Hey guys, thanks for going on this nerd journey with me.

If you want your episodes ad free, go to make me nerd dot com, slash join and hit that buttons got me onstruck.

Hello everybody, and welcome to make me a nerd.

I'm Mandy Kaplan, a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore all things nerd culture that I've been missing out on and afraid of my whole life.

I have an update, Pete, if you could play breaking news something, some kind of sound cue that'll get people excited.

An update from Megan Parlin about the rehearsal episode that you all heard.

A couple of weeks back.

She sent me an article that said since the show ended, a bill is now moving forward, a move that Fielder said may have been influenced by his HBO series.

In June, the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to approve the Mental Health in Aviation Act, bipartisan legislation that would require the FFA to encourage pilots to disclose mental health conditions, something they are not currently doing, so as not to lose their jobs.

The bill would allocate thirteen point seven million dollars per year.

To recruit professionals, including psychiatrists.

I love when an artistic endeavor turns into something real and can affect change in the real world in a meaningful way.

So I take back all the negative things I said about Nathan Fielder and the rehearsal.

I loved it.

It's perfect.

I love Megan, She's perfect.

I'm being an asshole about the last stuff, but I really do think that's very cool that he took something creative and made change.

So way to go.

Maybe Spirited Away will make us legalize bath houses.

Who knows.

I invited a wonderful guest today, solo without his partner.

We'll see how this goes.

He has been on Make Me a Nerd Covering Everything Everywhere All at Once, and The Exorcist.

He is a film professor and podcast host.

And I'm just going to say it, he's a goddamn delight everyone.

Keenan Diaz, You're goddamn delight.

I think that's three swears for me so far.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I didn't know we were allowed to do that in the show.

Oh fuck yeah, yep.

So Hi, it's wonderful to see you and to be with you, to talk about Spirited Away before we do, you said, oh, I'd love to do something geeply and I said, huh, what's that?

What do you mean?

Can you explain what Jhibli Studio is and give us a little primer?

Yes, So, on the film side of anime in Japan, like it is the most prestigious.

So sometimes people in the West will say that it's the equivalent of Disney.

I think, after you've watched one movie, Spired Away might be like, not really, It's it's its own sort of thing, right, But it's led by a their main director, who is Hayamiyazaki, and so those terms his studio and his name, Yazaki and Jibli.

They're kind of interchangeable in a lot of people's minds.

But there are also other really talented directors who work there, and a lot of what we think about is like prestige anime comes from Chibi or other studios or other filmmakers who are living in the shadow of Jibli, so like starting in the late eighties or so, which is why anime starts to come over.

So it's like distinct from like the TV side of anime, which is like so nerdy that I couldn't I can't go there.

They know, you have to find someone who can really really show you the real nerdy stuff of like you know, a thousand episode things that.

Have done one piece and I have some anime coming up about figure skating, two nerdy things.

So I'm all over anime?

Now Is it offensive when I pronounce it anime?

Should I say anime?

Oh?

I think it's offensive when I over pronounced it as.

Anime, but I wasn't going to call you out right.

Anime is just the Japanese shortening of animation.

Right, so yeah, and you already, professor pre answered.

My question was was is Spirited Away considered anime?

And you have answered that is right?

Yes, absolutely so really anything that is animation in Japan they would call anime, but we would we would say, like any kind of Japanese Japanese animation is.

Animal giant eyes, Like there's a look that you can call anime comfortably.

Yeah, absolutely, and the the giant eyes.

Though, sorry, I guess I'm going off on like a a film professor history tangent.

But like for it, can I get a hall pass?

Can I go to the bathroom?

It's college, you can go.

You know, you don't have to ask me, Mandy, you all are grown ups here police what you do here?

Man?

We're here to like wrap and.

I love your corduroy jacket with the swede elbow just by the way you look.

No, but the the giant eyes, which, of course in the West we look at and it's so distinctive for us.

The people who were inventing, you know, the Japanese anime style in like the fifties and sixties, especially on TV, they were trying to copy Disney eyes.

So so to them, they're like, snow White has gigantic, freaking eyes, and so let's do that and then but to us, we just see snow White, and we just we see it.

You know, we're in the culture, so we don't see it as different.

Right.

I think snow White has had work done, But that's just my own theory.

At fourteen years old, girl, yeah, it's.

Never too early to start.

So spirited away is what we did.

Now.

You said this isn't your favorite, but it is the most beloved, well known.

Everybody else's favorite by far, So I thought that's a really great place to start.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

For the clickbait.

Let me give everybody.

This is the highest grossing Japanese film until twenty twenty.

Ten year old Shahiro is thrust into a world of spirits after her parents are mysteriously transformed into pigs at an abandoned amusement park.

To save them and return home, she must work in a magical bathhouse run by a powerful witch, uncover the secrets of those around her, and summon a strength she never knew she had.

That is the plot.

She had the power inside of her all along.

Didn't she not?

The first time I acquateed it with Wizard of Oz.

Now, absolutely, I started to chuckle as I read that.

And I'm not trying to be a dick, but anyone who knows me heard me say after her parents are mysteriously transformed into pigs, and they thought, oh, oh, Mandy watched this movie.

Like, I can't believe Mandy's watching this movie.

This is not my sensibility, right.

I am a boring, factual person.

I'm not into, you know, wildly imaginative world building things.

