In writing, the first thing I do is come up with a claim. Then, I figure out different ways to support my claim. The most common way is to incorporate multiple kinds of evidence. It crucial to use various types of supporting evidences because they all offer different perspectives and can be used for different purposes.  

For my Major Paper 2, I analyzed the Japanese animated film, Spirited Away. My understanding of the film was that it provides “the audience with a reflection of today’s society. The obstacles [the protagonist] encounters in her journey make us ponder upon the modern society's problems such as materialism, greed/consumerism and environmental pollution” (Lee 1). In order to support and elaborate on this claim, I used the various resources. I incorporated the director’s commentary and a scholarly journal to give the readers an in-depth analysis of the character in the film. Also, a statistical evidence was used to prove a point. 

The DVD of Spirited Away had a bonus feature of the director’s commentary on the film. This was immensely helpful for me because I got to understand his intention behind the creation of each character. For example, he said in the commentary that the scene with the Stink God character was inspired by his own experience of cleaning a local river (Miyazaki). This commentary solidified my claim that the Stink God character is the reflection of the polluted nature and its purpose is to raise awareness of environmental pollution among the audience.  

When the director’s commentary was used to confirm that I was on the right track of interpreting the purpose of the character, a scholarly journal article about Spirited Away provided me a deeper analysis of the character. The scholarly article that I used was “Matter Out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away” by Susan Napier. In the article, Napier analyzed how each character in the movie is the representation of the modern society’s issues by explaining their actions. For example, she claims that No Face suggests a modern society "that is out of control, lacking in subjectivity, unable to connect with others and animated only by the empty urge to consume" (Napier 305). And then she said that the reason No Face feels so empty after eating everything he possibly can is because he possesses "no real sense of self and unable to communicate effectively" (Napier 304). I used her interpretation of No Face to argue that people consume so much these days because they feel empty inside. Then, I took it further and suggested a solution to stop feeling empty. As No Face shows us, massive consumption is not the right solution. Instead, “people must acknowledge their emptiness, try to identify the origin of such feeling… and share their feelings” (Lee 4).  

I added a statistical evidence to the part where I talked about the credit card debt problem in modern society. I included information about the number of credit card holders, the average credit card debt of U.S. household and etc. Not only do these statistical facts give more accurate information, but they also make the readers realize the seriousness of the credit card debt problem in our society. 

The most valuable lesson that I learned from this assignment was how to cite different sources. The MLA citation for this assignment is more complex than other assignments that we did for this class because I used various sources that range from an animated film to a scholarly article to an on-line article to a statistical evidence. Having the MLA citation down is crucial for many reasons: 1) you want to give credit to authors whose works you have used, 2) it is a strategy to avoid plagiarizing,  3) it provides evidence of your research. Also, it is important to have the right the in-text MLA citation because your readers can quickly follow the citations to the reference page and then, locate any sources that might be of interest to them. 

I really enjoyed this assignment. Writing about my all-time favorite film itself was fun, but through researching and reading different sources, I was able to gain more in-depth understanding of the film and write about it. Also, the MLA citation strategy was a valuable lesson that I can use for my future writings.