Headscratchers / Spirited Away

• How was Yubaba able to have a giant baby like Boh?
  • This troper always got the impression that Boh isn't actually a baby, he's just been treated like one his whole life and so, because this is a magic place, he keeps looking like one.
    • Is it ever specifically stated that Boh is Yubaba's baby through blood? Perhaps she adopted him.
  • Her coddling him kept him from maturing, but it didn't keep him from growing. He's shaped like a baby because he is treated like one, and he's as big as he is because of his age.
  • Remember that Yubaba isn't human, and neither is Boh. This may be just how their non-human biology works. When she gave birth to Boh he was a normal-sized infant, and then he grew into a giant infant, and that's just how the aging process normally works for their species. Eventually, he'll morph from "giant infant" to "giant adult".
  • I was under the impression that the baby was not Yubaba's biological son and was more like a magical creation of hers.
  • Yubaba is a giant counterpart to Miniature Senior Citizens.
• This troper has always wondered—when Chihiro and her family arrive at the "restaurants", what are those pinkish-orange, pouchy-looking things Chihiro's dad piles onto his plate and basically eats whole? They look like they have some kind of red stuff inside, as well.
  • Tightly woven ramen or yakisoba?
  • It's clearly anpan, a bun filled with red bean jelly.
    • No, that's what Chihiro ate after the Stink Spirit left. I've heard secondhand that Studio Ghibli said that it was haggis, but I can't find the source. Theories range from steamed pork dumplings to boiled eggplants.
  • They're called Nikuman. They are a common snack food found in combini here in Japan...
  • Because of tweets by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, it likely is the stomach of a coelacanth, a kind of endangered fish.
• What was the point of not having Chihiro remember her journey through the spirit world? Yeah, it's a forbidden place for humans, but still: The moral of the story is about facing your fears and becoming more mature. If that's the case, then, wouldn't Chihiro's experience have been rather pointless if she didn't remember it once she came back? How would that have still made her change into a different person?
  • I don't recall it being said that she would forget everything. Though it's been a while since I saw the movie, but I'm sure only her parents were shown to have their memories wiped, while all Haku told Chihiro when she left was that "no matter what, don't look back." In the English dub, the parents at the end tell Chihiro she shouldn't be afraid of starting at a new school in a new place, to which Chihiro replies "I think I'll be okay." implying her being aware of how capable she is in difference to her attitude at the beginning of the movie, which wouldn't make sense if she'd forgotten everything.
    • Well, according to Miyazaki himself, Chihiro did not recall her experience after leaving the spirit world at the end — but added that it doesn't mean completely forgetting it, and how there's a likely chance she'll eventually remember what happened.
  • Even if Chihiro doesn't consciously remember what happened, the emotional growth still happened. She's stronger now, because of her experience.
    • This. Look closely after she exits the tunnel and you'll see her hair band sparkle in the light for a moment. She received that hair band in the spirit world, which (a) may jog her memories later on, and (b) it's symbolic of how her emotional growth remains even if her memories have disappeared.
  • This probably coincides with Zeniba's line: "Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can't remember."
• Okay, this has bothered me since I saw this film as an eight-year-old in 2002. Were Chihiro and Haku *in* love, or did they just love each other? It works either way, but I'm just curious about what other people think.
  • They deeply cared about each other, but they weren't in "love" love. They never explicitly stated anything more that the fact that they were good friends.
  • Call him a spirit guide, spirit protector, "imaginary" friend, or maybe a Big Brother Mentor that sort of thing. The "love" between them isn't love in a romantic sense, but there is a strong emotional attachment, like how an older brother would feel for his sister.
  • I saw it as a kind of spiritual and/or Puppy Love thing. I think the implication is that if or when they meet again as adults, they'll be each other's true love. Though not entirely sure how it'll work when Haku's not actually a human...
• Did Haku lose his dragon form at the end, or did he consciously turn into a human so that he could talk to Chihiro?
  • The second thing, he couldn't talk to her in his dragon form.
  • Perhaps it was the shock of remembering his true name that caused him to transform so quickly.
• It's set that the bathhouse workers don't lose their memories on the spot when Yubaba takes their names away and slowly makes them her slaves by making them forget who they are. That being said, why hasn't anyone tried to prevent it and write down their old names while they still remember them? Wouldn't you think it suspicious that the oldest servants remember nothing of their lives before the bathhouse, not even their birth names?