So just reading that description, and I have a couple of others that were just like, I cannot believe I'm doing this.

This was big for me.

This is hands down, unequivocally a beloved film on Rotten Tomatoes ninety six, ninety six.

And it starts off very realistically with the parents driving little Chihiro.

They're moving into a new home in a new place, and it is so sad that this lonely little girl in the back.

Her parents aren't really focused on her.

It's just all and the music is sad, and I thought, oh God, what did I sign up for?

This is so sad.

Yeah, So it starts off with so even I think fans of this as I've taught this movie in class and a couple of different contexts, even fans of this movie take for granted how incredibly sad it is.

So the first thing we see is like this this car to like goodbye, goodbye to Hero, We're gonna miss you.

And it's got flowers.

And then we see her perspective looking down in her feet from when she's in the car, and we finally see Schahiro.

She looks like a corpse in the back of the hearse So she's got really flowers.

Yeah, but she's got her little flowers and she's holding them like like she's in a casket.

Bartender, I need another I did not make that association.

That is so shocking and so sad.

Luckily she's not dead, no, but she.

Is drawn sad as well.

Her little life eyes are just sad eyes.

Yeah.

They in Miyazaki's book they talk about her being drawn pouty, like having a pouty expression at the beginning, right, Yeah, but it's about her coming back to life, you know.

She she feels like a lot of ten year olds do if I'm being removed from the old life, that my life is over, and she really means it.

And I think that's one of the reasons why the movie like affects people so much, is it takes it takes childhood seriously, and it doesn't it doesn't like we're not seeing it like it's like some Pixar movies do.

Like we're seeing it from the grown ups, and we see like what the children need to learn in order to get over this, like we're ahead of them, like we're with her, and none of the rules make sense and everything is crazy.

Uh, and then she just finds this inner strength seemingly out of nowhere, right as opposed to like a lot of like American movies or you know, they're like you have to learn this task to become stronger, Like, what is the thing that separates her, that that makes her come alive, that saves the day?

Like, I don't know if we can really actually pinpoint it right?

Right, and it is quite well.

I compared it to a few things just because that's what I do.

It's not to take away from its originality, because it's wildly original.

And then they turn into pigs, and I wrote, their pigs?

What the hell is this?

This can't be made for children?

Right, I'm freaked.

And the only way I knew that it was made for children was because I watched it on HBO Max with commercials, and all the commercials were for toys.

The kids are not right, Yeah, I really think it's not for kids.

I think it's a terrifying movie.

Kids love it, kids love it.

Kids Keenan introduced me to some of them.

I think that for a lot of kids, it peeks into the adult world, which is what happens to Tahiro.

Right.

So yeah, it's like you are.

You know a lot of our stories in the West, though, that are about this, are even harder on children than this is, Tazer, because like a lot of our stories in the West are like about orphans, and they're about like you've lost your parents.

I mean, so that's like Batman and Luke Skywalker and Rose Putger DeWitt and Titanic and Dorothy Gale, like they're all got dead parents, you know, t hero to hero has potentially a happy life, but she just kind of melancholy and can't put her fingers on that.

And I think a lot of kids are like, this is me, This is literally me.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Everyone tells me there's something wrong with me, and I can't look around and point to what it is.

And then I'm forced, you know, before I'm ready to experience what it is to be a grown up.

And it turns out that it's going to be okay.

Like I'm with that, yeah.

And that's one of one of the chapters in Miyazaki's memoir, which is a two part gigantic thing turning point and all of this.

Raining to lift the book.

Turning point and starting point.

There's two of them.

I swear that's right.

But one of the sections on Spirited Away is titled quote don't worry, You'll be all right, Like that is the message that he said he hoped to get And I think a lot of the young people I listen to who tell me that this is their favorite movie of all time, that's what they get out of it.

And then you let them pee whenever they want.

You are really whatever, man, I'm not here to tell you what to do.

You're making the world a better place, Professor.

I want Pete to put up a picture because as they enter this world there are such stunning shots.

The art direction in this movie is stunning, and I put the ship at night next to a building, Pete, if you can put that picture up, it's like art, like a movie.

It's absolutely rich with color and light and oh my god, who is there CG involved in back then?

Or was this hand drawn?

How did this come to be?

It's so beautiful.

Yeah, hand drawn and gibli avoids what a lot of studios were doing in the late nineties, like this one, which is to CGI everything.

So there's a couple of shots where where they're going to use CG to help with depth, like this beautiful shot later on than the one that you're talking about, where where Chihiro is chasing after Haku and she's going through like flowers and stuff, like that, and it's all these really cool layering.

So I really don't mind the kind of computer aided animation that they do at GIBLI in this time period, where a lot of other studios you'd see them like all hail the computer overlords and not do that.

So they they were maybe more resistant than others, but they weren't like, you know, they weren't like completely tossing that out as an option to use computers.

But no, they love the the hand drawn nature of things, and they still do hand drawn movies.

So Miyazaki having two years called two years ago called The Boy and the Heron and so, yeah, that has more CD aided effects, but yeah, the majority of its hand drawn.

It makes such a difference.

And I've seen a lot of the CG movies because of having a kid, and they can be beautiful, but it doesn't have that emotional effect knowing a computer did it.

It doesn't hit me in the heart the way this did.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You know, hopefully you'll see some more GBLI movies because there are some that are easier to understand than Spirited Away, I think, and easier to track what the hell is going on.

