I can only send you here, the rest of the way you have to go by yourself, don't look back.
- "Spirited Away"
Spirited Away poster
The whole film of "Spirited Away" is about a girl named Chihiro Ogino, who inadvertently enters the world of the hidden gods, and the greedy parents are punished to become pigs, and the night of the god world is slowly awakening, and the helpless Chihiro is about to turn into a bubble, at this moment, the white dragon rescues her and tells her: In this world, you can only live by working.
In order to save her parents, Chihiro works for Grandma Tang with the help of Hakuryu, but she is stripped of her name and becomes Xiaoqian, and has since lost her memory.
Through Chihiro's unremitting efforts, Chihiro successfully found her parents and returned to the human world.
First, each character in Spirited Away has a strong symbolic meaning
The characters in "Spirited Away", whether it is our protagonists Chihiro and Bailong, or Tang Baoba, Faceless Man, Fang Baobao, Xiaoling, and Qian Baozi have extremely strong realistic symbolism. Miyazaki has hidden reality into the anime, so Spirited Away is more than just a fantasy story about Chihiro's adventures.
It is also Miyazaki's grandfather to guide the young people of Japan.
1. Chihiro
The film begins with Chihiro sitting in the car extremely depressed and lazy, she complains about why she left the original school and has a negative attitude in the face of the new environment outside the car, at this time the ten-year-old Chihiro is satisfied with the status quo, negative, and timid.
After mistakenly entering the soup house, some basic work could not be done, careless, panicked.
In the face of Grandpa Boiler's kind protection and help to Chihiro, he didn't even have the consciousness to say a word of thanks, and even asked others to remind him.
Miyazaki himself said of chihiro's role: "When it comes to the decline of the Japanese, what worries me most is not the economic growth, nor how multimedia will develop, but whether the children in our country are healthy. ”
2. White Dragon
If the faceless man is like a white paper that is easily infected, then it is a white dragon that comes out of the mud without staining.
Hakuryu himself is a river god, and long ago, his name was called "Amber Lord", and Chihiro was saved by Hakuryu in order to pick up the shoes that fell into the "Amber River". After the Amber River was destroyed by humans, the homeless White Dragon came to the world of the gods to worship Tang Po as a teacher, and also lost his name, and was renamed "Xiao Bai" by Tang Po Po.
After Chihiro mistakenly enters the magical world, her body slowly becomes transparent, and she finds that she is about to disappear, and Xiaobai arrives in time to say to Chihiro, "Don't be afraid, I'm here to help you." He then fed the panicked Chihiro pills and led them to Grandpa Boiler.
When Chihiro got a job, Xiao Bai took Chihiro to the back mountain, and a slight sweet and bitter fragrance filled the air, and the mountains were full of unknown wildflowers. When they arrived at the pigsty, Qian found his parents who had become pigs, and could no longer bear the grievances, curled up on the side of the road, and cried loudly, letting a ten-year-old girl experience so many things that no one could bear.
Xiao Bai said to Chihiro while comforting, "I can't even remember my name, but it's incredible, I remember Chihiro." As he spoke, he handed Chihiro a card and talked about his experience in the yuya, where Grandma Tang used her name to control others. I have forgotten what my original name was, and you must not forget your name and give Chihiro your own rice balls to eat.
Even though the White Dragon experienced the destruction of the river and was homeless, he still saved Chihiro who fell into the water at that time, and then guided Chihiro. I think the nature of the white dragon is like this, even if there is another protagonist "Chihiro", I believe that the white dragon will not be treated differently, this is the quality of the white dragon.
3. Faceless man
The faceless man symbolizes emptiness and loneliness, which is the most primitive, exists, and there is no distinction between good and bad. When it rained, Chihiro left a door for the faceless man, and the faceless man entered the soup house to repay Chihiro, and after the faceless man entered the soup house, people were not interested in the faceless man without money.
So the faceless man conjured up an infinite amount of gold, and found that since he had gold, everyone in the soup house had changed their normal attitude and was extremely enthusiastic about him, and they bowed their knees. The faceless man's enlarged body was filled with his inflated desires and tainted filth.
It symbolizes the process by which the first and kindest side of human nature is polluted by the dark side of society.
The experience of the faceless man symbolizes the saying that one day, the kind and naïve and even cynical us, in the ruthlessness of society, will eventually become what we hate.
In the end, Chihiro takes him away from the yuya, and as Chihiro says, this person will go bad in the yuya.
Second, every character is growing
This animated film, Hayao Miyazaki, expresses a yearning for goodness and kindness, and like other animated works at which Ghibli works, fairy tales generally end with great consummation.
In this movie, every character is growing and trying to overcome their flaws.
Chihiro used to be a timid, negative, wayward, content with the status quo, growing up in a greenhouse.
But both her parents turned into pigs, and she had to face danger alone, to face despair, and during her time in the soup house, she learned to be strong, brave, and persistent. This process does not happen overnight, and we can fully see this gradual process in the movie.
Half of the pills given by the river god to the white dragon and half to the faceless man, saving the white dragon and helping him get rid of the greed and filth in his body, helping the baby to learn to be independent, and finally saving the parents, although at the end of the animation echoes the beginning, it is still such a scene, but we can see a chihiro who has grown up independent and strong.
After entering the yuya, the faceless man thought that money and food represented what everyone in the world desired, and he handed the infinite gold and food to Chihiro, and handed it to the only person in the world who cared, but was rejected by Chihiro.
So the kind and straightforward faceless man was ostracized by Yuya for a long time without friends, resulting in psychological distortion and unwillingness after being injured, so Chihiro's refusal made him recall his previous lonely mood and make an extreme series of behaviors.
Finally, with Chihiro's help, he spits out all the food, leaves the soup house, and stays with Grandma Qian under the initiation of Grandma Qian, we can see that the faceless man goes from primitive simplicity to being polluted by the dark side of society, and finally gets rid of greed and filth and returns to primitive and simple, which is a kind of growth.
At the end of the story, Qian finds her parents and leaves the hidden world.