Considered the most successful cinema release in Japanese history, grossing over $396 million worldwide, Spirited Away (『千と千尋の神隠し』, literally Sen and Chihiro’s Sudden Disappearance, 2001) overtook Titanic (at the time the top-grossing movie worldwide) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing movie in Japanese history with a 31.68 JPY billion in total, as of time of this writing (March 2025). It received critical universal acclaim, being frequently ranked among the greatest animated movies ever made, and won the Oscar Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards making it the only hand-drawn and non-English language animated movie to do so. Ever since Spirited Away was released, it has been often quoted among the best movies for children and grown-ups alike: the story of a jaded 10-year old girl Ogino Chihiro, who is traveling with her parents to their new neighborhood, but underway they enter the magic world of the spirits. Her parents behave inappropriately by greedily eating food, which was not meant for them and are, consequently, transformed into pigs. Chihiro searches for work at the bathhouse of an old witch, Yubaba, in order to find a way to turn her parents back into the original form as humans so that they can return together into their real world. Along her initiation trip in the liminal space of the bathhouse and beyond it, Chihiro gets to know several people, each one of them with his or her own story, and matures in the process.
Historical Background
A dazzling fairy-tale at the beginning of the new millennium, Spirited Away transcends the classic concepts of family and primary community into progressive all-too-fluid environments announcing the “liquid societies” of late modernity, and reminds its audiences of our all-too-human need for love, warmth and acceptance. Furthermore, together with Takahata Isao’s Hôhokekyo: My Neighbours the Yamadas 『となりの山田君』 from 1999, Spirited Away inaugurates a new approach to family, childhood and parenting which distances itself from the all-encompassing conformism of a society focused on the notion of family as the fundamental cell of the society and instead attempts to identify the basic mechanisms of that very society overcoming traditionally transmitted modi operandi – once again circumscribing the premise that the “nuclear family” is a post-WWII socio-economic construction and not a perennial over-individual natural law.
Analysts and media-commentators have so far pointed out that in Spirited Away, major themes such as supernaturalism and fantasy, traditional Japanese culture and Western consumerism as well as environmentalism are creatively combined, resulting in a breath-taking emotional and mental adventure savored by children and grown-ups alike. There is, indeed, a brilliant combination of these elements, which indicate, more widely regarded, the “magical realism” often encountered in literary works which juxtaposes the imaginary of the real life with the – mediated or unmediated – incursions into the fantastical realm. This occurs within the already accepted framework of the hybridity of Japanese modernity subsumed in the Meiji era slogan wakon yôsai (和魂洋才, commonly translated as “Japanese roots/identity, Western technology/knowledge”) and encompasses the thinly veiled existential ideology of life being the most precious asset one possesses and could ever possess, consistently orchestrated in Studio Ghibli’s works since Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War from 1994 under the superficial layer of concern for nature and for our position as humans within the universal, temporally and spatially, circuit. The Orientalist tendencies of theoretical interpretations highlighting Spirited Away’s “Japaneseness” conveniently downplay both the larger context of its emergence, its intense promotion at the Japanese box-office and in Japanese mainstream-media of early 2000s and in specialized global outlets ever since and its impact on Western audiences, in terms of a paradigm shift from audience cultures of dissemination and appropriation towards individuation (in Jungian perspective) and expansion of one’s potential. Therefore, in the following lines, the analytical focus deviates towards Spirited Away’s archetypal functions as well as its power of fluctuating identities and individual potentialities towards greater self-acceptance in the name of self-growth and self-compassion.
Plot Overview
The movie starts as ten-year-old Ogino Chihiro and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father suddenly decides to take a shortcut. As a result of the subsequent hasty drive, the family’s car stops in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park built up in the atmosphere of what one might imagine as Meiji era’s early modernization of Japan: Chihiro’s father insists on exploring, despite his daughter’s protest, and soon they find a seemingly empty restaurant still stocked with food, where Chihiro’s parents immediately begin to eat without waiting for the master or for waiters to show up and serve them. Chihiro leaves her parents to eat and adventures further: after a while, she reaches an enormous bathhouse where she meets a boy who introduces himself as Haku and who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. In panic, Chihiro returns to the restaurant where her parents were eating only to discover in horror that her parents had been transformed into pigs; when she tries to escape the place, she finds out that she is unable to cross the now-flooded river-bed.
