Loading…

A stranger at the library changed how I talk about anime | Anime Discussions - Rigidtalk

A stranger at the library changed how I talk about anime

I was re-watching 'Spirited Away' on my laptop at the Seattle Public Library last month. An older woman sat nearby and after a while, she leaned over and said, 'That film is about a girl learning to work, isn't it?' We talked for twenty minutes about how she saw it as a story about responsibility, not just magic. I always just called it a beautiful fantasy before that. Has anyone else had a simple chat that shifted their whole view on a show?

3 comments

3 Comments

jason9584mo ago

Yeah that Princess Mononoke take from @patel.leo hits hard too. I used to see it as just a cool environmentalist fable, but now I catch myself thinking about how Ashitaka can't actually pick a side. He's just running around trying to stop the worst from happening while both groups have totally valid reasons to fight. My buddy pointed out that even the forest gods don't really care about humans, they're just part of the system getting wrecked.

lucas_west6mo ago

Totally get that. Had a similar thing happen with Princess Mononoke. Was telling a friend it's a cool action movie with forest spirits. He just said "it's about two sides refusing to understand each other, until they have to." Blew my mind. Now I see the whole conflict differently. The boar god, Lady Eboshi, Ashitaka in the middle. All about that stubbornness.

patel.leo6mo ago

Yeah but that's giving the characters too much credit. They don't refuse to understand each other, they literally can't. The boar god is poison and rage, Lady Eboshi is trying to keep her people alive. It's not stubbornness, it's survival. The movie's about how progress always hurts something, and there's no clean answer. Ashitaka doesn't fix it, he just stops the bleeding for a minute.