Blown Away by Spirited Away
While I love cartoons produced just for television, I have to admit that some cartoons created for the cinema are even better. I reckon that the best anime films at the moment are produced by Studio Ghibli, a Japanese firm led by Hayao Miyazagi, who started his career as a comic book (or graphic novel) writer and illustrator, and who is now one of Japan’s most revered filmmakers.
One of his recent anime films is Howl’s Moving Castle, which was nominated for an Oscar but which lost out to Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. We don’t have to feel too sad for Miyazagi, however, since he won the Oscar in the previous year for his stunning anime Spirited Away. In this charming film a young girl finds herself abandoned in an alternative, magical world when her parents accidentally trigger a spell turning themselves into pigs. This leaves her having to work for her living in a bathhouse for gods and spirits of Japanese folklore.
As usual in Miyazagi’s films, there is a young love interest who helps her rescue herself from her perilous situation. There are also several comic characters who ensure that, although the film makes several important points about family and about belonging, it is a good laugh all the way through.
There is clearly a standard amongst cartoon-makers around the world, that, however much violent damage their characters receive, they can bounce back from it uninjured. From Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry to Miyazagi’s Japanese mythological creatures, the characters fall from great heights, throw each other around, and suffer huge weights landing on them. I am always surprised that just about every one of them doesn’t come down with a neck injury, but no, they bounce up undamaged ready to start again.
Okay, why am I even bothering to wonder? After all, they are cartoon characters!
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