u/Julkipups

I watched Spirited Away again yesterday and afterwards read a lot of interpretations of it. Most of them made sense, but none of them really explained why the movie feels so devastating and genius to me at the same time.

For me, almost the first 80% of the film are pure horror. Chihiro enters a world that is completely overwhelming and overstimulating and everyone immediately treats her like a burden. She gets chased, screamed at and thrown into work she is practically too small and weak to do. What makes it even worse is that she doesn’t just face death: she faces the possibility of failing to prevent death through her own inadequacy. That’s psychologically so much crueler. It feels like: “If you can’t survive here, it’s your fault.” And then the film constantly traps her between impossible rules. She learns that breaking rules can get you killed, but also that following them perfectly makes it impossible to survive. Like with the stink spirit scene: she’s expected to clean his bathtub with her bare hands, even though she needs steam room passes to do so.

With incredible resilience, courage, intelligence, and the biggest heart, Chihiro ultimately manages to overcome everything. She slowly begins to understand how the spirit world works and people start taking her seriously. She carefully builds friendships, becomes more confident, and falls in love with Haku.

But because she feels a deep responsibility toward her parents, she decides to save them from their pig forms. At first, her only goal was to return to her old world, because the spirit world forced her completely out of her comfort zone, making home and family seem desirable in comparison. Yet after enduring so much, risking everything, and finally finding her place in this strange new world, she is forced to leave it again. She is not even allowed to look back. When she returns, her parents (whose lives she saved through unimaginable hardship) immediately treat her badly again. Her father scolds her for taking too long, and her mother complains about her clinging to her arm. They treat her as if she were a useless creature who only causes trouble. Just as they did at the start of the film, when they mocked Chihiro’s justified caution and fear regarding the tunnel and the abandoned food.

I know the film is partly about criticism of capitalism, environmental pollution and of course about Chihiros hero journey, her growing up and character development.

But for me, the most important message is that the most beautiful things in life are often the ones that seem terrible at first. You have to struggle, suffer, and leave your comfort zone to reach something meaningful and eventually feel fulfilled. The film contrasts the comfort zone that feels safe but is ultimately limiting (her parents’ world) with the frightening unknown that later becomes enriching (the spirit world). Only by leaving her comfort zone does Chihiro realize how empty her old life really was. This can also be connected to her move to a new town. The film therefore encourages people to be brave, persistent, open-minded, and kind, because you never know what lies beneath someone’s first impression.

What I still struggle to understand is why Chihiro has to leave the spirit world in the end. I mean, I understand why she she does it, but I do not fully understand the deeper meaning. You finally reach the place where you belong and then you have to leave it behind and return to where you started? Maybe the message is that life is not about arriving somewhere, but about journeys themselves, and that the path toward a goal often feels more meaningful than reaching the goal itself. Maybe another difficult “spirit world” already waits around the next corner for Chihiro. Maybe the film is trying to suggest that life is fleeting. That life is made up of many beautiful moments, and that you can’t hold on to any of them. But more will come along.