It puts you in a room in Mitaka and dares you to blink. Yubaba faces front, cracks that enormous mouth open, and laughs. Then she pivots a full 180, and a tiny bird punches out of her hair and shrieks like it has been trapped in there since the bathhouse closed. The bird tucks back in, she spins around again, and the laugh restarts, over and over, no story, no dialogue, just a gag engineered down to the frame. That is the whole point of the Film Guru Guru shorts: motion as the joke, repetition as the punchline, and Yubaba's silhouette doing all the heavy lifting. Almost nobody outside the museum has seen it, which is exactly why the people who have will not shut up about it. You cannot stream it. You have to go stand there.

Yubaba, a character from Spirited Away, is back in a short film made for the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka as part of its Film Guru Guru series. She faces front and laughs with her mouth wide open. When she turns a full half circle to show her back, a little bird pops out of her hair and shrieks. Once the bird ducks back inside, she swings around to the front again and gives another laugh.