But Miyazaki comes from television, so he comes from Japanese television, and so you know, animated television is very much like cut all the corners.

We can like as long as it's got like a soundtrack that the kids can understand while they're eating their fruit loops or whatever, like don't worry about it.

And like, I don't know, you maybe have seen like the parody of anime.

It's like me and a pose and then like flashing lights behind me or something, and we're going to like use that every episode like three or four times, and that just not you know, once some Miyazaki gets his hands on his own studio, it's like, no, we're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of like karaokes things.

Yeah, he said, In my grandparents' time, it was believed that Cami Cammi comi right, the commy existed everywhere in trees, rivers, insects, wells anything.

My generation does not believe this.

But I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything, and that comes through in every frame of this movie that even the evil characters have you know, have heart and even the there are inanimate objects that come to life later and what a beauti sentiment.

And humans who we treat as humans or like human characters and then they turn out to be things like rivers, and we've been building this relationship with them, and it turns out that we've been having a relationship with nature and the environment without realizing it.

And how like we are key to them, right, Yeah, So in Miyazaki's yeah, grandparents' generation, it would be Kmi, it would be the gods Miyazakis of this generation that is more about like environmentalism, right, and like you could see how those would be very different and a big pivot.

But in his films, they're not a pivot, right, They are holding on to the old while looking forward to be like, well, what do we have to do now as Japanese people in the nineties and two thousands to save the planet, right in the wake of things like not just climate change, but nuclear war, which is really key over all of all a Japanese cinema like since the nineteen forties, right, is nuclear wars like in the background, But it's even in his anime, which is again like he's growing up and raising children at a time when everything could go away, and like holding on to these moments and holding on to the spirit that is in a rock or in a bathhouse or in a door right and honoring it.

It's so interesting as you're talking.

It fills me with this beautiful respect for life and positivity and also a deep sadness.

Yes, and that's what comes through in this film.

And you know, it's not as simple as they don't wrap the film.

It has a happy ending, but it's not a big musical number where it's like now everything is okay for everybody all the time, And there's such a The sad tone of the opening did go away, and then it became suspenseful and funny and also sad, but that heavy because in the beginning in the car, there was this very sad piano music that was really making me just want to curl up in the fetal position in the shower and cry, I'm just I'm a shower crier, and that's what But that all did go away because there was too much adventure and beauty to go on.

But there is such an underlying sadness to this movie.

Yeah, there's a there's a term in Japanese that we don't quite translate.

Well, it's mono no oare Mono means things, no is like an apostrophe, and then aware it looks like aware, so like a W A R E.

So sometimes we'll just use that and say that this means like the awareness of things, but it's not.

It doesn't literally mean aware.

It's something like the the ineffable nature of things, or the passage of time or impermanence.

And that's really key to most most Japanese stories is you know, the the cherry blossom festivals and that kind of thing.

So like the reason that's so big in Japan is because of mona no aware.

We have to go and see the cherry blossoms now because they only last for like ten days and then they're gone.

And you go there and it's not just like wow, look how great this is.

It's look how great this is and how brief this is.

And that's what life is.

That's what positive moments are.

That's what negative moments are.

But it's just you sit by the river and be like the river's not always going to be there, and I'm not always going to be here to see the river and that's like this.

So for us, yes, it's totally sad, as I understand it.

In Japan, it's more than just sad.

It's also empowering.

But yeah, we're like, that's such a bummer that we're to be here.

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, we could all use a little more of living in the now and appreciating every moment.

And it is all fleeting.

There you go.

Hopefully that'll make some nerds out there.

Life is fleeting this too, cell pass.

Yes, so Chihiro is now well she meats haaku that is yes, voiced by an old friend of mine, Jason Marsden.

Oh really, And I flipped when I heard his voice, and then I thought, oh, now Keenan is going to know I watched it in.

English, I wondered.

I mean, that's fine, I think for a first viewing.

Yes, it's always the debate, and I've tried both, and for me, I have an easier time focusing, you know that way if I do look aside at a cat or something, I don't miss anything.

So I opt for the English.

I might not always, you know, maybe the next time, the next Jibli I'll do in the in Japanese.

But they really do good dubs though, so they these were because their duns are really strong.

Yeah.

Yeah, And Jason Marsden is just the best for those who don't know him, he's been huge in the animation world for years and years and years, and he had his baby just before we did, and we were in birthing classes together, and he's like dull.

So she's in this magical world and she has to get a job at the bath house.

Is there anything sexual about that to you?

You know, that hadn't occurred to me, because yeah, bath houses in Japan are very non sexual.

But it's all female employees in their beautiful robes and all these big large male ogres or monsters coming to get bathed by them.

Geez, when you say it like that, yeah, I guess that should have occurred to me over six or seven times I've seen this movie.

So yeah, yeah, I don't know.

But in that world, it's completely parents bathed with children.

You bathe with strangers.

I'm too much of a prood.

I've never done that, but yeah, you just bathed with strangers and everyone just knows that it's not about sex and don't make it about that.

Yeah, So yeah, that's that world.

I was the kid or adult in backstage areas all the actors are.

You know, you have to rip off your costume and put on your next costume.

And I was the one who mastered, like holding a towel around me and shimming out, and so I wouldn't have to reveal anything.