Distressed, Chihiro sits of a lawn and observes that she is turning transparent; this is where Haku finds her and instructs her to eat something he hands over so that she stops the process of losing herself – afterwards, at his advise, she is supposed to ask for a job from the bathhouse’s boiler-man, Kamaji (a typical yôkai 妖怪, a supernatural being in Japanese folkloric imagination commanding the susuwataris すすわたり or dust bunnies). However, Kamaji refuses to hire her and asks worker Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. In her turn, Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but she persists, and is eventually given a working contract, in which Yubaba takes away the second kanji character 尋 of her name 千尋, renaming her Sen 千. While visiting her parents’ pig-pen, Sen realizes that she had already forgotten her real name, but is subsequently warned by Haku that Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and that if she forgets hers, like he has forgotten his, she will never be able to leave the spirit world.
Sen faces discrimination from the other workers, except for Kamaji and Lin who show sympathy for her ordeal. Soon, wrongly believing that a silent creature named No-Face (Kaonashi 顔無し) is a custormer, she invites him inside, followed by a “stink spirit”, who appears to be Sen’s first customer, who reveals himself as the spirit of a polluted river, so corrupted with human filth that one could not tell what it was at first glance. It only became clean again after Chihiro pulled out a huge amount of trash, including car tires, garbage, and a bicycle. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Sen a magic emetic (vomit-inducing) dumpling. Meanwhile, No-Face imitates the gold left behind by the river spirit and tempts a worker with it and then swallows him, continuing to demand food from the bathhouse while giving away extensive amounts of gold to its workers.
Separately, Sen sees paper shikigami 式神 (small gods in Japanese folklore) attacking a dragon whom she recognizes as Haku metamorphosed, who, grievously injured, crashes into Yubaba’s penthouse: Sen rushes upstairs, and a shikigami which stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Zeniba, Yubaba’s twin sister, who turns Yubaba’s son, Bô, into a mouse, and creates a false copy of him. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku strikes the shikigami, causing Zeniba to vanish, and then falls into the boiler room with Sen, where she feeds him part of the emetic dumpling, causing him to vomit up the seal and a black slug, which Sen crushes with her foot.
With Haku unconscious, Sen resolves to return the seal and to apologize to Zeniba. Sen confronts an engorged No-Face, and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, steadily regurgitating everything that he had eaten. Sen, No-Face, and Bô travel to see Zeniba with train tickets given to her by Kamaji. Meanwhile, Yubaba orders that Sen’s parents-turned-into-pigs be slaughtered, but Haku reveals that Bô is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test.
Sen meets with Zeniba, who makes her a magic hairband and explains that Yubaba used the black slug to take control over Haku. Haku appears at Zeniba’s home in his dragon form and offers to fly them home. No-Face decides to stay behind with Zeniba and become her spinner, while Sen and Bô leave with Haku for the bathhouse. In mid-flight, Sen recalls falling years ago into the Kohaku River and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku’s real identity as the spirit of the Kohaku River: ニギハヤミ コハクヌシ Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents from among a group of pigs in order to leave. After she answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract disappears and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry river-bed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the river-bed to her restored parents, who do not remember anything after eating at the restaurant stall. They walk back through the tunnel until they reach their car, now covered in dust and leaves. Before getting in, Chihiro looks back at the tunnel, her hair tie from Zeniba still intact.
An Archetypal Character: Chihiro
One of the most archetypal characters in Studio Ghibli’s cosmology, Chihiro learns throughout her symbolical journey of initiation that not all that appears monstrous to the eye is also bad and, conversely, that not all that shines is gold (pun intended). While she faces a number of possible fates, none of which is desirable, Chihiro develops from a spoiled kid into a responsible person capable not only to take care of herself, but also to care for and rescue those around her. At its most basic level, the gradual discovery of her own self could lead to physical execution – and even worse, metaphysically, to the loss of her identity and of her soul, as Yubaba, the huge-headed sorceress, maintains her power over other people and entities by taking their names away. Similarly to those before and around her, Chihiro is renamed when Yubaba snatches the second character of her name and discards the other, as well, leaving her only with a generic one pronounced Sen. By taking possession of her name, Yubaba transfers the control over Chihiro’s life to herself, with the consequence that Chihiro’s identity will fade away and her soul will drift into meaninglessness and nothingness.
