DISCLAIMER: Spirited Away, etc. all belong to the wonderful Hayao Miyazaki! Etc.
Author's Note: I've been revising my work lately, and an editing/revising all four of them. This, as of 5/11/07, is the newer version of "In Remembrance."
Enjoy! Please review!!
Differences Between the Japanese and English Versions of Spirited Away
"Although Miyazaki himself claims that Chihiro doesn't remember what happened, there is a line added at the end of the English dub which makes it appear that Chihiro does in fact remember what happened in the spirit world."
-excerpt from the section "Differences between the Japanese and English Version" article on Miyazaki's Spirited Away from http://en. What if Chihiro really did never remembered her time in the Spirit World? A case where Chihiro is be spelled to forget, and the spirits who remember her long for her return.
From Rin
I distinctly remember the day when Sen left the Aburaya.
She'd freed herself from Yubaba's clutches by passing her final test, (to find her pig parents in a group of those large bovines), and was laughing and smiling brightly, so much so that it was almost like she had a spirit's aura herself, even if she was a human. After thanking all of us for her time here, she ran across the bridge, and she left, with Haku escorting her.
Done.
End of story.
I'm crying right now, as I scrub one of the tubs adjacent to the large one she and I used to scrub before she left.
I miss her so much!
The time we spent together, even if it was only three human days...to me, it felt like the dreams of a long sleep, where I was resting peacefully.
Because for the first time I could remember, I had someone who actually needed me.
You can try and tell me, "But the patrons of the bath house and your Yuuna friends needed you!" But we both know that's not true, not in the same way. Sen was different, to everyone. It might have been because she was human, a fact that made most single her out, yet when it comes down to it, it was because of her own spirit, her fire, her determination to save her foolish parents.
I remember when I asked her about the human world, and her life there. She nonchalantly talked about the customs and lifestyles of the various peoples, but what really stuck with me was the look in her eyes when she talked about her parents. I had never felt so, so jealous before...it was then I realized that I actually cared about Sen, not just as a friend, but as family; as the little baby sister I never had, left to me by unknown parents for me to have and to hold...to keep. That night I nearly went to one of my foreman friends who guarded the pigs, to ask him to make them into pork, just so Sen would stay here. And be mine.
From Kamaji
She was just a little thing, when she stumbled into my boiler room, watching from the shadows as I worked. Her brown eyes were large in an emaciated face, her hair limp from the Kamis know what, and trembling.
What really made me notice Sen, though, was her determination to find a job here in this horrible place, this stupid aburaya, where the evil hag Yubaba reigned supreme. Then Rin came, and as she led the child away, a funny feeling overcame me, and I shrugged it off.
Over the next few days, she was the one, instead of Rin, who served me my dishes, and as one of her superiors, I had her sit and talk with me while I labored endlessly to keep the scents coming for the baths of our patrons. We would converse about various things, I suppose; my memory of those times is fading, something I greatly fear...
I shudder in horror at such thoughts, thoughts that come to me in the day when I sleep, even when I work, which usually makes me forget...
Forget that she's gone, and is not coming back...
I can't recall crying before, not even when I was a young spirit, but as I prepare the scents for the baths, I can feel that my face is wet, and I know deep in my heart, that these tears are for her.
For Sen.
From Yubaba
I remember the day I had found it.
Night had fallen and I had reached my office on the top floor of my bath house. Wrapping my wings around me to return myself to my dress and cloak, I had grumbled irritably as I move to sit in the lavishly decorated office in my quarters. Taking out my quill and ink stone, I'd set to work filling out and reviewing the many papers on my desk, my cigarette flute dangling from my lips.
It was here that I saw, buried under several sheets, a yellow, wrinkled contract, with the characters of a name I would never forget scrawled across the bottom in a shaky hand.
Chihiro Ogino it says in a mocking manner. Sen.
Pursing my lips, I had gazed at the deteriorating sheet, and reminisced about the short time she was here.
I have never gone by human time; (it was an insult to such a powerful spirit such as myself to do so), but during the time she was here, I found myself depending on it more and more, especially after the incident with that powerful river spirit.
I had never had much respect for her before than during that time; so much so that afterwards it made no difference to me whether or not she was or wasn't human, although my attitude might have suggested otherwise...
You'll never hear the words pass from my lips, but I miss the little brat.
Boh does too; I can see it in the way he plays with his toys, one in particular.
After Sen, (she will always be that to me...it was the name I gave her after all!!) My darling baby went into a depression of sorts.
He had begun to mature, (probably the influence of dratted Zeniba), and was now thinner, but more...more listless, and not as satisfied as he once was.
He wouldn't eat much, only play with his food, and his numerous toys remained in the trunk he had stored them in upon his return from my sister's cottage.
It was during the roughest parts of this stage, (where he would cry silently in the night, hugging only his pillows close and never speaking to me or anyone), that he voluntarily came forward, and confessed that he missed Sen. I suppose I had sort of known; but he had known her so shortly! How could such a bond develop so fast?
