Understand the setup: the move, a sulky ten-year-old Chihiro, the tunnel as the border between worlds, and the first rules broken.
Where it all begins
The girl who didn't want to come here
The film opens in the back seat of a car. Ten-year-old Chihiro (full name Chihiro Ogino) is moving to a new town with her parents, and she is angry: she is saying goodbye to her old school, crumpling the farewell card and bouquet her friends gave her. It's an important detail of her character — at the start, Chihiro is whiny, listless, afraid of everything, and wants nothing. The whole film is the story of how she changes.
Her father turns off the road and takes a shortcut through the woods. The car comes out at a strange building with a tunnel. Above the entrance is old stonework, and in the grass nearby sits a moss-covered stone figure (a dosojin, a roadside guardian deity of the kind placed at borders in Japan). This is the first sign: they have reached a BORDER.
The parents are curious and walk into the tunnel despite their daughter's worry. Chihiro doesn't want to go and clings to her mom, but she follows — she can't stay behind by herself. The tunnel leads out to what seems to be an abandoned park.
Lesson notes
The girl who didn't want to come here
The film opens in the back seat of a car. Ten-year-old Chihiro (full name Chihiro Ogino) is moving to a new town with her parents, and she is angry: she is saying goodbye to her old school, crumpling the farewell card and bouquet her friends gave her. It's an important detail of her character — at the start, Chihiro is whiny, listless, afraid of everything, and wants nothing. The whole film is the story of how she changes.
Her father turns off the road and takes a shortcut through the woods. The car comes out at a strange building with a tunnel. Above the entrance is old stonework, and in the grass nearby sits a moss-covered stone figure (a dosojin, a roadside guardian deity of the kind placed at borders in Japan). This is the first sign: they have reached a BORDER.
The parents are curious and walk into the tunnel despite their daughter's worry. Chihiro doesn't want to go and clings to her mom, but she follows — she can't stay behind by herself. The tunnel leads out to what seems to be an abandoned park.