The effect of anime on creativity in the context of critical thinking: The example of studio ghibli's spirited away

Anime, beyond being a component that forms the popular culture today, is a narrative and media tool with a multilayered structure in terms of creativity and critical thinking, combining cultural, psychological, and aesthetic elements. The animation of the Japanese nation is a form of visual storytelling through which the Japanese nation blends its unique cultural elements and presents them in alignment with national consciousness. The development of this national consciousness is embedded in the Japanese education system, which has evolved from the past to the present. Among anime studios, the productions of Studio Ghibli offer a critical perspective while entertaining viewers. The films of Hayao Miyazaki, one of Studio Ghibli's founders and directors, are works that stand against commodification in terms of their textual and emotional integrity and take into account universal and cultural codes. Miyazaki has blended the intensity of critical power with creativity, thus elevating his narratives to a deeper and more refined level. Critical thinking refers to certain mental activities such as reasoning, inference, association, and analysis; whereas creativity is the ability to think flexibly and to exhibit original ideas or products that are unconventional. This indicates a point of intersection between creativity and critical thinking. While creativity involves generating an original idea or product, critical thinking evaluates what already exists. This shows that creativity cannot occur without critical thinking. Therefore, critical thinking is essential for creativity. The aim of this study is to contribute new knowledge to national and international literature and to examine the impact of anime on creativity within the context of critical thinking through the film Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. In this research, a study on critical thinking and creativity was conducted by watching Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away movie with a total of 31 volunteer participants from Ankara Music and Fine Arts University and Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. Fifteen participants are students in Ankara University of Music and Fine Arts, and sixteen in Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. The voluntary participants included 2nd and 4th-year students from the Visual Arts Education Department, 2nd-year students from the Ceramics Department, 2nd-year students from the Visual Communication Design Department, and 1st-year graduate students from the Visual Arts Education Department. This study employed a qualitative research method, utilized content analysis. While watching the film, participants were asked to take notes on the emotions, situations, phenomena, dialogues, formal features of the film, the aspects of the movie that they liked or disliked, and to write down the situations they noticed about the movie with a critical eye. This part of the study aimed to examine the critical aspects of anime through the movie Spirited Away. Following this, the participants were required to construct two characters on drawing paper through either illustrative or collage-based expressions, whereby the creativity dimension of the study was operationalized in accordance with E. P. Torrance's established criteria for creativity. Upon reviewing the participants' texts, drawings, and collages, it was observed that anime contributes positively to both critical thinking and creativity.