The request he had made next surprised me greatly.
"I want Sen...but she has gone back to her own world. I want you to make me a lifelike doll of her, with different clothes for me to dress her in, and everything she would need in real life too! If I can't have her for a playmate...then I will have the next best thing!"
Although there were times I had loathed her, I missed her presence greatly. We all did; even the staff members who had at first hated her so intensely!
It was during the silent moments like these, when I gazed at her contract, (now stored safely in my desk drawer with my personal gold), that I wished she would stumble through my doors and become one of us again.
From the Spirits of the Bath House and their Patrons
The day that human girl Sen came to us, we though of her as a mere mortal, unworthy of a position here in our world.
We will never deny this; our suspicions toward humans rule our lives greatly, but it is only from our past experiences with them why we have always been affected so.
Most spirits who were not there during the time we worked with Sen will not understand; will sometimes even deny that she was here at all, and that no one could ever be fond of a mere human.
How wrong they were.
After the dreaded stink spirit incident, and the one with Noh-Face as well, we had come to look at Sen just like another member of the bath house.
Master Haku had been right; once her stench had disappeared, she could be tolerated, and once she was tolerated...well, not even he could predict what happened next.
I can imagine what your thinking; how could such prejudiced spirits come to love and adore a human as once of their own?
We will never know how, only that it did happen; she was here; and we all miss her.
Greatly.
We hope she will return...because if she does not, then only the Greater Spirits know what will happen to all of us.
From Zeniba
It is the eve of my surrogate granddaughter's arrival in this world and in my house tonight, and I am a busy witch, indeed.
I'm not sure how many years have passed since the time of her departure, but each year that passes here, I light a candle in the window, her favorite scent, chamomile, and knit. And stitch. And sew.
After she left, the hair tie I and her friends made for her snugly tied around her pony tail, I began to have strange dreams. When I went to talk to an old shaman friend about them, he told me to write them down before I could forget, but the truth was, I could never forget the things I saw.
She was growing up.
After about twenty-one of the dreams, I had sat down and read what I had written mindlessly in the dregs of my sleep.
The first seven were of her in a sheer white building with the words "Azara Prepatory School" written in bold lettering in the front. She was wearing a white sailor blouse with a red sailor's scarf and a dark purple skirt that went only to her knees. In some of them, she was laughing and smiling with other humans her age, or talking with a thin lanky boy who sometimes ran with other human boys around a large field with white markings on it. Other times she would be with her parents, who, I saw, often fought and yelled at each other, most of the time about dear Chihiro, events that always seemed to make her cry silently in her locked up room.
I hated those with a passion.
The second set of seven had her in an even larger building, this time in a city called "Kyoto", where she attended a school called "Tennyo High School", and she was always alone. By this time, her hair had grown longer, and was still tied back with my band. But oh how she had changed! The scrawny child I had once known was taller, her skin paler, and her womanly frame thinner than her childish one. Almost too thin, actually. By this time too, her home was in a place called the Hinata Apartments, where she lived alone and worked in a nearby bar as a waitress...that is, when she wasn't working in the supermarket where the locals purchased their food stuffs. It was in the last of this set of seven, that I discovered her parents had died, violently too, in something called a "car crash". I had nearly blown up the cottage then, as I recall. How it happened made me so furious.
Her parents had been arguing, about her again, in the car on a dark, stormy night. They had just come from dinner, and Chihiro was only fourteen, on the cusp of adulthood. Her father and mother were slightly drunk, having had at most two glasses of wine each, and her father was swerving dangerously on the road. They never made it back to the house. Akio Ogino had swerved too hard and had gone off the should her of the road, into the dense foliage, crashing the car so horribly that he and Yuuko both died instantly when the front of the car smashed into a large tree, sending it into flames.
And because Chihiro had been wearing my band, she came out injured, but alive.
The last set of seven dreams I can barely speak about, because they always make me cry; Noh Face, who usually read with me, would cry too, and beg me to make Chihiro return. Because by now Chihiro was twenty, in a place called "Tokyo University" and was dying.
At the hands of herself.
From Kohaku Nigiyami Nushi
After I left Yubaba, I went in search of my river. This of course, was anticipated by everyone, so they wished me luck, and I left.
End of story, right?
Not in an eternity.
Leaving the bath house was leaving Chihiro.
My human.
The one who, (dare I say it?), love with all my spirit heart.
I am floating now, floating in my restored river, (something the humans nearby had fixed, apparently, after a fire destroyed the apartments there years ago), and thinking of her again.
I miss her so much, it hurts.
It is night now, and rain and thunder come out to play. Changing into my dragon form, I leap to the sky, winding around the lightning and water droplets.
And as a particularly loud crash sounds, I roar her name in my dragon tongue, and express my anguish that she is not there.
Come back, Chihiro...
From Chihiro
Today is the day.
Walking from my rundown car into the graveyard near my old blue house on the hill, I kneel in front of my parents' graves, stroking the characters of their names on their head stones.
