Film Studies Assignment

Zubaida Ifshan
210315
B.A.Prog(Elective English and History)

Anime is most simply defined as a form of motion picture or flowing art that developed in Japan.
Although, this definition is widely contested. The author Sheuo Hui Gan argues that anime
strikes significant artistic chords and includes those films that surpass arbitrary and conventional
aesthetic boundaries. This is further elaborated by author Thomas Lamarre in his book The
Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, who points out the range of techniques, style and
mode of address as well as genres and story lines comprising an anime.

Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell defined animation as “the use of non-photographic methods,
including hand drawn and computer aided drawn images induced to the effect of movement that
is simulated through making slight progressive changes from one frame to another”. What makes
anime stand out from other animation is that it is hand drawn, due to which it bears significant
influence from traditional Japanese art forms and painting styles. Anime is also heavily
influenced and sometimes almost entirely based on the Japanese style comics known as Manga.

History of Anime

The history of anime in Japan can be traced back to the late 19th century. The Japanese artists
were inspired by the French art movement called "Japonisme" to create modern animations
which later developed into what is today known as anime.

The first-ever Japanese animation called Katsudō Shashin was created in 1906. It was made
using fifty different frames, each of which was stenciled onto a strip of celluloid. The first
commercial anime called Dekobō Shingachō: Meian no Shippai, was produced and broadcasted
in 1917.
By the 1930s, animation had become a recognized form of entertainment, although Japanese
anime struggled to compete with foreign productions due to limited budgets and resources.
However, anime's success can be attributed to the resourcefulness of its talented artists. Working
with constraints, they found creative solutions, such as using long, slow-motion shots or stills,
which became distinctive features of Japanese animation. Following World War II, the first
modern anime production company, Toei, was established. It was during the war that Japan's
government began promoting animations as a morale-boosting tool, which significantly
contributed to the growth of anime.

The 1980s are considered as the glorious years in the history of anime. Anime no longer
remained confined and traversed overseas. Apart from the iconic releases, the year 1985 also saw
the creation of one of the most celebrated studios – Studio Ghibli. The studio, created by Hayao
Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, produced the most seminal movies like Laputa: Castle in the Sky,
Ponyo, Kiki’s Delivery Service etc. The studio’s work anticipated the extensive catalog of anime
that was produced in the future.

In the assignment I shall be analyzing Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro,
Howl's Moving Castle, Ponoyo among others and hope to explore the theme of magical realism
and surrealism in them. The experience of surreality, I argue, is enhanced in anime due to the
dialectical tensions embodied in it, vis a vis its ephemeral materiality- hand drawn yet behind a
screen and its portrayal of real life scenarios and difficulties against the backdrop of an animated,
surreal landscape.

Over a career spanning 44 years from 1969 to 2013, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao
Miyazaki directed 11 full-length feature anime movies, along with 9 short films and 1 music
video. Starting as an in-frame animator with Hols: Prince of the Sun in 1969, he announced his
retirement after directing his final full-feature anime film The Wind Rises in 2013. However, his
upcoming film Boy and the Heron is set to be released this year.

His Oscar winning film Spirited Away released in 2001 is also the all-time highest-grossing film
in Japan. He was honored with Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Film
Festival in 2005. The range of his artistic presentation is immense, each movie he creates
promises an entry into a new fantastic world—and a return to a familiar universe. The oscillation
between real and fantasy and the mobilization of various semiotic contents, whether drawn from
traditional Japanese Shinto beliefs of Animism, spirits and myths, is what characterizes his
filmmaking. He continues to draw by hand to preserve the traditional techniques but his grip
strength and precision has reduced due to advancing age.

Magical Realism and Animation

Animation is a flowing art and hence has a narrative structure as in literature” (Mishra and
Mishra). It’s a very receptive medium for magical realism because of its rich visual
descriptiveness. Furthermore the animated medium removes any trace of authorial presence and
amplifies the audience's immersiveness in the narrative. Miyazaki’s work is especially known for
its tranquil, immersive experience of magic and spirits.
The 2001 animated feature film, Spirited Away is one of the most beautifully created films by
Miyazaki. The film follows Chihiro, a young girl who finds herself in the town of spirits. She
closely encounters the horrors of the spirit world where her parents are turned into pigs, which is
followed by the series of adventures in the bizarre world. The main opposing force is Yubaba, a
witch who heads the Bathhouse. Along the way, Chihiro meets new people like Haku: a river
spirit who can turn into a dragon, Lin: a Bathhouse worker, Kamaji: the boiler man, demon
No-Face, and more, who all help her throughout her journey.