At her core, Chihiro is a typical shôjo (少女, literally “young, unmarried woman”), her emotional maturity and mental fortitude surpassing by far her biological ten-year old biological age. It is indeed surprising the agility with which she integrates among other – real or netherworldly – beings at Yubaba’s bathhouse as well as her versatility in dealing both with those around her and with the new tasks she is burdened with. Miyazaki’s initial statement that he wanted to create a “typical teenage girl” with whom female teenagers in Japan could identity is a bit peculiar, as Chihiro is anything but typical, for domestic audiences in Japan and for those worldwide. More importantly, Chihiro does not seem to evolve substantially in terms of skills throughout Spirited Away which is, essentially, her odyssey, but rather as a human being slowly discovering that the world does not revolve around her and that there are more pressing issues than the ones she is accustomed with from her over-protected, sanitized quotidian life as a middle-class primary schooler in late-modern Japan. Chihiro’s development is less about acquiring practical abilities and survival competences and more about finding her own self within shifting realities with challenging circumstances, unexpected encounters and life-threatening events. Therefore, rather than developing coping mechanisms, the story displays the necessity to discover one’s inner potential and to attain it – followed subsequently by the self-confident, responsible expansion of that very potential. At the end of her journey as a heroine, Chihiro is both wise and more compassionate towards herself and the others and more able to tackle the future while remembering the past as a source of inspiration, courage and commitment.
Chihiro’s parentification due to the lack of maturity and insight on the side of her parents is one pivotal element in her metamorphosis from a little girl towards a self-aware human being: there is hardly any criticism towards her parents’ inability to truly care for her and/or in the hardships imposed upon their daughter due to this inability. Miyazaki, like Takahata in Hôhokekyo: My Neighbors, the Yamadas two years prior to Spirited Away, understands that criticizing the infantilization of grown-ups in Japan – and possibly in all late-modern, post-industrialized, service-based societies – cannot lead to positive outcomes as it is part of the very historical processes which underlie consumerism, superficial interhuman relationships and an overall sense of ennui and jadedness. Nevertheless, the attempt to employ the description of parental infantilization as a means to raise awareness of the real challenges in life of children which might be caused, whether one wants to acknowledge it or not, by their own parents, can result in well-intended changes.
Dysfunctional Parents
Indeed, Chihiro’s real problems are her parents: in Spirited Away Miyazaki paints a stark contrast to the parenting style in My Neighbor Totoro, where Mei’s father accepts his daughter’s view of the world and her explanations of creatures he cannot see; he is supportive and attentive and willingly immerses himself in Mei’s – and to a certain degree, in Satsuki’s – universe of fantastic encounters and fabulous entities. On the other hand, Chihiro’s greedy parents virtually ignore their daughter; they are self-centered and individualist, driving an unnecessarily large polluting car – an Audi, to be sure, a direct hint to what might be labelled as the toxic and unnecessarily aggressive Westernization of Japan since 1868 and more intensively since the end of WWII – and paying little to no attention or respect to the old, but perennial Shintô shrines and religious figurines they walk past by, even though they acknowledge their existence. Moreover, as the animated movie ends, they have not learned anything from their erroneous ways of living life and doing things, amnesia about their ordeal meaning that Chihiro’s upcoming life with them will be no different from when she started the adventure. In this train of thoughts, one could argue that in opposition to My Neighbor Totoro which appears as a nostalgic look at the past, Spirited Away is a lament from the perspective of the emptiness of the present, containing deep concerns about the future: The phenomenon of Chihiro’s parents turning into pigs symbolizes the greediness of humans, whom Miyazaki himself connected to those “people who metamorphosed into pigs [symbolically speaking] during Japan’s bubble economy with its all-encompassing consumer society of the 1980s, and these people still have not realized they have become pigs. Once someone becomes a pig, it is impossible to return to being human again, but instead one gradually starts to have the body and soul of a pig, these people being the ones saying, we are in a recession and do not have enough to eat” (Miyazaki Hayao, Orikaeshi-ten 1997-2008 [Turning Points, 1997-2008], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008, pp. 78-81). Moreover, the food emerges as a metaphor for a trap to catch lost humans and it is no coincidence that a lack of constraint goes hand-in-hand with envy and pride in possessing the latest technological gadgets while being insensitive to real suffering and loss in the world at-large.