Eight long years have past, and I am now in college, I tell them softly, sitting cross-legged on the ground in my shabby, patched black clothing. It is all I can afford on my salary now, especially with payments for college and the like.
I am studying to be a pediatrician, I continue dutifully, giving them all the details.
I have always felt I have wronged them somehow.
After the blurry excursion we had in the abandoned theme park, I felt very different from what I had been in what seemed like moments before, but what turned out to be three days. How odd...
Since then, I became a hard worker; I did my chores, cooking, cleaning, studying, and the like. My parents were so proud of my new maturity.
I hated it, because it felt like I should be working on something else.
This continued on for several months, and as my grades increased, I began to receive offers to go to schools of higher learning.
Dad was all for it. "Anything for his little girl!" He used to say.
But mom...mom was different. She wanted the best for me, don't get me wrong, but she was very worried about the amount of money we had, and claimed that even if I received a scholarship, it wouldn't be affordable.
And me? Sure, it would be exciting to learn new things, go to new places! But mom and I were practical people, and the last thing I wanted was to strain the lifestyle we had become accustomed to.
This argument was the cause of their deaths, as you can probably see.
Not directly, but it was because of this argument that more arguments popped up, and over the silliest things too, like the cost of rice or mom's ohagi addiction.
I'm sorry, I whisper to their graves, leaving a solitary white rose in front of each. It was all I could afford.
Getting up, I move my weary body toward the bordering forest.
Walking slowly past the small gray and brown spirit shrines, I move along the wooded path toward the odd theme park entrance, and stop.
So many memories... I whisper sadly.
If only...I had convinced them properly that I didn't require higher education, that the public schools were enough.
If only...I had stopped the other arguments.
If only...if only...
A wind blows out from behind me, pushing me gently, it seems, toward the long, dark tunnel. Making my way past the two faced guardian, I slowly walk toward the other side, feeling more and more tired by the minute.
As I pass, my memories seem to file through my eyes one by one, and I cherish the looks of happiness, sadness, anger, and love from friends and family alike.
By the end of the memory reel, I have reached the green fields, and can see the small town of restaurants and the bath house from over the hill.
Walking in the direction in which the wind blows me, the sun setting as I walk forward, I feel very heavy, and strange.
Voices are whispering on the wind...Sen...Sen...where are you, Sen? They whisper in such anguish it nearly makes me cry. If only I could find this "Sen" so they could stop crying…
The last rays of light fade away, and I have fallen to the ground. My eyes are heavy, and as they close on me, I whisper in my mind, that I wish this Sen person can find their way back to those voices...those sad voices.
From the Wards
At the very same moment Chihiro Ogino breathed her last breath and her body underwent rigor mortis, a certain white scaled, green eyes dragon swept through the air to investigate the breaching of the wards.
Not even a week ago spirit time had he returned to Yubaba and the bath house, to work as chairman and partial owner, when this occurred. The moment it happened, all the spirits stopped their work or relaxation to gaze out of windows across the bridge toward the direction of the giant clock tower. After no one moved for ten minutes, Yubaba herself came down and silently urged Haku to check the disturbance.
Flying overhead, he frowned mentally as he saw the spirits who usually dinned at the numerous restaurants line up in the streets like an honor guard of sorts.
Curious, he thought absently.
When he reached the bank of the river on the side of the Aburaya, he gasped and turned into his humanoid form before landing, running toward the drenched feminine body floating on the shoreline. His eyes widened in surprise.
From the Aburaya
After twenty minutes when Haku had not returned, the staff still remained in their frozen positions. By this time, Kamaji and Rin stood side by side with the Yuuna and amphibian staff, gazing out across the bridge in to the rising full moon.
A few minutes later, Haku's powerful humanoid form crossed over, a limp body in his arms. As soon as he stepped onto the bridge, the object in his arms glowed white, and faded, turning into translucent butterflies.
And at his side, beaming, her hair in its traditional pony tail, except longer, and her now healthy body clothed in a white kimono, Chihiro Ogino, called Sen, smiled and linked arms with her dragon friend.
Crossing the bridge, the newly inducted spirit's clothing gained the colors of her previous working clothes at the Aburaya, the standard pink and blue. As soon as the pair reached the other side, Rin, Kamaji, Yubaba, and the bath house patrons and staff crowded the young female spirit.
"Sen! Sen!"
"You came back," whispered Rin, hugging her tightly.
"We missed you, Sen!" Kamaji said, his broad smile taking up half his face.
"Its about time you returned, Sen!"
"Sen is back! Will she play with Boh again?"
"Sen! Sen!"
And Sen, once known as Chihiro Ogino, smiled tearfully.
Hugging her friends and new family back, she re entered the Aburaya with them.
And from her position n the clock tower, Zeniba smiled tearfully.
The portal may have made Chihiro Ogino forget them, but the spirits would always remember her.
And this remembrance...this true love, would always bring her back to them.
Always.