  • Haku tells Chihiro to hide her card and other things if I remember correctly, so it's probably forbidden. And as we know, Yubaba can be rather spiteful when her rules get broken.
  • Also, you might as well start questioning how you can "take" someone's name, and how that would cause amnesia. A Wizard Did It, nothing to see here, move along...
  • Actually, the name-loss amnesia is an effect of the overall spell, not just the visible part. By taking away their names, Yubaba forced them to say, "Hello, I am —-" whatever their name was, but she also took their identities as well, and their identities were literally every other detail of who they are. All were stripped away.
  • It's not actually clear if the name thing applies to all the workers, or if it's just something Yubaba does to workers whom she wants to keep on a tight leash. Maybe Haku is a special case because she knows how powerful he can be, and Chihiro is special because she's human. Nobody besides them mentions losing their memories or having their name changed.
• What exactly is Lin? We know she's not human, judging by her initial prejudice towards Chihiro.
  • She's a weasel spirit in the English version. In the original Japanese, she is a byakko (白狐), a white fox spirit and form of kitsune.
• Are all the lady bathhouse workers weasels? Are all the men frogs? Or are they all different kinds of animal spirits?
  • An overwhelming amount of the males seems to be frogs or toads, but clearly not all of them - Kamaji, for instance, is pretty obviously a spider. Not sure about the women since their animal characteristics are not obvious.
  • They're slug spirits.
• Is there any particular reason why Chihiro was able to know none of the pigs present were her parents? This is never explained, and it bugs me a bit. Is it because she has visited them enough times to remember some minor details about their pig forms? Is it just some kind of mystical connection between parents and kids? Or perhaps Chihiro by now is Genre Savvy enough to understand that the test would be impossible if it weren't for some sort of third option? Or all of those possibilities, or none of them?
  • I was always under the impression it was a mystical parent-child connection deal, though it could be that she just remembered details about their pig forms. It doesn't seem like Chihiro was quite Genre Savvy enough to know the test would be impossible because she does take a moment to look at the pigs in an attempt to find the right ones.
  • You know how "a mother always knows"? I guess sometimes it can work in reverse.
    • Supporting this idea, Chihiro is surprised Yubaba is unable to recognize Boh in rodent form, indicating Chihiro could recognize her parents in pig form.
  • Remember what Zeniba said? "Once you've met someone, you never really forget them." And how can you forget your own parents?
  • I have watched the movie more times than I can count, and I think I finally figured this one out. When Chihiro's parents transform into pigs, they still have some of their human hair on their heads, even when fully transformed. Later when Haku takes Chihiro to go see her parents in the pig pen, the top of their heads are obscured from the audience's view, but Chihiro certainly gets a good look and probably saw they still have their hair on their heads. Later when Yubaba administers the final test, Chihiro can clearly see that all the pigs presented had no hair so none of them could be her parents.
  • Haku did tell her earlier that she would need to remember what her parents' pig forms looked like to bring them back to human form. Presumably, she would have kept track of something about their appearances to distinguish them from the others.
  • Yubaba is a known trickster who evidently doesn't want Chihiro to win, and the best way to be sure she doesn't find her parents between the pigs presented is if her parents are between them.
    • Also, her parents weren't part of the spirit world from the beginning, so they weren't going to be at the end.
• So why did No-Face suddenly get hair? The other aspects of his transformation make sense: he could talk and got frog-like limbs because he ate a frog spirit and gets bigger as he eats more (especially two other bathhouse workers), but why the hair? And this happens before he eats the other two workers, who did have hair, unlike the hairless frog from before.
  • How do mutations work? Maybe it's a reference to him being innocent beforehand and the hair grows as he's corrupted by the greed in the bathhouse? After he's cured, he's back to being innocent and so stays with Zeniba so he can be raised without the negative influences in the bathhouse.
• Haku says that he and Chihiro will meet again someday. Does that mean that they will actually, physically meet? Or will it just be some spirit-y thing where she sees him as a river or something? Does Chihiro grow up, get married, and barely think of him again? :( Has Miyazaki said anything about it?
  • He implies that he can't leave the spirit world, so unless Chihiro goes back one day then no they won't be able to physically meet. But maybe they'll be able to be together in spirit. If he has no river to be the spirit of, maybe he'll find another one and he and Chihiro will meet that way.
