Geraci: Spirited Away

Taken from Visocki.wordpress.com

Spirited Away is one of Hayao Miyazaki's masterpieces. His use of the film to make the audience think of complex issues such as the environment, human greed, and desecration of or indifference to Japanese religion and tradition is just beautiful. In the beginning of the film, Chihiro and her family are moving to a new house in a new neighborhood. They get lost on the way, and while they are driving on the "short-cut," the pass small temples that are meant to house little spirits. However, the houses are in disrepair and have not seemed to be taken care of properly in a long time. This shows one aspect of people's indifference to Japanese tradition. This shows the people's disrespect toward the spirits who used the houses. At the end of the road was what seemed like an abandoned theme park. Chihiro's parents found some food on a counter unattended, and decided to just dig in. They were stuffing their faces with so much food that they turned into pigs by a magical spell. In this scene, Miyazaki is demonstrating what greed can and will turn us into, if we are not careful. When Chihiro could not get back to the other side of the river, and back to the human realm, Haku came to her rescue and helped her get a job at the bath house. She made a deal with Yubaba, the witch in charge of the bath house, and signed her name over to her. While she is there, most of the spirits working there did not like her because she was human. They knew what humans did to the human realm, and they did not like that one bit because it had sever affects in the spirit realm. While working at the bath house, a customer came that smelled awful. Yubaba thought it might have been a stink spirit, and she sent Chihiro to help him out. While she was helping to clean the spirit, she noticed what seemed to be a thorn in the spirit's side. Chihiro helped remove the object from the side and it turned out to be a lo of junk. The stink spirit was actually a river god! This scene clearly show how human pollution is hurting our environment physically and spiritually.  

Geraci: Nausicaa: Of The Valley of The Wind

Taken from Cosplayhouse

Nausicaa is the young princess of her kingdom which lies in the Valley of the Wind. She is a strong willed girl, and is not afraid of what she has to do to protect her kingdom. While there are soldiers in the kingdom, she is the one who does the most in terms of defense for her kingdom. There are very few things that scare Nausicaa, the main thing is letting her people be destroyed by the Toxic Jungle or rampaging Ohmu. She does not seem to fear for her own life from what we see in the scene when she stands in front of the Ohmu to return their baby and appease their anger. When the cargo plane is going down over the Toxic Jungle, she takes off her mask to calm down the guards from her village. When the Tolumekian army comes to the Valley, the guards and Nausicaa try to fight them off, but then Nausicaa stops the fighting because her father was killed and she did not want anyone else she loved to die. Nausicaa is an explorer type, and she is not afraid to go into the Toxic Jungle to look around and collect things her village needs, but is not readily available. She has a kind and caring heart, which allows her to save people who threaten her Valley. She does not care if the person or insect she is defending will turn around and attack her because she was raised to fight for those who need her help. Even though she is a young princess, she maintains a warrior for peace mentality. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind shows the complex relationship between people, people and nature, and royalty and their people. There is a balance to be upheld, and Nausicca is the one to do it.