Spirited Away has been aptly compared
to both Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard
of Oz. Like both Alice and Dorothy, Chihiro gets lost in
a fantastical world where she meets odd characters, who alternately
help and hinder her adventure. Food constantly changes Alice’s body,
just as it changes bodies in Spirited Away: It
turns Chihiro’s parents into pigs and it saves Chihiro’s life. Words
and word games confuse and enlighten Alice, and words play a big
role in Chihiro’s adventure as well. Thematically, Spirited
Away most resembles The Wizard of Oz. While
Alice goes looking for adventure to escape the boredom of a lazy
day with her sister, Chihiro and Dorothy are thrust unwillingly
into their strange new worlds and want only to go home. Unlike Alice,
who encounters other characters only briefly, Chihiro forms deep
friendships in her new world, just as Dorothy does in Oz with the
Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion. At the end of Spirited
Away, Chihiro finds that what she needs to get home has
been inside her all along. She summons her inner strength just as
Dorothy does when she clicks the heels of her ruby slippers.
