Huynh - Spirited Away

                Spirited away was a very different filmed from any other that we have watched throughout the semester. In this film, Chihiro, a young girl, gets trapped in the spirit world and matures and learns life lessons as the film progresses. Unlike other films that we have watched, there was no ONE specific story line to follow. This film went by event after event and each was their own little story, which I found very interesting. It wasn’t until you watched the entire film that everything was connected, because during the film, each event had no real relation to the next.

                There are many key events in the movie that most do not realize until the end of the film comes, and they can link everything together. In order to explain the events that occurred and their importance in the film, I will have to work backwards from the end to the beginning.

                In order for Chihiro to get her parents back from Yubaba and get back to the human world, she needed Haku. Unfortunately, Haku was badly injured and was dying. Chihiro was luckily able to save Haku by feeding him the herbal cake and returning the golden seal to Zeniiba. The only way she was able to retrieve the golden seal was with help from the herbal cake she fed to Haku. The only way she was able to get the herbal cake is when she cleaned the river spirit. The only reason she was able to clean the river spirit was because she was given many bath tokens from no face. This happened because of a couple of reasons. One was because she was the only person who was truly nice to no face, and the other was because she was given a job by Yubaba. The only way she could have even gotten the job from Yubaba was because of Haku helping her, and the only reason she is even alive is because Haku gave her food from the spirit world. 

                When these events happen in order, it seems very random, and almost as if there is no logic in the movie, but that is not the case at all. Just like in reality, you cannot plan out every step of your life. Unexpected things are going to happen, and you need to handle them as they come.  Things didn’t make sense, and all seemed unrelated, but in the end, all worked out well for Chihiro. I guess the message in this film is to take things as they come, because if you try to plan everything out, and something goes wrong, you have just wasted all your time.

AREN'T THESE GUYS CUTE?! - Image from Kokona

               

Huynh - Nausicaa

                Nausicaa was very similar to Princess Mononoke ,in that they both had a heroine who was at one with nature, and understood it unlike everybody else. In Princess Mononoke this was San, and in Nausicaa, it was the main character, Nausicaa. San’s objective was to save the forest from Lady Eboshi, because she was destroying the forest in order to expand her iron city. She understands nature unlike anybody else could, and considered herself to be a wolf. Nausicaa was a heroine who would communicate with nature, much like San. Her people did not understand nature, and feared it, and others saw it as an enemy and tried to destroy it. Nausicaa was the only person able to understand nature and thus, was able to save her people and create peace between the humans and nature. 

Image from Disney Kingdom Reloaded

                There was a difference between the two characters San, and Nausicaa however, and that was their motivations. San was a person motivated by hate and anger. She had been abandoned as a child and this caused her to grow hatred towards humans and is why she lives in the forest among the wolves. Nausicaa’s motivation to save nature was brought upon by a totally different reason than San’s. Nausicaa’s father was dying because he was poisoned by the forest, but she wasn’t going to give up and tried to become one with nature in order to find a cure. Both characters were motivated by very different things, but they were doing it for the same reasons that heroines in Japanese anime have. Where both of them had different motivations, one with hate, and one with love, they both still did what they did in order to save the things that they care for.

                Both films also show that there are many ecological issues in the world today. In both films, nature is threatened and is in danger of being destroyed by humans and technology. It brings up the question as to what is going to happen to our world in the future. We are constantly removing more and more nature in order to expand and advance, and it is affecting us in negative ways. These ways include global warming, earthquakes, tornadoes, and more.

                Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa were two movies that showed the importance of finding a good balance between technology and nature. When we continue to destroy forests and natural resources, it is slowly destroying the earth. Few people understand that, but both San and Nausicaa do, and show how much they care when they try to save it in the movies.

Huynh - Princess Mononoke

          There are multiple characters in the film Princess Mononoke that show exactly how good and evil exist within the same person, but the two that stood out to me the most were San and Lady Eboshi. San was a person who originally came off as a very bad and evil person who was trying to destroy the iron city, but as the movie progresses, you learn that she is just trying to restore the forest to what it used to be. This is how somebody can be both evil and good simultaneously. From the perspective of the iron city people, she is an evil person, trying to ruin their lives and tear down all that they have worked hard to create. On the other hand, from the forest and natures point of view, she is a person who is trying to restore what used to be a beautiful land back to what it should be, and is seen as a good heroine.

Image from Listal

Lady Eboshi is also another person who illustrates both the good and evil aspects of a person. To the people of her iron city, she is seen as a heroine, someone who has given them life, and a place to live, and something to live for. Her desire to expand further and get more materials from the forest in order to improve their city is an amazing task and will overall benefit her and her people that she cares for. But from the forest’s point of view, she is somebody who doesn’t care and is just destroying nature. What they do not understand is that this is not the case.