I love Amomoo.

And that's.

So she's in this world.

And she goes to see the six armed person whose name I didn't write down, voiced by David Ogden Steers, whom I love.

And there are these little balls with legs and they're like little spiky balls, and I wrote, dribbles, I'm such a nerd, You've learned trible.

And so she's trapped in this world in order to save her parents.

And I started typing, this feels like Beauty and the Beast.

You know, young girl trying to save her father has to stay in this world.

And as I was typing that, I heard the voice of Susan Egan in the Beast.

I thought maybe I was prescient, because they didn't look up at mass list for most of the movie.

Okay, and David Atairs is the clock Jesus Yes, cos Cot swept cheepers.

Okay, there we go.

Yes, yes, so there are several I forgot that, but there are several links.

And you know, kids in trouble, kids in peril is tough, I hope for everybody.

She's a tough little spitfire, but she's scared and sad and it's heavy watching her negotiate this world.

And then they give us a really funny moment in the elevator.

Pete, please put this picture up.

She squeezes into the elevator with this stumo.

He looks almost like a spurry squid.

Yeah, do we know who he is?

He never comes back.

He never comes back in a lot of nipple.

I think with a lot of these little creatures in this movie, you could try to look it up and like on the fan wikis and like see like where they are, like if they're based in some real, some real mythology.

But I think a lot of them are just made up.

I think a lot of them like, let's make some crazy nippoly tall people, right, and she can't.

I mean she's just squished in there.

And they let this elevator ride go on a bit too long, and I needed that levity.

I like the comedy in that moment, because other than that, we're watching a terrified little girl realize she's trapped in this scary world.

Yeah, and this world of indentured servitude.

And that's the that's the advice she has to get through this is if you know, you can turn into a ghost or a spirit, or you can become an indentured servant, like those are your options.

That's really really terrifying.

It is all terrifying.

And then we meet you Baba, voiced by buzm Plashette, who I wrote is like the Harvey Fi of seventy sitcoms.

Thank you.

She?

I mean, she is one of the scarier creature slash characters I've seen in a while.

And one of the things she does to Chihiro is take away her name and says, I'm going to call you sen and that is how she controls people.

And I wrote, that is some cult shit right.

There, right, Yeah, absolutely, that's a really a good way of putting it.

Yeah, Charlie Manson's girls, those weren't their names, uh huh.

And that is so part of a cult.

If we take away your former identity, you know, then we define you and you have nowhere to go.

In your sense of self.

Yeah, but I think it's I think for this time watching that thinking about this, you know, in like the era where we're telling children they have to keep the names that we gave them as kids and they're not allowed to pick their own names and that kind of thing, and that's some kind of you know, crazy woke ideology or something like that really struck me this time of like, yeah, like a child should be able to have at least the one thing that's theirs, right, they don't even if they have their own room, it's there in their parents' house, and they kind of understand that, you know, and what is it that is theirs?

And their parents pick their food and their and their clothes and everything, and this one tiny thing that they have that they can control.

And so here you know.

The movie was made in two thousand and one, and I've seen it many times and hadn't really thought about that, but just how scary that actually is.

I the first several times I've seen it, I was thinking about in terms of like it's magic, right, and it's like this magic thing this witch is doing, but like that's a real thing real people do, Like Charlie Manson, like you're saying and that really hit me this time for the first time.

Yeah, I love that a non parent is saying we don't let kids control enough in their lives.

I'm like, oh, no, no, no, Casey has plenty of control.

It's fine.

For the kids perspective.

We don't understand the wide world.

Right, let me have this one thing.

Let me call myself ladybird instead of you know, instead of Christine, like, let me do these things?

You know?

Right right?

I was watching and she goes to visit her parents and they are pigs.

Yeah, but they're her parents, And I wrote, well, I don't know that.

I'll eat bacon again.

Thanks a lot, Keenan.

My cat is dain Bacon.

He's the one who's sleeping under my chair right now.

So is he really buddy?

Oh?

He just put his hand on my on my foot.

I love that.

Let's switch our topic to cats and why we love them.

Right it's the Cat Hour with Mandy and Keenan right now.

You have no way of knowing this, but I wrote, why did I think this movie was about a horse?

I know why you thought the movie is about a horse.

Why did you figure it out?

No, okay, because there's a different movie called Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron from about the same time in America.

Oh my god, where Matt Damon is a horse.

It's like I when I watched Supernatural and forty minutes in I was like where Superman, and Jared was like, that's small villue, idiot, Like I was watching Supernatural thinking any minute.

Act, Yeah, which of these.

These guys are going to become Superman?

I am not right?

And then I guess I wanted to ask at this point, why why is it called spirited away?

What's your philosophy behind that?

What a great freaking question about you?

I don't know why it's called spirited away?

So I mean that's part of the fear that she'll become a spirit and have to leave the world.

And I guess she is spirited away from her reality to real you know, a spirit world.

Yes, but it didn't.

Yeah.

I had to look up the Japanese title and I was like, wait, it's something different in Japan.

But what it is in Japan is San and Cha heroes spiriting away.

So it was spirited away, but they have they have her listed as two different characters, right, Yeah, yeah, great question, Mandy.

If you're listening and you have a theory, I would love to hear it, because it didn't immediately nothing came to me like, oh I get it.

You know.

It just didn't feel like the right title.

Not that I have a title that I thought was better.

