Story At the Central Park Zoo , Marty the zebra celebrates his tenth birthday but has grown bored with his daily routine and longs to experience the wild. Marty's best friend is Alex the lion , who enjoys showing off for the public and his celebrity status as "the king of New York". Alex attempts to cheer Marty up, but Marty, still unsatisfied, learns that the zoo's penguins —Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private—are trying to escape, and follows them out. Alex, Melman the giraffe , and Gloria the hippopotamus pursue Marty and attempt to convince him to return. The four, along with the penguins and two chimpanzees named Mason and Phil, converge at Grand Central Station where the authorities sedate them using tranquilizer guns . Under pressure from anti-captivity activists, the zoo is forced to ship the escaped animals by sea to a Kenyan wildlife preserve. During their travels, the penguins es...
Story Ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents are traveling to their new home. Her father, a man who loves to take shortcuts, ends up in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned village, which Chihiro's father insists on exploring despite his daughter's misgivings. While exploring, Chihiro finds an exquisite bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have transformed into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river. Haku finds Chihiro and advises her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji. Kamaji asks Lin, a bathhouse worker, to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but Chihiro persists, and Yubaba hires her. Yubaba takes away the second kanji of her name, Chihiro ( 千尋 ), renaming her Sen ( 千 ). Haku later warns her that if she forgets he...