Similarly dysfunctional at the other end of the spectrum, Yubaba’s over-protective parenting style – what might be labeled nowadays as “helicopter parenting” or even “gentle parenting” – in the environment of the the bathhouse of the spirits with its ambiguity and darkness, leaves little room for comfort and imagination in relation to the alternatives to Chihiro’s parents: she over-spoils her son, the oversized Bô (Sunny Boy), a Gargantuan baby whose wailings seem to be the only thing able to control Yubaba. In his turn, Bô is the archetype of the puer aeternus or the “eternal boy” who cannot – may not – grow up into a functional member of the society due to his mother’s emotional reliance on his staying forever dependent on her. While one might see the rudeness and cruelty of many of the bathhouse employees towards Chihiro as caused by her humanity, I would argue that it is her evolving humanness resulting in kindness and honesty that they envy: corruption is ever-present in this place of excess and greed, as depicted in the initial appearance of No-Face, and this surfaces in brutal contrast to the simplicity of Chihiro’s journey and transformation, highlighting the constantly chaotic carnival in the background. Nevertheless, towards the end of the animated movie, even Bô is positively impacted by Chihiro’s development, visible in both his mother’s behavior and his own demeanor, clearly showcasing the positive impact of challenging events and of the necessity to face those events, instead of carefully avoiding them – or instead of parents trying to protect their children from natural experiences which build individuality, resilience and compassion as a combination of empathy and integrity. While Bô’s future is open in Spirited Away’s narrative architecture, the ironic display of Yubaba’s character as simultaneously oppressive of her employees and over-protective of her son brings into the spotlight the ideological confusion and inner splitting of late-modern social actors unable to bring to a common denominator their selves as the crucial protocol in building up coherent individualities.
Secondary Characters as Symbols of (Human) Nature
An interesting character is Haku: he has been intrinsically associated with environmentalism and Miyazaki’s environmentalist message, respectively – from a more holistic perspective –, with the environmentalist propaganda of present-day wealthy nations: on the one hand, Haku does not remember his name and has apparently lost his past, which is the reason for him being stuck at the bathhouse. Eventually, Chihiro remembers that he used to be the spirit of the Kohaku River when she was still a little child, which was demolished and replaced with apartment buildings: because of humans’ need for development, they destroyed a part of nature, causing Haku to lose his home and his identity. This can be compared to deforestation and desertification: humans tear down nature, cause imbalance in the ecosystem, and bulldoze animals’ homes to satisfy their need for more space, which is then turned into houses, shopping-malls, stores, etc., but do not think or care about how this affects other living things. Like in Bô’s case, whose behavior towards the end of the animation movie suggests further development and the overcoming of motherly control, it is Chihiro’s growth which impacts positively Haku’s remembrance of his own true self. Unlike Bô, though, he seems blocked into his current reality which might imply the sturdiness of nature, its stability and solidity seen from the perspective of humans who fear and abhor change – change being in fact the only constant in nature, in the universe, in the cycle of life itself. Haku’s ambiguity brings him on the same level as the ambiguity and darkness in Yubaba’s bathhouse, but contrasts to it due to its sparkling light and white imagery. Haku is the one who welcomes Chihiro and helps her navigate the first steps in the new world – and he is the one who brings her journey to a closure, without himself evolving too much during this procedure: an inevitable stream of light and hope in an otherwise bleak and uncomfortable expedition of initiation, discovery and sacrifice.