Spirited Away’s most primary notion lies in its Japanese title、 “千と千尋の神隠し,” which
trans-literates to “Sen and Chihiro’s Spirited Away.” It refers to the emotion one feels when a
person is not present in the human world due to being strayed into the spirit world. The
encounter with the spirits is a central theme of various movies by Miyazaki. He derived the
concept from the beliefs of Shintoism, in which spirits from the natural world are worshiped.
For Miyazaki however, spirits do not necessarily have a religious meaning, but their presence
serves to create a mystical experience that leads to a heightened awareness of one’s life and
experiences. Chihiro’s character herself depicts this, initially, she is a typical preteen ager , who
swings between the fearful naïveté of childhood and the willfulness of adolescence. However,
when she enters into spirit world, her persona subtly starts altering, and she starts observing the
life around her better.The world of Spirited Away amalgamates the lives of the characters with
our lives by erasing the lines between the real and the unreal and, in turn, merging the idea of
past and present.

The spirit universe seems fantastical yet very realistic, making the story and the setting of the
movie very immersive. Miyazaki is able to create this surreal world not only through the
presence of spirits but also by creating the right 雰囲気 (Funiki), which translates to a
combination of “atmosphere,” “mood,” and “ambience.”He is able to achieve it through detailed
and intricate brush strokes. The otherworldly atmosphere is achieved by depiction of a complex
town that is simultaneously new and abandoned. The familiarity adds another dimension to the
town of spirits, which is created by the choice of a western setting. The portrayal of the Japanese
and western elements in spirited away depicts the post-war Japanese architecture and lifestyle.
The climax of the movie comes when Chihiro is flying through the sky with Haku, transformed
into a dragon. Chihiro's recollection of a childhood memory unveils Haku's real name, breaking
the curse holding him. Like many of Miyazaki's works, the movie implies that retaining our
childhood dreams and memories is crucial in one's journey of rediscovering our true selves and
attaining freedom.

In Miyazaki’s work, the metaphor of flight recurs time and again and often becomes a pivotal
point in the movie. Flight for him is both an escape and a return to a familiar world and it's not
just about traversing distances but also moving through time from childhood to adulthood, past
to present and future. The experience of the flight synthesizes the two worlds of past and present,
spirit and real and creates what I argue a magical realist art-form.
The narrative of My Neighbor Totoro revolves around two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who
move to the countryside with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother. They are
welcomed with clear blue skies, well-worn roads, friendly neighbors, and overwhelming
greenery. The detailed depiction of the natural world in the animation plays a crucial role in
creating the Funiki in the film. The rice fields and the roads along the hillside unfurl at a
hypnotic pace. This portrayal conveys a feeling of transparency, with magical elements woven
into the presentation of the natural environment: winds sway through trees dramatically, while
fish shimmer mysteriously beneath sparkling waters. Irlemar Chiampi’s thesis on magical
realism, suggests that it involves the coexistence of the natural and the supernatural in a
nondisjunction way, in which the natural appears strange, and the supernatural pedestrian” .

Their new home is an ancient house surrounded by a lush forest and filled with the palpable
presence of spirits, becoming the backdrop for a series of adventures as the girls encounter the
forest spirits, the most notable of which is the big, fluffy Totoro.
The presence of spirits is again central to the narrative. In the movie, spirits aren't presented as a
mystery but an undeniable part of reality like nature.
Totoro lives in a sacred tree on the grounds of a Shinto shrine. He is presented as a woodland
creature who eats acorns. Totoro does not communicate through speech but behaves as a loving
and domestic spirit that can imbue the girls’ lives with comfort and adventure. The question of
what Totoro actually is remains unanswered but the presence of Totoro and other spirits is so
seamless that one doesn’t even care to ask the question.

The metaphor of flying is again used in this film. “Catbus” — a giant, many-footed cat operates
as a flying bus. Totoro and the Cat Bus, along with Mei and Satsuki riding in it, symbolize a
profound connection to nature, particularly the wind. Flying with these characters represents a
deep bond with the natural world and requires Mei and Satsuki to trust the spirits, signifying
their pure relationship with the natural world.
Amidst the lush landscapes and delightful adventures of the two sisters, is the brooding presence
of their mothers ailment which is described to them as flu. The absence of their mother lingers
anxiously over the entirety of the narrative. Since, both the girls are unable to both recognise and
express their fears, their lives are overtaken by vivid imagination. Totoro almost every time
appears when their lives are overtaken by distress. The climactic encounter occurs when Satsuki,
tired of seeking help from the real world, pleads with Totoro to help find her sister. As per critic
Hirashima Natsuko’s suggestion, then, the spirits are “symbols of the little girls’ anxiety over
moving into a new house and fear at the possibility of losing their mother, emotions more
effectively conveyed through images rather than words”

