Famous anime spirit seems to have gotten even better in the year since his skills were last recorded on video.
During his on-screen appearances in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, the ghostly No-Face/Kaonashi attempts to communicate through a series of aurally unsettling gasps and croaks. So we were all a bit surprised earlier this year to see that the famous Studio Ghibli anime character apparently has an interest in music, as he’s been repeatedly spotted on the streets of Hachinohe in Aomori Prefecture playing the tsugaru-jamisen, a three-stringed Japanese instrument.
With warm weather coming, you might have expected the cloak-and-mask-wearing No-Face to take a break from his musical endeavors for a while, but he’s still startling and entertaining passersby. Just last Saturday, Japanese Twitter user @zunzun_2525 ran into him in the city’s bar and restaurant district.
The previous video we’d seen of No-Face’s shamisen skills was taken roughly a year ago, and it sounds like he’s only gotten better since then.
▼ A more relaxed performance, recorded last November.
His visual artistic skills also seem to be on the rise, as he frequently takes up a position in front of food stalls and eateries evocative of the ones in the opening scenes of Spirited Away.
▼ Make sure you ask for permission before you start digging into any of the food inside!
If you’re in the mood to do a little spirit hunting in Hachinohe, those in the know say that No-Face often appears during weekends and holiday periods when the weather is dry (that outfit must be a serious pain to move around in if it gets wet), usually on the side streets in and around the Miroku Yokocho and Miharuya department stores. Here’s hoping he eventually attracts enough fans to convince fellow Ghibli musicians Pazu and Seiji to grab their trumpet and violin and join him for a jam session sometime.
Source: IT Media, Twitter/@zunzun_2525
Follow Casey on Twitter, where all this shamisen talk has given him an urge to listen to Zuntata’s Daddy Mulk.