The bewildering array of creatures featured in the movie shows the diverse range of gods and spirits populating Japanese mythology. Chihiro survives precisely because she understands the basics of the spirit world as we all do in childhood and quickly adapts to living within it. The outwardly human Haku himself, who lives under the spell of Yubaba, is capable of transforming into a dragon, as is Yubaba, who can fly in the shape of a monstrous bird. No-Face is a semi-transparent mask-spirit which communicates with Chihiro through grunts and whimpers and is able of becoming a ravenous monster who punishes the bathhouse residents, greedy for gold. In this way, Spirited Away’s world is a grotesque version of our own world in which excess and ambition mixed with kindness and camaraderie co-exist. Even the minor denizens are filled with character, such as the various folks who work at the bathhouse, e.g., the ôtori-sama, yellow chick-like bird-gods, the more outlandish players like the ushi-oni or wide eyed demons with colourful hair and antlers who wear traditional dresses, and oshira-sama or the bulbous daikon or radish-god who Chihiro squeezes into a lift with, among many others
A Unique Journey of Initiation
During her journey, Chihiro becomes gradually stronger and more empathetic, as she understands that there are less fortunate persons – human or not – than her, and learns to fulfill her duties with seriousness and diligence. Moreover, the sullen girl from the beginning of the animation movie slowly evolves towards a deep, hardworking young lady, able to see beneath the surface of instant gratification and fake friends. Eventually, helped by trustworthy companions, she becomes able to rescue her parents, and they leave the mysterious space but she will forever remember the valuable lessons apprehended during those fantasy weeks while her parents are totally oblivious to what had happened.
There are several themes which crisscross the plot-line of Spirited Away: the imbalanced power relationships within Chihiro’s family are suddenly challenged when her parents lose their human shape and the child lands in the position to rescue them. On the background of this ‘family crisis’, with irresponsible parents and children forced to mature ahead of time, the subtle critique of capitalism and its market-driven consumerism (in the characters of Chihiro’s parents) as well as the questioning vision on the over-Westernisation of Japan at the expense of its millennial traditions and belief systems (in the structure of the bathhouse, with the luxurious life of Yubaba in brutal contrast with the strict, modest life of her employees, or the lavish life-style of the bathhouse guests, again, in blatant contradiction with the poverty and humiliating treatment of those serving them) emerge. The gloomy ambivalence in Chihiro’s new surroundings turns, ultimately, into a bright metaphor of her own process towards maturity: like in the old image of a lotus-blossom, which stems from muddy waters, and indeed, according to folk convictions, the muddier the waters, the more radiant the lotus-flower, Chihiro grows up into a sensitive, warmhearted young girl, both profound in her compassionate way of approaching the others and sincere in her soft manner of dealing with herself.
Particularly No-Face, whom she treats with kindness and thus saves from his self-inflicted loneliness and greed, and Haku, the spirit of a river which was destroyed and replaced with apartment buildings, deliver powerful metonymies for the alienation of the humans from their natural habitat: it has been repeatedly argued that Spirited Away is a story about environment and its systematic ruination by humans in their equally limitless and ruthless drive for progress; nonetheless, Spirited Away’s characters alluding natural phenomena are to be observed on the background of Chihiro’s story and the impact they have on her evolution. In No-Face, she discovers her need to nurture and to comfort, without expecting anything in return. In Haku, she explores her ability to open up to friendships and emotional intimacy, while mentally managing her own reactions, fears, doubts, her anger and her isolation. More than punctual symbols of a nature constantly attacked by humans, the characters alluding natural phenomena function as vivid reminders of the nature within each of us, of our innate need for closeness and companionship, which can only be acquired if it is given freely, in the first place.
In doing so, Spirited Away aligns with similar coming-of-age narratives, such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1971), Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1881-1882) and Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (1900): children who outgrow their age as a consequence of magic encounters and events, and proceed on a long and insidious pathway towards “returning home”. On the way back, the characters discover that their world would never be the same again, and simultaneously with their sadness, a fresh sense of self emerges, which enables them to see the others and themselves as empowered, liberated beings. The trajectory of their new development is complex and at times perilous, but also rewarding and full of unexpected positive experiences.
Technical Details: Visuals and Music
In terms of animation style Spirited Away shows the confidence of a master creator who has honed his abilities but is justly capable of adapting to new techniques when necessary: some of the more elaborate shots in Spirited Away employ indeed computed-generated imagiery, but commonly this is restricted to putting hand painted textures on simple geometric shapes to allow for three-dimensional tracking, compounded by an additional number of frames which required steam and smoke effects. Nevertheless, traditional techniques prevail and deliver visual warmth and a specific sense of authenticity both to major elements of the visual design and to minor ones, such as the simple yet expressive susuwatari or dust bunnies reminiscent of My Neighbor Totoro and the complex and initially revolting Stink God: hand-drawn cells convey the emotional involvement of those contributing to the creation of the animated feature, their efforts and their hopes. While computer-generated frames are more cost-performant and time-sensitive, they rarely manage to outcompete the emotional flexibility of hand-drawn elements. Then again, one must move forward with the times and adjust to its ever-changing requirements.
