Miyazaki's Love Letter

The last year, maybe year and a half, I was thinking about this one thought — that Hayao Miyazaki’s movies are sort of a manifestation, a love letter to regular women who demonstrate strength not through exercising power or physical abilities, but by drawing it from love and care for the people and things they care about the most.

In Nausicaä, we see a little girl who believes in the friendly intent of nature, standing between her people and a seemingly hostile world, establishing peace through sacrificing herself for the things she loves. Similarly, in Spirited Away, Chihiro takes care of her family and her friends, starting as a person who doesn’t care much about anything but herself. She is a child, after all — moving from one city to another, new school and so on. Why would you expect any different? But then she grows through hard labor and a bunch of obstacles. She demonstrates care for people you wouldn’t expect her to care about — Lin, the girl she met in the bathhouse who became her friend, then even Yubaba’s baby, then Haku. They were all a little hostile towards her at first, and still that pulling desire to help, to save the day.