In the world that we live in and understand, people are generally seen as good or bad. But what they do not realize is that in order for there to be a good in people, there needs to be a bad as well. It is what makes good good, and whats bad bad. San had good intentions just as Lady Eboshi did, but in order for them to be good intentions for some people, there need to be bad intentions to others, and even though this may not be intentional, it still applies. San had good intentions for the forest, but had bad ones for the iron city, and vise versa for Lady Eboshi.

Huynh - Ah! My Goddess

                Ah! My Goddess is a very interesting movie in how it portrays humans and gods in the world. In the film, Belldandy and Keiichi are two characters, one human and one goddess, who are in a relationship and everything is going well until Belldandy’s old mentor, Celestine, returns and wipes Belldandy’s memory. Celestine then turns into the “villain” of the movie and tries to destroy and get rid of all the suffering in the world so that people only have to go through happiness. This doesn’t seem like he is that bad of a guy to me, because what he is doing is with good intentions. The only reason it comes off as a negative thing is because the goddess do not want this to happen. What makes me curious is what puts the goddess in charge? Who says that they should be the ones that juristic whether or not what Celestine is doing is wrong or not?

Image from Writer's Cafe

Another thing that kept me thinking as I watched this movie is what makes a human human. When one tries to define being human, the one thing that seems to be the same in any case is that humans have the ability to choose. There is some unknown entity that humans have that influence the choices that we make which is what makes us who we are. If this is what makes us human, then why are gods considered to be gods? In Ah! My Goddess, the goddess’ are the ones who are in power and decide what to do, but that’s just it, they are DECIDING. That is a form of choosing, and if only humans have this ability to choose, then are they even gods? They are making decisions which can potentially end badly or very well, which is what confuses me. If they are gods, then they shouldn’t be making choices at all, but does that mean that there aren’t or shouldn’t be gods? Do gods even exist? How do they work in other religions? Anyhow, this delves into another discussion entirely, that should be discussed elsewhere at another time…

Huynh - Grave of the Fireflies

                The Grave of the Fireflies was a very sad anime film to watch. It involved an older brother, Seita, and his younger sister, Setsuko, during WWII. They lose their mother, and their father is in the war and they are forced to live with their distant aunt. They get taken advantage of by their aunt, and end up leaving to live on their own. The hardships they face while living on their own are very saddening and devastating, but give a perfect feel for how it was to be a child during the war. Everybody began to take on their survival instincts and would put themselves before anyone else, including children. This is shown in the movie when Seita is trying to find some way to make money to buy food, but cannot, and people will not help them out in this desperate time. This drastic change in lifestyle causes Seita to do things that he would never normally do. The perfect example of this is when Seita begins to risk his own life, and goes into people’s houses during the air raids so that he can steal from them. This hard war time is also seen very well in Nosaka Akiyuki’s paper. In his paper, he talks about how he and his sister were on their own during the war and how very bad things had happened to them and how he did things that he would never normally do. Both the film and Akiyuki’s paper describe what it was like in Japanese society during the war. Once it turned to a point where survival was the number one priority, children were not treated the way they should be. 

Image From Ghibli Blog

                The film also shows a very strong relation between brother and sister and the impact they can have on a society. It is always very sad to see children go through this, rather than an adult which is what makes the movie so sad. The relationship that Seita and Setsuko have shows how family is in Japanese cultures. It is something that is very different from the way Americans act and sees family here.

Huynh - Harp of Burma

The Harp of Burma was a very interesting film about war. It showed how the Japanese felt during the end of the war and how they got through it. From the films and the readings, you learn a lot about how Japanese see death. The act of suicide and taking one’s life away is seen as a negative thing in American culture. It is a seen as a sin, and a sign of weakness, and should never be done. In Japanese culture, it is completely the opposite. The act of committing suicide when defeated in battle is a way to re-earn ones honor and save their family’s reputation.
                In the Harp of Burma, Mizushima finds Japanese dead comrades and knows that he must stay behind, and do what is right, and give their souls peace. He gives them a proper burial. This is very similar to American culture.

Image from xlacayo

                In Letters from Iwo Jima, you see examples of how Japan sees suicide differently than America. The group of soldiers does not know what to do as supplies run out, and they decide to go out with honor and each kill themselves. This is very hard for the soldiers to do, but they do it in order to better serve them emperor, keep their honor, and their family’s honor as well. This is very different from American ways, because in America, committing suicide like this is not seen as an act of honor. If this were to happen with American soldiers, it would be seen as a sign of weakness, sin, and giving up, which is exactly the opposite of what Japanese feel it is about.

The second example from this film is when the last platoon decides to go out into battle. They all know that they are going to be defeated, yet they still make the decision to go out and fight for their country and fight for what is right. This is something very similar to American beliefs, because it is seen as sacrificing yourself in order to help the country that you love and the ones that you love as well.

Death and suicide are very interesting topics to discuss when talking about war time films. It is something that is seen very differently in different places of the world. The Harp of Burma, and Letters from Iwo Jima both show the Japanese view on this very well.