Always With Me

Doodled a fast Chihiro because watching the movie again made me wanna draw her~

Hello~ Your wonderful host/discussion/person who awkwardly sits in front of you hoping you all want to talk about the movie you just watched here~ I think we had a really great start to the Signs and Wonders season, and I can't wait to see the further dialogue generated in the blogs.
Most of all, I was super excited that for many of you this was your first time seeing this movie. Its my third, and I can say that this movie definitely gets better the more you watch it. I picked up on a lot that I didn't the first two times - I'll admit, the first time I watched it I was horribly unimpressed with the film as a whole, I thought the plot was a muddled mess and that things were solved too easily. And yet everyone praised it almost unanimously, I was ashamed that I didn't feel the same way.
Even now, I can't say that its my favorite Miyazaki movie. But there is a distinct difference between personal favorite and the 'best'. Favorites can be liked for many reasons, and when something is your favorite you can easily ignore flaws (if anyone was curious, my favorite Miyazaki movie is a tie between Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky).
This latest viewing though has definitely, at least for me, assured that this is Miyazaki's best.
One of the biggest problems in this movie for me when I first watched it was that Chihiro seemed to become a better person too easily, and came to solutions with no effort. Watching it this time I focused on her progression from a selfish brat to a heroine, and it can be hard to track because being thrown in that environment changes her naturally and at times subtly (especially when you are distracted by all the other things happening, like No-Face's subplot), but it was by no means easy. I tried to put myself in her shoes, and I realized that I took for granted so many things she did. Climbing down those stairs to get to Kamaji? She was so terrified that she had to slowly skooch along. Not only that, but trusting the word of someone you don't know, in a place you don't belong. Believing in Haku had to be so difficult, especially when she found out about what the others thought about him. And yet without him she would not have even made it through the first night.
The first time I watched the movie I also didn't understand how Chihiro was able to solve Yubaba's final test, but I have a theory now. Zeniba tells Chihiro that you never truly forget anyone if you've met them. Haku showed Chihiro which pigs were her parents, so according to what the film told us she would have remembered. I still don't know if that's the solution, or if the fact that she even could solve it makes sense, but I know that this time I was rooting for her. When I watched it the first time I was frustrated that she got out of a seemingly difficult test so easily, and felt like she just was able to do so because she was the main character and this had to end happily. This time I was a lot like all of the bathhouse workers, waiting in nervous anticipation. I had seen all that Chihiro had gone through, how much she had grown, and I believed in her to know what to do. I wanted her to be able to get her parents back, because she had worked so hard to get to this point.
Chihiro is a great character, and I think Miyazaki created an amazing role model for young girls around the world.