  • We need a sequel! But in the meantime, we can speculate. Chihiro might go through the tunnel again. (It's near her house, after all.) She might go there by accident, or because of some lingering traces of memory, or because Haku has some way of signaling her. (Remember that near the tunnel there's a collection of shrines where some spirits are said to live. Maybe Haku can get one of them to deliver a message to Chihiro.) It's also possible that the real-world Kohaku River will get rerouted at some point, or the neighborhood currently blocking it will be torn down and the whole area will become a nature preserve, or whatever, in which case Chihiro and Haku could meet up in the real world. (Though whether Haku can actually speak in that form is another question.)
  • Chihiro will meet Haku again when she dies and takes the train through the spirit realm.
• It's kind of unclear over what timeline the movie takes place. How long is Chihiro in the Spirit world? A few days? Weeks? Months? It seemed like more than just a few days to me.
  • Word of God is that it's three nights. The first night is when Chihiro signs her name away. The second is when No-Face arrives and then the third is when she gets to Zeniba's place. She goes home the next morning. So she spends a long weekend in the spirit world.
  • But when Chihiro and her parents return to their car the path and entrance are overgrown (even new trees are visible), there are leaves and dust on the car, and the plaster on the entrance to the park and the stone statue's face is worn away. This suggests the Spirit world runs on Year Outside, Hour Inside. The overgrowth maybe could have taken months but the weathering suggests years have passed. This bothers me we didn't get a clear answer on how much time actually passed in the material world.
    • I had the impression that the plants just grew super-fast because some magic leaked out from the tunnel, so it only looks like they've been gone for months. (And I guess that explains the weathering too because of Magic.) Otherwise, Fridge Logic suggests that Chihiro and her parents will show up at their house only to discover that months have gone by and they've all been reported missing, and everyone will wonder where they were all this time and the only thing they'd remember is that they walked through this one tunnel and the whole thing would be really weird and Chihiro would be singled out at school as that one weird girl who mysteriously disappeared. It doesn't exactly ruin the ending, but it kinda throws it off. My headcanon is that the spirit world actually runs on Year Inside, Hour Outside, so they emerge from the tunnel only a few minutes after they entered it, and all the overgrowth is just a localized side-effect of some latent magic.
  • Simply going by how she makes emotional connections and how people/spirits react to her and the way she gets homesick, she is longer there than just 2-3 days. Such a short time is not enough to be treated and act like, she is. And adding in the car I would go for two to three months.
  • The movie shows clearly three days passing, and if months went by the car probably won't work once she and her parents reach it as gasoline gets spoiled and the car itself probably would damage after months in the open, especially with one of the windows open. EDIT. Besides, if months went by a missing person report for the Oginos would've been filed, the police would check the area eventually finding the abandoned car, and would've taken the car away to Forensics.
  • I personally think it's only three days (at most) outside. (A car left in wood with all the windows rolled down, could be some kind of dusty after 48-72 hours, if the weather and season are right.) And the entrance, and statue(also the surrounding area.) are in fact already the way it looks at the end, at least for a long time. The clean, well-maintained look is just an illusion created by magic, to draw people into the spirit world..... then became either Yubaba's slave worker or....well, the food source of the place.
    • there are Kami in Japanese mythology that are even more powerful than normal, Kami that take little to no interest in either the spirit world or the human world but are also unable to interfere when things in both worlds go wrong. They might’ve been fully aware of Haku’s plight of being enslaved to Yubaba (or did not approve of her name-stealing antics) and the clean, well-maintained entry was their way of interfering in order to lure a mortal into the spirit realm in hopes of freeing him. The fact that Chihiro was incredibly lucky during her brief time in the spirit world (as she was technically a trespasser not a guest) meant that there was some higher power at work behind the scenes giving her aide.
• How are Yubaba's criticisms of Chihiro a case of Jerkass Has a Point? Sure, she complains quite a bit, but considering that her parents got turned into pigs for eating spirit food, and that she has to sell herself into slavery to avoid a Fate Worse than Death (which risks a completely different Fate Worse than Death) her reactions are entirely reasonable.
  • Values Dissonance is in place here. Yubaba was mocking her bratty childish nature and the fact that her parents effectively committed theft (Chihiro's father intended to pay for the food, but still simply grabbed food while the staff was absent which is still theft) but it’s still unreasonable to put the blame on Chihiro as Chihiro herself had been perfectly willing to leave after that surprised blast of wind yet was openly and coldly dismissed and ignored by her own parents when she told them that she didn’t like the place and that she wanted to leave, thrice!
• Why are the inhabitants of the world called Gods when they are clearly Fairies?
