No Face in Spirited Away

Going along with what John has shown us in class, I recently re-watched Spirited Away, the Japanese anime created by Hayao Miyazaki. Interestingly, I found a character really similar to the monster portrayed in the video John shows us. The character's name is No Face. In the movie, he wanders around but he cannot speak because he is a ghost. But after the protagonist Chihiro lets him into the bathhouse, he begins to eat people and takes over their voices. In a way, he begins to take over the identities of the people he eats. He is a monster, but at the same time, he can also make gold. Because of that, people love him, thinking that he will give them gold if they can satisfy his appetite. Eventually, his appetite becomes so large that food cannot satisfy him anymore. And he starts to eat people who gets in his way to see Chihiro.

I cannot find a clip that shows the entire sequence on youtube, but this is a taste of how No Face looks like.




Of course, No Face is not exactly the same as the monster or Little Otik as he only eats greedy people, but I find it interesting that Japanese culture, especially animation, has so much to do with cannibalism and consumption. It is, for sure, no pure incidence, and I am certainly interested to talk more about this.