Episode 47 - Spirited Away (featuring Jimbob Talks Movies)

What's up, guys! We've got another excellent episode for you guys! This is an episode that we've been wanting to do for a long time. Yes, another one that we've wanted to do since Chris & I met. We're both tremendous fans of animation and are constantly looking for other sources outside the traditional safe space of the Disney animated movies. So today, we invited on yet another guest in order to tackle Chris' favorite non-Disney animation studio, and a rising star in my book, that of Studio Ghibli, specifically their most famous movie, Spirited Away!  Spirited Away was released in Japan in 2001, and in the United States in 2002. It is the only non-American produced animated film to ever win the Academy Award for Animated Feature. It follows a little girl named Chihiro who stumbles onto a mysterious amusement park with her parents and discovers that it's a hidden bathhouse for spirits, and must find her parents when they are taken from her and turned into pigs. We talked a lot with Jimbob about the different metaphors that are hidden beneath this film's many, many layers, as well as how this seemed to draw interesting plot structure to a lot of 80's dark fantasies. And of course, the man, the myth, the legend himself, Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli & director himself.  All of that and more on today's episode of Talkin' TV!!!