Trivia.

My first and favorite Studio Ghibli film - Spirited Away - was first seen with a Chinese dub. The only anime I had seen then in completion was Cardcaptors and Zoids. I’ll never forget it, the subtitles were pretty messed up as well, “uncles and grandfathers” everywhere. Of course the whole world created was the most fantastical I’d have ever witnessed (perhaps only surpassed by Final Fantasy the Ninth), so I went along with it. My mother’d come home from work, I from school, and she handed me this white cd with Spirited Away written rather hastily in orange highlighter. I normally didn’t watch what my mother gave me, especially since she’d given me Reservoir Dogs a few months prior; needless to say, it wasn’t a film perfect for the malleable eyes of a ten year old. But it was still bright out, and even for a mind capable of formulating the most dark and twisted of nightmares, a source of light proved to surpass any level of fear I might dream up. Thus I gathered what courage I had been able to scavenge and played the movie in my room - is anyone ever comfortable being observed while immersing themselves into another universe? Spirited Away, or as it had been subtitled “The Witch Lady” proved to be the most treasures of the little possessions I owned. The movie may have been jumpy, the dubbing may have sounded like the works of grouchy women, the subtitles may have been a grammatical failure, but simply for the visuals and storytelling, there was no way I could not hold the film in high regard. Accompanying the work of imagination was a score composed by Joe Hisaishi - and there are no words, or I am experience a limit on a vernacular front, to describe the way he orchestrates a soundtrack to act as a Bonnie to Clyde, an ebony to an ivory. Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember Japanese being an option at the time for audio, but the language seemed so foreign, so I opted for familiarity I guess. Watching the film again for the first time in almost a decade, I feel overwhelmed with nostalgia. Oh, if I took better care of my DVDs.