ironic because Miyazaki critiques exactly this type of sheltered upbringing in Spirited Away. Chihiro and Boh are both brought up in a bubble, separated from the real world around them. Although Miyazaki may want to step back and be less involved in his films, the cultural gap between his generation and the younger generation of animators will clearly make doing so almost impossible. Miyazaki is part of a generation of Japanese animators who made anime an important mirror of Japanese culture, both past and present.
<r>The Westernized look of anime is rooted
in the post-World War II occupation of Japan by the American armed
forces. Inspired by the American adventure-based comic books that
appeared during the occupation, an artist named Osamu Tezuka created
the first commercially successful manga (the Japanese
name for comic books) in
Spirited Away is the second of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime to win the equivalent of the Academy Award for Best Picture in Japan. While it would be almost unheard of for a comic-book-based movie to achieve this honor in America, the historical significance of manga in Japan makes it possible there. Manga is a medium that crosses both gender and generational boundaries. Manga exist to fit every interest, from politics to pornography to violence, and the Japanese read manga much the same way that American adults read novels. However, manga’s readers do not draw the same distinction between animation and live action that Americans do. In fact, Spirited Away is one of Miyazaki’s few feature-length films intended for children. Most of his other movies, such as Princess Mononoke, which also won Best Picture in Japan, contain violence and adult concepts that could frighten a child.
Animation may be starting to cross generational boundaries in America the same way it does in Japan. The audience for anime in America is growing. As children who cut their anime teeth on Pokémon get older, they can begin to appreciate higher quality anime such as Spirited Away. Some filmmakers already credit anime for influencing their cinematic style, such as the Wachowski brothers with The Matrix. The influence of anime can only increase as today’s young anime fans become tomorrow’s filmmakers.
<r>Spirited Away has been aptly compared to both Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. Like both Alice and Dorothy, Chihiro gets lost in a fantastical world where she meets odd characters, who alternately help and hinder her adventure. Food constantly changes Alice’s body, just as it changes bodies in Spirited Away: It turns Chihiro’s parents into pigs and it saves Chihiro’s life. Words and word games confuse and enlighten Alice, and words play a big role in Chihiro’s adventure as well. Thematically, Spirited Away most resembles The Wizard of Oz. While Alice goes looking for adventure to escape the boredom of a lazy day with her sister, Chihiro and Dorothy are thrust unwillingly into their strange new worlds and want only to go home. Unlike Alice, who encounters other characters only briefly, Chihiro forms deep friendships in her new world, just as Dorothy does in Oz with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion. At the end of Spirited Away, Chihiro finds that what she needs to get home has been inside her all along. She summons her inner strength just as Dorothy does when she clicks the heels of her ruby slippers.
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