But maybe it's somewhere in this kami that Miyazaki was talking about, there's something more about like spirits everywhere or spirit in all of us.

So I don't know, there's there's something better there.

Yeah, I'll write a strongly worded letter to JIBLI and I'm sure they'll change the title.

Have you ever been to Japan?

Side note, I have not been to Japan, so I'm I'm only like half of a weeb because I haven't gone and done the full thing.

Are you into Japanese culture or.

Is it just on Well, when I when I grew up in Hawaii, and so like how you study Spanish and elementary school up here in the Southwest, I'm in Vegas, like that's what we do.

We would study Japanese instead, so that was what we would learn.

And so I have Japanese cousins and then in Hawaii they have like like the Spanish channel up here, there's Japanese channels, so I grew up on some Japanese TV.

So yeah, some of my some of my white friends know a lot more about Asian culture than I do, even though I'm Asian.

But yeah, but I have not been to Japan.

Okay, I'm just curious.

No, Hey, then we meet this sludge monster who comes in.

I'm not really trying to break down every detail of the plot.

I didn't understand it, right, but I can make a mean comparison.

Pete throw up the picture of the sledge Monster next to his doppelganger Jaba the hot.

Right a little bit.

And you can't see these pictures.

I can try and show you side by side.

I think I know a job of that.

Looks like I'm nailing it fair enough.

All right, you're a nerd, but the sledge Monster was nasty.

There is a lot of scatological stuff in this movie, and a lot of puking, a lot a lot of drooling and pooping.

And it's is that, you know, Is that accepted in Japanese culture or.

That's no, not in not in everyday life, but in their I think that's why they go to their media for it.

Yeah, because it is a much bigger taboo for for them in that world to do that.

But again, I think that's what kids like about this bodily functions.

And you know, we were talking about, you know, honoring everything and loving everything, and you know that becomes how we how she sort of navigates the world is like this stinky thing and then her seeing learning to see past it.

And then but like people get eaten and we're so trained to be like, Okay, they're gone forever, but no, in this world, they come back and everything they're regurgitated.

Yeah, there's and it's gross, but everyone's back.

Everything's going to be okay, don't worry about it.

Kids.

And we in this part of the movie, we are face to face with no face.

Yes, who is scaryll Yes, just this black chef do we figure with a face?

But the face isn't his actual face.

It's just a mask above his mouth.

And it's turns out that's not his face.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he he is scary and also funny, like he's I think he's that perfect thing for kids, where like I'm afraid of him, but I want to be his friend, you know, like like I want him on my side and he's so ethereal and and he he We have these big close ups of his like expressionless quote unquote face that has so much expression to them, right when he's like trying to give them money and you look at him and he's like please, like and you see this all done, all this, you know, character acting without dialogue.

So you'll start seeing some of these characters as you go just in the street, on people's T shirts and stuff.

You know, maybe you'll see them.

You'll start seeing them everywhere.

You'll see to hero, but you'll definitely see no on things from now on.

Oh okay, oh yeah, I'm going to look and every time I do, I'm going an angel gets its wings and I'm going to think of you.

There were many times in this film it felt like they were going to burst into song because it's very heightened, right, I mean, that's definition of a musical.

And then at an hour and seven minutes, when Lynn and Sen are eating rice balls and talking about getting out of this place, I was like speaking for a song.

It just felt so right in that moment, and I thought this would make a beautiful musical.

That's so interesting, Yeah, because because now I'm thinking about you know, movies from my past, like in America, and yeah, they'd be singing somewhere right.

Sorry, Pete, if that's going to get us in trouble if I sang too much of the song, I just.

Can't believe someone else sang on my podcast instead of me.

Well, I make shit happen.

There is Spirited Away live on stage.

The production features elaborate sets, original music performed live, and intricate puppets to bring the beloved characters to life.

After its premiere in Tokyo in twenty twenty two, the show had its European debut in London in twenty twenty four, and is scheduled for a run in Shanghai in twenty twenty five.

It is performed in Japanese with English captions.

MM hm, that's great, you did it.

I manifested it.

That sounds crazy, like, I hope they keep it.

I know you like the dubs, but I hope they keep it in Japanese even if you're not catching everything, because it sounds like it'd be great as some kind of more than a musical, like an opera, like you know, with these giant puppets and things like that, like That's what some people like about like watching the movie once for a Gebi movie, and then you know, in English, and then putting on the the subtitles and then just kind of just looking at the imagery and the feelings and the vibe of it.

Once they kind of know the story.

So I have a lot of friends who will do that.

So they'll say, yeah, to get the story and to watch it in English, and then afterwards, so just let it ride me through and just like be in these spaces and around these crazy, crazy designs, and that that is the experience for me, even more than my plot.

That's cool, but it would mean I would have to have understood the story.

Right.

Maybe if we weren't so hung up on like dialogue man, maybe found it within ourselves man and honored the COMI within all of us, we would get it.

Well.

Speaking of the dub, I love to a Hero's Voice.

It's a young actress named Davy Chase.

And when I looked her up, she's Lilo.

She's Lilo.

She's Samara in the in the Ring, right, I.

Think, Oh, I don't know, I think so I believe you.

I can't remember if I ever saw The Ring.

I know the image of the girl crawling Oh.

Yeah, through through the TV.

Yeah she's from the ring.