  • In Shinto the Japanese term for God (Kami) is quite ambiguous and may refer to many kinds of spirits that would be more similar to the Western fairy, it's an animistic religion.
• The circumstances that lead to Chihiro dropping her shoe into Kohaku River are never really explained. Then again, in the Japanese version, it is somewhat justified because Chihiro is telling Haku what her mother told her.
  • Honestly, this is explained by her being a kid. She would have been single-digits in age and definitely wouldn't have clear memories of things, whether her mom told her or not. "We visited the Kohaku River, and I fell in and lost my shoe," could well be ALL she remembers.
• When No-Face starts causing havoc in the Bathhouse, Lin tells Chihiro that No-Face has eaten three workers, one of them being Aogaeru and the other two some unnamed employees. However, how does Lin know that No-Face devoured Aogaeru? No one was there when No-Face ate Aogaeru, the two being alone at midnight.
  • No-Face uses Aogaeru's voice to communicate with people, so it would be logical to assume, along with Aogaeru's absence in the morning, that he was eaten by No-Face.
• Even though Kamaji didn't approve of Chihiro helping the Sootballs by carrying the coal piece for one of them, why didn't he do or say anything to prevent her from doing the task for them?
  • He was curious as to whether a 10-year-old girl would be brave enough to walk right up to the furnace. Or maybe it's just a cultural norm in the spirit world, so once Chihiro lifts the coal she's under the "finished what you started" rule and it would be rude for Kamaji to interrupt her in the middle of a task like that.
• How did Chihiro get back up the staircase from the boiler room after that one step broke on her way down? The narrative skips over her climb back up the stairs.
  • She probably used another set of stairs somewhere. Law of Conservation of Detail.
• By "Don't Look Back," Haku also meant that Chihiro should not tell anyone else about her experience in the spirit world after she returned.
  • It may also be a reference to the Greek tale of Orpheus - he went to Hades to save his lover, Eurydice, on the condition that he doesn't look back until he leaves. He does look back when he is out, but not when Eurydice leaves - leaving her trapped in Hades for eternity.
  • Or Lot's family in the Bible. Don't Look Back is a common mythological/folkloric trope across many cultures, one of many that Miyazaki channels into his works.
• Eating food at an apparently abandoned theme park is a pretty bad idea, even without spirit world creepiness. They just start eating food that has just been sitting out for— if not years, months, weeks, or days, then at least hours.
  • While it was a superbly stupid idea to assume that all that food lying there was okay to eat even if they intended to pay as soon as any personnel showed, the food did smell and look fresh out of the oven/pan/pot/whatever that respective dish was made in and despite it being warm enough weather to not wear sweaters or coats there were no flies flying around.
• It's worth noting that the act of simply smelling the food may have started affecting the parents' minds almost immediately - as soon as they smell it, it's all they care about. Granted, while they had been traveling for likely several hours and were probably hungry and wanted to stretch their legs, there's still a few additional cues:
  • Chihiro's mother impatiently tells her to "hurry it up" as Chihiro struggles to cross the river with its huge rocks. Neither parent really makes an effort to help her, but the dad actively extends a hand to the mother to grab. They begin heading off without her. Bratty or not, parents typically keep their kids close in unfamiliar areas.
  • They didn’t even bothered to consider that just the mere presence of delicious smelling food at stalls in an abandoned amusement park to be at all suspicious nor did they even try to resist or suppress their hunger in hopes that the staff would return. Even starving humans tend to be instinctively wary about eating food that’s been suspiciously left out in the open especially if they don’t know WHERE it came from as it could be poisoned or a trap set by someone or something they should avoid.
  • Even if they had intended to pay for the food as soon as the workers came back, they seem to almost immediately attack the food upon reaching the stalls with little to no hesitation. Sure, they were hungry, but typically, even hungry people at least converse during their meals, or start to eat a bit slower. Chihiro's parents almost immediately started GORGING themselves once they'd had that first taste. They barely slow down to consider what they're eating and eventually start to take absolutely no notice of Chihiro.
  • Before Chihiro walks away in frustration, and even before they've even eaten a lot of food, you can hear very loud snorting and grunting from both of them as they continue to eat. Humans do not typically make these types of noises while eating. It's likely that they started to turn almost immediately after that first bite of food.
• Did No Face really want to eat Chihiro? Is that why he kept giving her gifts or did he develop this unhealthy and ravenous appetite after spending too much time in the bathhouse?