Spirited Away

Plot hole: When her father is taking the "shortcut" he somehow doesn't need to shift gears even though he has a manual transmission. At the speed he was at he should be in at least 2nd gear.

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Continuity mistake: To the right of Kamaji on the wooden decking, there are two folded purple sheets on top of each other, clearly visible in the overhead shot when he yells "You sootballs got a problem?! Now get back to work!" However, when Chihiro and Lin leave and Chihro thanks Kamaji, when he says "Good luck," you can see that it is now a purple sheet on top of a blue sheet. (00:27:20 - 00:29:10)

Hamster

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Yubaba: Oh, my baby! Are you all right? Are you emotionally tramautized?

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Trivia: The idea of having the bath house workers clean the river spirit came from an experience Hayao Miyazaki had when he was younger, where he helped clean a polluted river and one of the items removed from it was a bicycle.

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Question: On the DVD, there are two sets of subtitles. One follows what is being said closely and includes sound effects. The other follows the general idea of what the characters are saying, but the sentences are written differently. What is the purpose of the second one? Also, why do even the accurate subtitles show Lin as Rin, Zeniba as Zaneba and Kohaku River as Kalaku River?

Susan Kirk

Chosen answer: This is probably because one track follows a near direct translation from Japanese, while the other subtitle track follows Japanese more loosely but is one that a westerner can relate to better. A normal western person who never had any experience with Japanese would be puzzled why there are sound effects in the text, that is because Japanese has a lot of specific sound effects for many thing, like the sound of someone walking and makes a quick stop, the sound of someone becoming shy etc. And as with Lin and Rin, these are pronounced the same way in Japan.

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