Yeah, she's the samar in the ring.

So someone else will have to bring you into that nerddom I knew the.

Girl, the actress who was the crawling girl.

Oh wow, really, I know.

It was really what a claim to fame?

Uh I wrote here?

Great, now I'm scared of origami.

She somehow manages to get chased and attacked by angry origami birds.

Razor sharp, yes, that plow themselves into the side of the building.

Yeah.

It was so inventive and dark and bizarre and wonderful.

I mean it's how do you make a gami scary?

That's a good question, I mean, you know, yeah, it's they do such wonderful, like beautiful inventive, like these soot monsters and stuff like that.

It's weird how they're able to have like this wide spectrum of these suit monsters that are just like cute little things with eyes, you know, and the little arms look totally cartoony, totally safe, totally like Mickey's club House huggable, and then in the same thing can have realistic looking or you know, it's kind of real like dragons who are bleeding from their mouths and stuff like that, and things that are incredibly dangerous, incredibly scary, all within some of the same frames.

You know, that's pretty nuts.

So that oragami thing and they're attacking and they're attacking this little girl, but also her little rat friend and stuff like that, Like, how do these things exist on the same plane?

Yeah, yeah, again it occurs to me it's not for kids, but I believe you when you tell me kids love it.

They do.

Yeah.

Yeah, can you guys all reach out and say to me, oh, my six year old loved this movie.

I'm curious.

I would even do a follow up interview with one of those kids.

Yeah, you know they maybe they're a little older now and they want to hop on the podcast and let me ask them.

I wrote on my notes, I'm going to have I have bad dreams from this.

I don't think.

I don't think you will, because because in the end it turns out that they're all your friends.

These razor sharp wore a gami that are going to eat your face.

I don't mean just that we're a gomi, but there would be a really cool or a gami number in.

The musical oh, that sounds great.

When I covered Mommy Dearest on the podcast, yea yet, right, and we did if it were a musical, what would the memes of the songs be and where they would go.

I wish we had done that with this because I feel like it's really ready.

I mean, obviously they made it into one I'm late to the party, but I am finding the plot almost like a series of beaver dream vignettes.

Yep, it's convoluted, and even reading plot summaries because I do try on wiki if I'm feeling confused or and then I said, is that just me?

Nope, I don't think it's just you at all.

It's incredibly episodic, right, and unlike it's it's really easy, and I think helpful sometimes to compare it to Alice in Wonderland, to Wizard of Oz, to Star Wars.

But what those have for you that kind of hides how episodical they are is that there's a physical place we're going to, right, So it's okay, So here's the poppy fields, here's the flying monkeys, here's this, here's that.

But her journey is internal, right, so it's so it just feels maddening sometimes like what order is it?

That's why before we got on on Mike, I was like, I'm a little worried because it is the movie of the de Blue Cannon that I know the least, even though I did watch it again, right, because it's like what order are things?

Like you have your notes that you are great, but like like is the stink monster before she meets the soot monsters?

When does the When did the heads get turned into the baby?

Like none of them actually like like hit into each other, you know what I mean?

Like none of them are like dominant sound.

Like you're reading a mad lips.

It is.

It's so barre.

There are heads, the streams jumping all around on their own, right.

Uh huh?

When does no face the eat the frog?

You know?

Like it's because even as I was watching, I was like, when are we going to get to the train?

And I was like, oh, you know the trains at the end obviously, but like like yeah, everything is so internal, which again I think is why it's you know, it's not better or worse than Alice in Wonderland, but it is.

It is I think, very catching because for children or you know, adolescents, because it's like, yeah, I didn't wake up one day and I'm an adult, like something like I'm not really aware.

I can't place if someone asked me, like what were the events in order that maybe who I am?

You know, and like she just she's just working day to day and these things are are happening.

And it's not like a lot of the stories that we're used to where here's where Luke gets the lightsaber and here's where Luke meets on solo and is challenged to do this, like like they are so random, they're so episodic.

Wait is this all happening in her mind?

Or did this all really happen?

Hey man, I didn't say that, but yes, that's what some people say for sure, right right right, I mean internal like just it's psychological, like like by the end of it, she's brought back to life and knows that she wants to continue on with her life.

But it's not like because I got the I got the Wicked Witch's Broom and you know, I learned the magic words, like none of that happens really, It's just that she grows up.

But you know, some people have read this is like Dorothy, like Alice in Wonderland, that it's all a dream or it's all in her mind.

Yeah, I think there's less.

There's less like little clues in this that would say that that's actually what's going on.

You know, there's not a scene where she wakes up or or even the kind of clueser in Alice in Wonderland where you know she kind of like wakes up from it at the end.

But but some people have read.

It that way.

Yeah, I actually don't know Alice in Wonderland.

What I know?

What's with me?

You baba who I just referred to as Harvey Feierstein.

Uh, she is the evil, evil, evil bad guy.

And she has a baby, a beloved baby that she loves, and the baby is a giant.

I wrote, how the hell can that baby talk?

But I'm glad it did?

And then I was, actually the baby was annoying.

I was glad it got turned into a hamster or whatever it was?

Me too, and I was, I was, I was upset that it got turned back into a baby at the end.

Is much better as an answer?

Yes, And then vultures are attacking, and I said, great now I'm afraid of vultures too.

With top buns because they have Eubaba's hair on top.

