...Studio Ghibli...

My cousin has recently got me into watching works from Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio. To date I have seen Howl's Moving Castle, The Cat Returns, My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away. All of them have been really good. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them! The animation style is simply beautiful. Not sure which I preferred out of all of them. Though I loved the characters in The Cat Returns and Spirited Away was such a beautiful story, In fact I want to watch it again! Though I'm not sure why but the lead character in Spirited Away reminds of someone - maybe it's just the voice????? Hmmmm I'm not sure but I just have this weird feeling of familiarity with the main character Chihiro Ogino. Either way familiar voice or not it is a brilliant film.

The film follows Chihiro as she and her parents move to their new home in the Japanese countryside. On route they take a shortcut and accidentally enter a world of spirits with her parents who help themselves to some lunch after the long journey and are subsequently turned into pigs. A mysterious stranger known as Haku helps Chihiro to get a job in the bathhouse to the spirits while she tries to find a way to free her parents before they become the main course for the guests of the bathhouse...





I created a hero who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. It's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish.
— Hayao Miyazaki