Spirited Away Meets Death Stranding in Bleak Crossover

By Evan Valentine

Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away was a world filled with light-hearted elements, while also featuring darker elements hiding around every corner. One wouldn't expect characters or elements from the Hayao Miyazaki to work well within the Hideo Kojima production known as Death Stranding, though one fan artist has accomplished the impossible by creating art that crosses the distinct worlds with one another as video games and anime collide.     

Spirited Away sat at the top spot of the anime movie hill for some time, being dethroned recently by Demon Slayer: Mugen Train as the most profitable anime film of all time. Besides the profits that Ghibli amassed thanks to this magical tale, Spirited Away was also the first project from the studio that won best-animated picture at the Academy Awards, proving how legendary the animation studio of Ghibli has become over the years. While it's doubtful that the animation house will be returning to this universe via a sequel film in the future, the characters and locales of Spirited Away will be brought into the real-world thanks in part to Studio Ghibli's amusement park which will be swinging open its doors later this fall in Japan.

Fan Artist Artazi took the opportunity to merge the worlds of anime and video games, imagining what the characters from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away might have looked like had they emerged from the mind of Hideo Kojima rather than Hayao Miyazaki:

While yet to be officially confirmed by Hideo Kojima and his production company at this time, Death Stranding's Norman Reedus seemingly leaked that a sequel to the original video game was in the works, going so far as to state that "we just started the second one." Considering how outside of the box Kojima's games have been in the past, whether they be Death Stranding or the Metal Gear Solid franchise, we would expect more mind-bending adventures within the universe that made walking from point a to point b a perilous adventure.

Would you love to see Death Stranding receive an anime adaptation at some point in the future? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of crossovers. 

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