Is this a movie stoners love?

Huh?

Probably as a non stoner and is.

Looking up and off to the side.

Yeah, like I thought, probably I've.

Just cropped his world a little up.

A lot of my stoner friends like it.

But now I'm trying to like draw the then diagram of things, and a lot of my stoner friends like the Wizard of Oz.

I don't know I have that has not occurred to me.

Well, I think if you're stoned, you would not be concerned with following the thread as much as going on the ride.

Right, and just like, look at this, feel this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd.

Be curious about that.

I'm not a but I'd be curious to come at it with less analytical approach.

And if look, if I weren't watching it for my podcast, I probably would have given up on it because I would have felt lost.

So I'm glad that I had a reason to watch it and pay attention and take it all in.

But I might have, you know, had I been stoned, just gone on the ride and thought it was beautiful, and yeah, it's an interesting experiment.

It's interesting for me.

How Yeah it is episodic.

It is maybe chaotic, it is confusing, and yet when it gets to the last like twenty minutes or so, when they go on that trade, I find it really really compelling and everything just kind of slows down and they let it like breathe and you think about it, you know, so as chaotic and crazy as it is, it goes to this place.

And of course you don't know that first time you watch it, right, there's no way for you to know that, like this is just gonna be my life forever, these fever dreams.

But I think that, you know, maybe you can't achieve that like real sense of calm that you get at the end of the film if you didn't have all this chaos.

Yeah, the train going over the water was breathtaking.

That's actually where I asked if there were CG involved.

But mm hmmm, uh, has no one taught you hero about stranger danger?

How does she know no face won't hurt me?

Stranger danger, I think is a pretty American idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are there are game shows in Japan.

There are Japanese games, and that's another thing you should do for make me and R to find someone who really knows those Japanese game shows and have you watch those?

But there are game shows in Japan where they send out like a six year old with a camera and they're like, here's like like amazing race style, like around the neighborhood and like go and see what you can do on your own?

Wow, like how it dependent?

You can?

No, thank you?

But now if anybody wants to come on and watch Japanese game shows with me, that sounds exciting.

Oh again the mom and me is like, and then do we know why she hero has those adorable red smudges under her eyes.

I think that is just her her making, making her design to look like like like she's it just to help.

I think her look adorable part of her, part of her aesthetics, like the rosiness to her to her cheeks.

Yeah, oh okay, but it looks under her eyes like a football player puts the black war paint.

Yeah yeah, I like that.

I wrote they would never be able to plummet to earth talking while talking and land safely.

Is this not based on a true story?

She and.

Haku, Yeah, jump out and they're just like so anyway, and they're just talking as they're plumiting to earth.

Yeah, yeah, but it is so funny what we're what we're willing to accept, Like he was just a dragon yea who she cries tears onto and then tells him his middle name and then he turns into dragon pedals.

But we're also being like, why can they talk?

That doesn't make sense?

Right?

It is It is a fever dream, it really is.

Yeah.

I was very disturbed when she passes the pig test.

M it's that for me was like, what have we put this little girl through?

This was all so disturbing, and now she has to identify which pigs are her parents.

I forgot the solution to that riddle again.

I think it happens to me every single time, and it stuns me.

Yeah, I don't remember a riddle.

Remind me so.

So you Bob is like, you have to pick which one of these pigs are your parents?

Right, and like as proof that you you don't have a connection to your your old life, that you're still here.

And she looks and says, none of these are my parents.

This is a trick, and you Bob was like are you sure and she's like, yeah, none of them are.

You Bobs like hooray and oh every single time.

I think that really surprises me because it's it's set up so much like like in the sequel to Wizard of Oz Return to Oz, where you have to go through and like see which of these relics used to be your friends and crazy like that.

Yeah, oh, that's terrifying.

You haven't seen that Return to Oz Nope with uh what's your name from the craft anyways?

So so yeah, that's crazy now U for a bulk?

Yeah, yeah, so she's she's Dorothy in that one, and she has to go through and there's there's a giant room and your friends have been turned into knickknacks around the room, like at the end of Indiana Jones three, and you have to look and see like which one of them is your friend, just by like feeling their vibes.

And it's like little like teacups and watches and doilies and things.

I feel like you're making so many of these things up.

I don't know if I believe you.

I couldn't.

I'm not imagined enough to think of these things.

This is from the world of other people's minds.

Okay, I'm going to get deep.

Okay, are you ready?

Let's do it.

Heads up.

So it's all about getting your name back?

Is there an element of this that's about divorce?

Oh?

I like that.

I wouldn't.

Yeah, that's great.

I haven't thought of that.

Mandy, yees, go ahead, and Mandy, I like that a whole lot.

It just seems to be you know, to reclaim who you are and remember who you are and get your name back, and that I know that is so important to people after a divorce, right, you know, to shed a life that wasn't right for you.

Yeah.

I wonder about that, like a lot of a lot.

Like my mother like kept her name after the divorce, you know, and felt like at that point it was too late to you know whatever reclaimed, Like what a personal decision to make, Like I can't even imagine being married.

Yeah, h yeah, I wonder.

I mean, the names are so important in this movie.

And then I my last thought was, is this a Wizard of Oz?

It was all a dream scenario?

Although she has the magic or the purple hair band, right, so that would imply that it's real.

Yeah.