In Miyazaki’s other movies like Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo, the real and familiar are
again binded with the exotic and the magical. Author Cheng-Ing Wuin in his Hayao Miyazaki's
Mythic Poetics: Experiencing the Narrative Persuasions in Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle
and Ponyo notifies Hayao Miyazaki's fantasies as "an inheritance of symbolic representations
common to all humanity". Howl’s Moving Castle is a fantasy story which is drenched in magic .
Set in the early 20th century where magic is commonly used everywhere, the novel tells a story
of a young girl named Sophie whois turned into a 90-year- old woman by the witch’s curse. Her
journey to break the curse has led her into a wizard Howl’s moving castle. Throughout the film,
the castle grows, it changes and suffers with the characters. It survives in the end to become a
home that every one of us can live in.
The loss of Sophie’s youth is symbolic of the loss of her ability to see the world with child-like
wonder. In the end, when she is able to find love, she also regains her youth and vitality, which is
a central concern in Miyazaki’s world.

Miyazaki doesn’t ask us to believe in the supernatural or the spirits, but he invites us to look
around us, perhaps as a child would, without expectations and clear notions of what would
happen next like Satsuki, Mei, Chihiro, and Sosuke—with open eyes and open hearts. In all
Miyazaki’s movies, it’s children who best grasp that nature and come in contact with spirits.
Sosuke and Ponyo love each other; so do Chihiro and Haku. No adult ever even sees Totoro or
the Catbus, though they may feel their presence in the lilt of strange music on the air or a gust of
wind.

It’s not that children are pure and innocent and unquestioning—Miyazaki’s young protagonists
are thoroughly human and flawed. It’s that they don’t mediate the world through calcified rituals
and worldviews. Children possess minimal preconceived notions about what exists or doesn't
exist in the world; they are the ones who catch glimpses of mysterious figures moving in the
shadows of deserted theme parks, witness a goldfish transformed into a girl, or observe a small
ethereal being wandering through the grass.
The motif of flying once again returns in Howl’s moving castle but now in a different form .
During their first encounter, Howl takes a walk with Sophie in the air while running away from
his persecutors. This walking in air symbolizes elation that one feels when one is falling in love
and also symbolizes freedom. It signifies rising above the disharmonies and contractions in the
world, in their case the imminent threat of war. Both Howl and Sophie are momentarily freed in
the air.

The multiplicity of perspectives also adds to the surreality to his movies. Miyazaki's ability to
depict life through diverse perspectives, contributes to the surreal and immersive experience for
viewers. While one film may adopt an insect's viewpoint, another sees life from the perspective
of a little girl in a spirit world. Flying introduces a new dimension and adds depth to these
movies, diminishing the weight of earthly problems. In his films, such as My Neighbor Totoro
and Spirited Away, Miyazaki shows through different viewpoints. For instance, the former offers
a glimpse into the world through the innocent eyes of children as they encounter mystical
creatures in their rural environment. On the other hand, Spirited Away presents a fantastical
realm from the perspective of a young girl who stumbles into a mysterious spirit world. The
surreality however has familiar undertones to it, which Miyazaki uses to stir the collective
unconscious of the audiences.

I leave you with this image of Chihiro in a train passing over water, sitting beside no face.

References
Gilkeson, Austin. “Gods and Spirits (….and Whatever Totoro Is): Exploring Miyazaki’S Fantasy

World.” Reactor, January 26, 2024.

https://reactormag.com/gods-and-spirits-and-whatever-totoro-is-exploring-miyazakis-fant

asy-world/.

Mubashir, Zainab. “The Magical Realism of Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro (1998).” Medium,

July 14, 2022.

https://zainabmsheikh.medium.com/the-magical-realism-of-miyazakis-my-neighbour-toto

ro-1998-87da804326ae.

Selvaraj, Vivek. “A VISUAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ANIME MOVIES BY

HAYAO MIYAZAKI.” Www.Academia.Edu, January 29, 2018.

https://www.academia.edu/35784472/A_VISUAL_AND_DESCRIPTIVE_ANALYSIS_

OF_ANIME_MOVIES_BY_HAYAO_MIYAZAKI.