Call Me Chihiro Ending Explained: Does Chihiro Quit Her Job at the Bento Shop?

Hiroyuki Yasuda’s slice-of-life manga titled Chihiro-san (ちひろさん) has finally been able to translate its story on the screen, and now it’s time to breakdown the Call Me Chihiro ending in order to discern the theme of human emotions significantly addressed therein. The 131 minutes long Japanese film is directed by Rikiya Imaizumi, who works out the screenplay for the same as well, and Kasumi Arimura leads the storyline in her titular starring role.

The official description of the movie on Netflix reads, “An unapologetic sex worker starts working at a bento stand in a small seaside town, bringing comfort to the lonely souls who come her way.” Call Me Chihiro also stars Miwako Ichikawa, Hana Toyoshima, Jun Fubuki, Lily Franky and others.

What starts off with a warmly comforting scene with Chihiro caressing a cat, a definitive image of the genre often seen in anime as well, eventually probes into the protagonist’s feelings of loneliness. While it seems that she’s helping people by handing out happiness to them in the form of bento boxes, she’s actually just as much reliant on them for the same sense of company through the struggle of finding a place in the world.

Call Me Chihiro Ending Explained

Chihiro appears to be a vibrant and happy soul outwardly since the beginning, but the truth is that she can’t seem to develop any meaningful and personal relationship with anyone. Love is but a passing word in her life, as the emotions associated with it breeze past her and are not able to provide her with any form of solace and serenity.

In a conversation with Tae, an older lady, also the bento shop’s owner’s wife, who’s now been hospitalised following her loss of vision, the senior reveals the true depths of Chihiro’s character by saying that she carries her loneliness within her. No matter where she goes, she’ll always feel it. While her former job as a sex worker may have been a turbulent one, it also brought along quite a few life lessons that she still lives by.

Although she unapologetically acknowledges her past profession, she still fells an emptiness that can’t seem to have a cure. When her past is briefly unraveled in the movie as to how she landed this job, the narrative divulges that it gave her the chance to start anew, but even when she approached her ex-boss to start working as a sex worker, she was on the verge of killing herself due to the same numbing sensations.

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Thereafter, on a rainy night, when she’d quit working as a sex worker, she found the bento shop. Again, she started afresh in hopes of finding her true calling and purpose in the world. Even though she always sported a smile on her face, she was rarely actually feeling what she portrayed.

Her new job at the bento shop, however, does grant her the opportunity to lead a stable and calm life as opposed to her former occupation. As learnt from the words of one of her old job’s customers, Chihiro comes to accept that people often feel misunderstood because we’re all just aliens from different planets and can only connect with people who belong the same planet as ours, but this percentage is low beyond compare. Therefore, she awaits the day when she’ll be able to find someone from the same planet as hers.

She finds that supportive companionship in Tae, whom she also perceives to be her mother figure. As a result, she keeps paying her visits at the hospital, and in the end even pulls her out for a ride furtively. Tae was the second person with whom she found that sense of belonging, while the first one was a lady named Chihiro, as sex worker, whom she met during her childhood. She even shared a meal prepared by herself with this lady and found a safe haven in her company after running away from her family and home due to the first signs of those feelings of disconnect that started it all.

Back then, the now Chihiro, went by the name Aya. But when she approaches her ex-boss as an adult, and is asked for her new name as a sex worker herself, she picks up ‘Chihiro’ as her choice, remembering the first person with whom she felt safe and cared for.

In the end, Chihiro does form a small family of sorts with Okaji, Makoto, Bajiru, Becchan, Utsumi – her ex-boss, Bito – the bento shop owner, Tae – his wife and the homeless man who dies early on. She comes together with them and enjoys a dinner party with all of them, an act of bidding farewell. At this soiree, Chihiro is overcome with emotions to the extent that she tears up and starts feeling overwhelmed. It seems as if she’s going to head towards suicide again, but she receives a call from Tae, which helps her openly talks about her feelings.

She’s presented as a beacon for others as the dinner party becomes her final act in the town. She not only finds a new understanding of her identity there but also helps the others form a community. Each character, like Okaji and Makoto, was troubled by their own versions of loneliness, but they eventually find strength and friendship in each other, and it’s all because Chihiro helps connect these dots for them by bringing them together.

Finally, she moves on to a farm, where she starts fresh yet again, but this time with a smile on her face that actually paints the true feelings behind it. It’s a poetic transition as she shifts from a town that is covered by the sea on all sides, with water being a symbol of melancholy – the same emotion that she was drowning in earlier – to a pasture, that is fully represented by the colour green, in turn metaphorically defining her organic growth as a person – almost as if she’s been reborn.

Read our review of the movie here. Call Me Chihiro is now streaming on Netflix.

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