Spirited Away taps into Chinese nostalgia

The animated film Spirited Away is becoming a huge box-office success on the Chinese mainland 18 years after its original release in Japan, drawing in a legion of nostalgic moviegoers who once watched the film from non-official sources.

The Hayao Miyazaki-directed film took in 192.7 million yuan ($28 million) after three days of screening in China, more than double of 90.7 million yuan taken in by runner-up Toy Story 4, according to the China Movie Data Information Network. Both films debuted on the Chinese mainland on Friday.

The Oscar-winning fantasy film tells the coming-of-age story of a young girl, Chihiro, who ventures into a spirit world to save her parents who have been turned into pigs. Many Chinese had already watched the film via DVD or online, but that did not stop them from returning to the cinemas.

A manager of a Capital Cinema branch in Beijing says the film's patrons were mostly those in their 20s and 30s seeking to revive their childhood memories, and some came in with children.

"The cinema screened this film over 20 times a day during the weekend to meet the huge demand. More than 90 percent of the seats were booked," the manager says.

Zhao Xiaoyu, a resident of East China's Shandong province, says she rushed to a cinema after work on Friday and stayed in the seat even after the last song started to play.

"I was immediately transported back to the time when my college roommates and I sat before the only computer in the dormitory to watch the film 15 years ago. I remembered it took a long time for the movie to be downloaded because of the slow network," she says.

Miyazaki, who is also a leading animator in Japan, boasts a following in China. Spirited Away, which scored 9.3 of 10 on China's major film rating platform Douban, is deemed a masterpiece.

"I watched it by VCD at the age of 6 and have since wished to see it in the cinema," says a Sina Weibo user.

"This movie accompanied me as I grew up. I will surely go to the theater to pay tribute to my youth," comments another netizen.

Lu Jianing, associate professor with the School of Theater, Film and Television at the Communication University of China, says Japanese animated films including those of Miyazaki have attracted several generations of Chinese.

While China introduced Japanese animation in the late 1970s, it was only after the turn of the century that Chinese youngsters became familiar with the genre.

Wang Yuhui, a film PhD student from Hokkaido University in Japan, says many Chinese born in the 1980s and '90s harbored a nostalgic feeling toward Japanese animation that figured prominently in their childhood.

Spirited Away is not the first Japanese movie to draw success from China's nostalgic moviegoers. In 2015, Japanese 3D animated film Stand by Me Doraemon became the then top-grossing Japanese film in China with a box office of 530 million yuan. Last year, My Neighbor Totoro became the first Miyazaki film to hit Chinese mainland screens, 30 years after its original debut in 1988.

Xinhua

(China Daily Global 06/27/2019 page16)