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.