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?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_west3d 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.leo3d 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.