Spirited Away turns 17 this year. The Academy Award winner and Japan’s highest grossing film left us with important lessons in life that we always have to remember, despite this masterpiece of an animated film was made without a script. Sound’s amazing right? Legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki made the story of this inspiring and heartwarming animated film by started filming it without the entire story being finished; which means that the storyline was being developed as the filmmaking process and the animation was still being made.
In this article, let us talk about the best life lessons that we can learn from Spirited Away.
Before we read the entire article, for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this legendary animated film, Spirited Away (Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away) is a 2001 Japanese animated film which is considered a coming-of-age fantasy animation written and directed by Miyazaki himself and was animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, and the Buena Vista Home Entertainment of the United States.
The voice actors in the animated movie were Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, and Takeshi Naito. The story of this film is about Chihiro Ogino, a 10-year old girl who moved to a new neighbour who was able to find a portal or a way to the spirit world after some magical occurrences. Her mission was to find a way to bring her parents back to normal and get back to the human world. The film was considered the highest grossing Japanese film with $289-million grossed worldwide. Below is the list of the life lessons that we can learn from the film.
- FACE YOUR FEARS- Chihiro entered the spirit world, afraid and alone and she was very undoubtful for being among those ghostly creatures but eventually she was able to face her fears for the sake of saving her parents and starts to realize that facing your darkest fears will free you from all the negative emotions and learn how to fight back. In real life, facing your fears is one of the most difficult things a person encounter, it takes a lot of courage, mental toughness and faith to conquer fear and Chihiro proved that fear is tough to beat but is far from being invincible.
- MOTIVATION- Throughout her journey, Chihiro’s motivation to save her parents impressed No Face, the faceless monster of the magical world of Yubaba. No Face tried to bribe Chihiro with gold but her will to save her parents shamed the faceless monster and decided to accompany her in her quest. In real life, being motivated with greed and money will lead you to nowhere but if your motivation is about yourself, about your success and your loved ones, for sure you will be headed to the right direction.
- SELFLESSNESS- On her journey, Chihiro did not just displayed her sheer motivation but also act of selflessness by helping every spirit she came across by doing good deeds even if it is very small but for those that she helped with, it meant a lot to them. Your generosity and selflessness will always be cherished by the people that you helped and will always gratify you for it.
