The bulk of the film takes place through the looking glass, in a dreamlike underworld. It's a world where people who enter from the outside gain a timeless existence. New livelihoods manifest around the people who go there that reflect their aspirations and values. Whenever someone enters the domain of the Towermaster, the world transforms to reflect their idea of paradise. In the real world, Mahito meets an elderly woman named Kiriko, one of the seven maids at Natsuko's home. Kiriko appears in the underworld as a much younger woman. There, a new life manifests for her. She's sailor whose job it is to catch fish to feed the helpless inhabitants of an island in the middle of an endless sea. She thinks she's always been there--she remembers nothing of her life in the real world. Nevertheless, she possesses figurines of the other maids and treats them with reverence. Because the maids are her friends, by this film's loose logic, she car...
"We are in the world, not against it." - Ursula K. Le Guin