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Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese director of animated films and co-founder of an animation studio and production company, came out of retirement to write and direct Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. Miyazaki based the story on his friend and the friend's daughter.

According to Ghibli sources, Chihiro is 10 years old, Haku is about 12 or 13, Lin is about 16, Chihiro's mother is 35, and her father is 38.

The story line is tight enough to determine that Chihiro was in the spirit world for three nights—in spirit-world time. There are many differing opinions about how long that was in human-world time.

Viewers have many different interpretations of this character, including theories about a symbol of greed, a relation to noh theater, a symbol for multiple personality, and even some people say that this character represents a lustful man who looks for sexual services, as if the bath house was in fact a brothel. However, as Hayao Miyazaki stated in an interview, No-Face is a homeless wanderer god (non existent in Japanese folklore) that in fact represents the contemporary Japan, the Japan in which people think that money will make them happy.

Lin is a fox, the radish spirit is a radish, Yubaba and Zeniba are witches and ravens, Haku and the supposed "stink spirit" are river spirits and dragons, Kamagi is a spider and most of the other spirits are various plants and animals. The shadows at the train stops are human souls departing to the next life from the human world. Boh is a giant baby. The paper birds are Shikigami. The foreman is a large frog.

Greed and selfishness. Notice that all they wanted was the gold. When they found out that No-Face was a "monster", all they wanted was to save their own skins.

Not according to Hayao Miyazaki. The source is an interview with him in the film pamphlet sold in theaters during the film's first run in 2001. He did, however, make a distinction that not recalling an incident is not the same as forgetting it. He raised the possibility that the memory could always come back to her at a later time. However, one of the major modifications to the film's script in the English dub is an extra line that implies that Chihiro does remember the events of the film and is now much stronger in spirit for her adventure. The English script was approved by Studio Ghibli.

Kamaji says this because Zeniba put a spell on Haku to slowly kill him, in revenge since Haku stole her gold seal. "Bleeding from the inside" means bleeding internally; since Haku swallowed the seal it is inside of him and it's causing his internal organs to hemorrhage. The "paper birds" are Shikigami, spirits trapped in paper created by Zeniba.