This paper explores the Japanese anime Spirited Away, which was created by Studio Ghibli in 2001 and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The paper examines anime as a medium and as a social phenomena. To the reader, it presents distinct features of Japanese society and mythology. Spirited away is an adventure filled with elements of fantasy and the supernatural. Because of this, it offers unique insight into how Japanese mythological symbols work as a critique of contemporary Japanese’s society. Despite of it being a specific genre with regional characteristics, it paradoxically achieved global popularity. The main theoretical substance for this paper is the work by Roland Barthes Mythologies, semiotics, some concepts of film studies and a previous semiotic analysis of Spirited away done by Okuyama Yoshiko. There are two main motifs in the anime. The first is faith and social retreat from god against the culture of indulgence. The second motif is the development of the main character. The goal in this paper is to uncover the key messages in the anime movie by analyzing the motifs and to interpret their meaning in the context of its global popularity.
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