Chihiro Ogino
Chihiro Ogino (荻野 千尋, Ogino Chihiro), referred throughout most of the film by Sen (千 lit. "one-thousand"), is the ten-year-old core protagonist of the Japanese animated film, Spirited Away. She is voice by Rumi Hiiragi in the original Japanese version and is voiced by Daveigh Chase in the English dub (who also voiced Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch).
Appearance[edit | edit source]
Chihiro is a ten-year-old girl who has brown hair, brown eyes, and rosy cheeks. She is very petite and has a childish appearance, and a pudgy face. Her attire includes a white medium-sleeved T-shirt with bright green stripes, bright red shorts, white socks and sunshine yellow velcro sneakers. While working in the bath house, she is barefoot and wears a coral colored kariginu robe with a white hitoe underneath and short sashinuki pants, as well as a tasuki cord for tying her sleeves up.
In an interview regarding Chihiro's character design, Hayao Miyazaki informs the audience that "[He] created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. It's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. [He] wants [his] young friends to live like that, and [he] thinks they, too, have such a wish."
Personality[edit | edit source]
Chihiro's growth into a capable individual is a core factor to the movement of Spirited Away's plot. During her adventure in the Spirit World, she matures from an easily scared girl with a childlike personality to match her age to a hard-working, responsible, and brave young girl who has learned to put her fears aside for those she cares for. To protect her friends and rescue her parents from a spell that has turned them into livestock, Chihiro sheds her former personality and adapts to her environment to become a courageous, caring, quick-witted and reliable girl.
Chihiro was based on a real-life girl: the then-ten-year-old daughter of a friend of Miyazaki's. This girl also made Miyazaki continue working after promising retirement from filmmaking after Princess Mononoke.
