Just baffles me. The movie is just so non-western and not culturally relatable to any person from an English culture. It's an absolute foreign oddity.
shareIt's well done. When the mud monster or whatever appears at the bathouse you can't take your eyes away because the pace, the visual syntax, the editing, is perfect and exceptionally well done and that is what a good film is by default.
shareIt's both extremely culturally specific and universal at the same time. Everyone on Earth has an "inner child", one that is still terrified if losing parents protection and finding themselves alone in the world and unprepared. All the best movies gave a universal theme like that; the desire to find love, to reconcile with a parent, to gain superpowers, etc.
So to westerners, it worked because they empathized with the main character, even though they didn't understand anything about the world she found herself in. Heck, maybe the film is more fun, if the spirit world is a complete mystery to the viewer.
I don't think they understood much about it personally. Watching it again and reading some analysis's of it I unfortunately agree with the child prostitution theory. ''Parents paying off their debt'' ''taken into an underworld'' ''wanting her soul'' and the bit about ''don't ever forget your own name''. Oh goodness..
shareIt works on all sorts of levels, including some I don't understand, as I don't know much about the spirit world being shown. I don't know if the works as a metaphor for being sold into prostitution, as folk tales about faery worlds generally give the mortal a way out if they can pass a test of spiritual worthiness, and real-world prostitution does not.
And the reason this film was popular all over the world and not just in Japan is because every adult in the world has that inner child, and occasionally that part if the self says "Hey, wait, I'm still the same person I was at ten, and part if me still feels out if place in the adult world and wants to run back to my parents". I'm a middle-aged professional myself, and yeah, even I occasionally get that feeling of "Well how small I supposed to cope with the adult world, this is too hard!", I think everyone dies. So that's a universal feeling that's never been better explored on film.
Thats ridiculous.
shareBecause western culture is infantilized. Look at how people react to comic books and their adaptations.
share[deleted]
Not me, I don't give a damn about all of those silly superheroes in spandex, and I wonder why the MCU dominates cinema when there are just as good heroes in other movies, even more so.
This just proves that you don't need self-insert race-specific characters or cultural stereotypes to like something, let alone love it, as long as it's good.
Modern liberal writers have yet to realize that.
I take it you don't travel much, huh?
shareI've been out of the USA several times. This film was completely relatable.
shareit was the only foreign film I ever saw as a kid in theaters. Everyone is into Japanese animation now but back in 2003 it was not mainstream. This was the first Japanese cartoon I saw and really enjoyed it as a kiddo
share