So there's only really tiny subtle things like that that have any sort of evidence that that that that's there, right, So it's not as overt as in the Wizard of Oz or anything.

Yeah.

Right, yeah, so you can read in so many different ways.

And again, like I think adolescents like this movie so much because it is about the second lives that people have, you know, away from the way did your parents see you or the way that they might have seen you at your old school, your little town, and how scary that is, and how that is just what childhood, adolescence and like growing up is until you figure out who you are, and for a lot of people doesn't happen until much much later in life.

Right, But like the ideas of myself as a child, the idea is that my parents or my teachers tell me, or that I have for my friends, or that I read about this is what little girls should be.

And she gets to go and live this other life, this grown up life, and get to experience that in the span of like an hour in real life, right, right, come out as a stronger person.

Yeah, as you're talking, it's occurring to me that was theater Camp for me.

Yeah, And have you seen the movie Theater Camp?

No, I haven't, You must, you must.

The way they arrive at theater Camp is like they have been freed from whatever negativity they've been going through it their home and in their schools, and that my theater camp was my saving grace growing up.

In this movie, theater Camp is hilarious, but it also captures how much this means to all of them, right, trying to be themselves.

Sometimes you come back and some people from those experiences find that they can't even communicate to their old friends, you know, they're they're they're real friends and the real world, like, I'm such a different person now.

And then some of them find it so liberating that they have stronger relationship those people or realize that they have different friends.

Yeah right, yeah, Yeah, it's a really really beautiful movie, you know, just lush and also just spiritual, and yeah, I think every time I do watch them, like, but it's so crazy.

It's such a crazy chaotic thing.

Am I going to come out of this at the end?

Okay?

And it's just so relaxing the last twenty minutes or so, just slow, not a big climax, and everybody becomes a friend, right, She's able to convert every single person.

So Ybaba is terrifying, and she's this you know, terrible Russian style witch.

But she but she's able to call her granny, and she's not fully like in some of the other Giblue movies they fully convert the bad guy into being like a part of the team, like a good guy.

But here they reached this kind of detente where just like you're calling me granny.

That's weird but okay, and you kind of see her soften without meaning to, without coming to some you know thing where they shake hands or anything like that.

Yeah, what is your favorite Gibli movie?

Mine is the is the actually saddest one, which is called The Wind Rises, which was supposed to be Miyazaki's last film.

He's retired several times.

So the threatfarv of.

Yeah, so the last time that he he retired it was after this movie he made about this airplane designer leading up to World War Two who loves airplanes as art.

A lot of Jibli movies are about aviation.

Jibili comes from the name of a type of Italian airplane, the Jibili, and this is this aviation designer who sees airplanes as art and the only way he can achieve his art is by working for the Japanese Army of the World War Two.

So we start designing these planes that are going to and we know, going to kill thousands of people, and but he has to like balance that, like is art worth it?

And it's like really hilarious, really, oh my goodness.

Yeah, yeah, that's that's my favorite one.

But if you're saying that the children's style ones, yeah, Totuo, my neighbor Toaturo, that's everyone's Have you seen a Toturo?

Okay, once you once you see my neighbor of Totuo, you'll see them everywhere.

They're on t shirts and mugs and in Toy Story three, they're everywhere.

Oh okay, well, thank you, thank you for sharing this movie with me.

I am relieved to know.

No, I mean I enjoyed it, I admired it.

I didn't quite understand it.

And for you to say that's okay, that's everybody's experience with it, or most people, and that thrills me.

You know, it's like I didn't miss anything or I'm not missing out on the experience of it.

So no, I think, well, that's my experience of it at the very least.

And I've seen many of the GLI movies.

I think this is the most confusing so sometimes when people are like this is my favorite, I'm a little like, what about the much simpler ones?

What about those ones that make some sense?

But they love it?

That's great.

I am going to share my business with everybody, and then you're going to tell everybody where they can hear more from you, which they should just go do.

I want to tell you all that make me a note as a production of True Story FM engineering the peerless Pete Wright.

My theme song is Wonderstruck by Jane and the Boys.

You can find me on Instagram at Mandy Underscore, Kaplin Underscore, Claven's and those are both with ks and you can find me on TikTok at Mandy Miscast and I'm also on Blue Sky as Mandy Miscast.

It's pretty exciting.

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Okay, Keenan, where can everybody hear you?

Great?

So I am part of a comedy deal with my good friend Lester Ryan Clark.

We call ourselves is Banana for Scale, and we have several movie focused podcasts, including The Exorcist Minute, Going min and My Minute through that movie that one we've completed.

We're fifty minutes or so by the time you're listening to this into every minute of everything, everywhere, all at once, where we have had Miss Mandy kaplan on as a guest so for that.

And we also have a show that's a spin off of our extra show called The Devil's Details, which is a look at the devil through history and literature.

So yeah, you can listen to us there please.

We try to be funny.

We try, we try to be you can hear immediately we're trying to be funny.

They carry rubber chickens as.

They walk a walk a yes.

And you can find me on Instagram or letterbox as howdye keenan that's k y n a M.

And if you're thinking about going again into a film degree, I am an assistant professor in residence at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Department of Film, where you might encounter me in classes such as the Miyazaki Jipli class, or the history of animation, or the history of Walt Disney the man.

So come up to Vegas join.

Us, well said, thank you everybody for joining us on this journey of spirited away.

Until next time, stuck