Do you remember when you were watching the breakfast scene from Howl’s Moving Castle—just watching Markl gobble down all those good eggs and bacon? Or in another animated movie where you just said to yourself, “I need that bowl of ramen with the black tea eggs, pork belly slices, and spring onion.” All of that animated food looks just right to eat. And then you go to a restaurant, and see it for real, and for some reason, the fire that cooked the ramen didn’t smile, and the food just looks a little less…magical? 

Yeah, there’s a hard reason for that, and that is it’s something called an idealized iteration. These animators make the details of the food exaggeratedly specific, focusing on the light, extra droplets of water, steam, everything that makes you drool. When you watch movies, well, regular, non-4D or 5D films, you have sight, not smell or touch, unfortunately. That’s how you can um…‘taste’ the food. We promise, it’s not you, it’s digital. Sometimes, it could even reach into something more absurd, like extra scenes in all your 90s Disney movies or those crazy cheese pulls in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

These films really play with your emotions! Aren’t your earliest memories of food connected to those homey childhood cartoons? Well, maybe not exactly, but you might be able to remember some time where you felt ‘at home,’ watching someone eat homemade egg drop soup in a Studio Ghibli film or looking at the precision by which the mom in the pixar short film, Bao 2018, takes her time, making those little fluffy cute dumplings and watching her baby dumpling grow up.

Bao (2018)

Prepare some tissues for this one. Just to summarize it for you—Bao is a sweet mom—an ideal mom who suffers from periodic loneliness and empty nest syndrome (a feeling we can all connect to). One day, when cooking bao buns, one of the dumplings comes to life and starts crying like a newborn baby boy. We know, cute right? And then, the mother raises the bao-bun-baby thing, helping him when his stuffing gets smashed by playing too rough with his school friends and doing yoga with him in the public park. Eventually, he gets into his bad boy phase—leaving the house with his new ‘cool’ friends in their sports car, and surprisingly brings a ‘hot’ blonde home! Finally, the bao-bun-adult-man is about to leave the house with his new lady to make his own life independently, and the mom gets all sad and…eats him. Afterwards, the real bao-bun-adult-man comes back to his mom and reconciles with her, making fresh bao buns with his lady and mom.

We know, it is not irregular to feel an urge to want to eat the cute off of something. As human as he was, I know some part of you just wanted to eat his little ‘bao-bun-adult-man’ face. Food is very deeply connected to family and safety, making all of these scenes important—market strategy. Nevertheless, it does tap into those parts of yourself that you didn’t know longed for that kind of ‘safety,’ and ‘pleasure.’ Bao satisfies our needs for reconciliation, nurturing, and letting go through adorable food. 

Spirited Away (2001)

The great Studio Ghibli and its classic masterpiece, Spirited Away (2001). As much as we love our readers at mxdwn; if you have not watched Spirited Away, what have you been doing for the past twenty-four years? Why won’t you want to be lost in a bathhouse for spirits and other weird looking monster-spirit-things?

The movie follows Chihiro, a young girl who stumbles upon an abandoned amusement park with her parents. Her parents get lured in by the smell of food in a market place, and, disregarding the surreal nature of their discovery, they eat and eat! Honestly, we don’t blame them, the pork roast looked insanely tasty. Seriously, look at those mountains of shiny sausages, rice cakes, meats, everything freshly cooked! However, they do end up being transformed into pigs because of their gluttony, so em…yeah. Anyways, Chihiro is trapped and has to work in a bathhouse—a quasi-resort for spirits under another name, Sen, to find her way back to the human world, and avoid the prying eyes of the notorious Yubaba. 

See what we’re saying about food and emotions—there is a scene where Haku offers her onigiri (rice balls) to make her feel better after seeing her parents as pigs. After Chihiro takes a bite, she breaks down completely.

Food opens up your heart. What is that saying your mom told you about how to catch a man? Cook for him or something? Studio Ghibli really knows how to slow down and accommodate the art of sharing food into narratives. The emotional weight, and the animators’ attention to detail (texture, vapor and so on) makes us crave a plain, rice ball. There is also the concept of Shintoism that could be attributed to the film—food offerings are usually made to worship kami (spirits); like the bathhouse which has an abundance of food.

Ratatouille (2007)

You remember that rat that likes to cook? Yeah, what was his name again? If you answered that and said Ratatouille, hard side eye for you. His name is Remy—a rat that can cook delectable french food and has an extremely sophisticated palette and sense of smell. Following the late Chef Auguste Gusteau’s motto, “Anyone Can Cook,” Remy ends up in Paris after an unfortunate incident he caused, that almost ended his entire rat colony in the French countryside. In Paris, he meets the terribly inexperienced chef Linguini and cooks through him by secretly pulling his hair underneath his chef hat. They face so many difficulties with Chef Gusteau’s sous chef, Skinner and the harsh food critic, Anton Ego. And in the end, Remy cooks Ratatouille—a meal that reminds the harsh critic about a very innocent memory from his childhood, even though it is regarded as a peasant dish. And there it is again! Food and emotion.

In Remy’s preparation of Ratatouille, we see all of the individually thin slices of the tomatoes, zucchinis, and potatoes arranged so effortlessly on top of the glossy tomato sauce underneath that just dances at the bottom of the shiny casserole baking dish; all of Remy’s movements, the way he adds the spices into soup, the way his omelet for Linguini looks extra soft and perfect, or the shine on the mushrooms and bell peppers. Oh, and not to forget the sensational music and burst of colors when Remy mixes strawberries and cheese. 

Passion, that’s it! That’s what adds the extra touch of perfection to digital food. Well, that’s another aspect. The process of cooking is so extremely romanticized that the food, the music, the general energy just makes it so that is has to be equally magic, it has to carry the same weight as Remy’s undeniable passion.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Other films like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2009, turn food into such a great spectacle. Flint Lockwood from Swallow Falls, a place known for its sardines, is left without food when the fish industry collapses. Then, Flint, the great inventor, creates the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (FLDSMDFR). It’s a funny name, we know. And the machine provides so much food and solves many of the food problems for the town by being able to even turn water into food. However, the greediness of the town’s mayor pushes the machine too far and causes the food to mutate into giant forms that threaten to destroy the entire world! Yeah, harsh turn from comfort and passion to this huh? We went from straight up safety to deadly abundance. To save the day, Flint and his buddies are left to stop the machine and save the world! 

This movie’s power doesn’t lie in realism or homeliness, rather in the diversity of the food items. Even though the food is trying to kill the world by raining giant steaks and string cheese from the sky, you have to say that it does look good enough to just eat. It invokes the same feeling as when a child sees candy falling from the sky. It’s horribly terrifying—well, depending on your age, but also pretty cool.

Whether we characterize these things as romanticism or idealized perfection in animated films, ties between food and comfort, or passion, we must applaud the animators who were able to use their skill and visual medium to trigger our imagination. It’s really a testament to what absurd animation can do to connect us to these deep human experiences.