In tune with his previous scores for animation movies directed by Miyazaki Hayao, Hisaishi Joe delivered a musical background, turned into an image album with ten tracks as well, for Spirited Away, which follows the tested success of submitting to the atmosphere and the general mental construction of the visual dimension promoted by the cinema release. The music playfully highlights Chihiro’s insecurities and doubts with acute sonorities and prepares the ground for her evolution towards self-actualization: this is obvious in the dynamic exchange between strings and wind instruments and between solo-melodies and massive orchestral dialogues. Right at the beginning of Spirited Away, a somewhat harsher musical background insinuates later developments thus overcoming the traditional function of music in visual media products to simply accompany and enhance the narrative dimension. For the most part, though, the classical approach prevails. This stylistic conformism contributes, I would argue, to the overall equilibrium of the animated feature, as it allows audiences to immerse themselves into the story and to absorb its symbolical messages without overburdening them with additional layers of aesthetic structures. Such a traditionalist approach to the animated conglomerate is a major reason in Studio Ghibli’s consistent success at the box-office and in its critical appraisal: it allows the focus to linger on visual architectures and their juxtaposition with narrative lines, therefore creating coherent microcosmoses of awe and stability.
The Family Concept at Crossroads
The dissolution of the traditional Japanese family (ideal) as implemented by Meiji technocrats and heavily promoted by the post-WWII Japanese consumption society appears in concatenation with the ideology of childhood being more often than not experienced as merely the product of a merchandized interaction between what Julia Kristeva has described in 1974 as the imaginary chaos and the symbolical order preparing the self for the confrontation with the real. Spirited Away contains lessons in hard-work and humility as necessary rites of passage on the journey towards adulthood while displaying clear signs of hope in the over-all narrative design of the animation movie: although Chihiro’s parents and their generation have abadoned her and her entire cohort to a world gradually ground down by their greed, envy, consumerism, Chihiro and those like her can discover in themselves the strength to restore the fading values of the past towards their positive reiteration in the future.
The future lies in the hands of the children: while Spirited Away is indeed very much an animated feature about childhood and growing up, about responsibilities and the challenges as well as the threats of the world, Miyazaki approaches this in a fantastical and spiritual manner with the parallel secondary message that childhood is not easy, but by all means, it is worth exploring in its deepest adventures. Studio Ghibli’s movies do not mollycoddle their audiences even in the feel-good realms of My Neighbor Totoro (1988) or Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), as it places its prepubescent characters into situations of genuine parables with no guarantee of a positive outcome, but with every element to make things work. Then again, Miyazaki and Takahata alike paint the world as seen from a youngster’s point of view that is anything but childish: the wonders faced by Chihiro are displayed from a child’s perspective with her full acceptance of the events as they arise, so that she can learn by herself authentically what is safe and what is dangerous, therefore avoiding to rely on preconceived ideas so that she can adapt to continuously evolving circumstances.
Conclusion: Ahead of Its Time
Spirited Away was the climax of a decades-long process to incessantly quest for new modes of expression able to transcend traditional artistic languages and media. It summed up poignantly and elegantly the trends and tendencies of the 1990s, of which it was a by-product, and opened fresh avenues of experimentation. It represented the finish line of an era and, at the same time, the gate towards new horizons, with innovative approaches to life, love, humanity and what it means to be human. The themes explored in Spirited Away – family, childhood, parental education, inter-generational contract, the rights and obligations of a civil participation in the world – found themselves at the crossroads of the public discourse in Japan at the time, announcing the vivid debates to happen 15 to 20 years later on a global scale. Moreover, Spirited Away exhausted the exploited potentialities of animation – Japanese and beyond – available up to that moment and pushed forward the necessity – the inevitability – of genuine creativity to quest for unique pathways in the future and to question the status quo even more fundamentally. Once again coming back from his repeatedly self-proclaimed retirement, Miyazaki Hayao would continue to deliver animation movies resulted from turning-point experiments, the first one being Howl’s Moving Castle three years after Spirited Away, which turned out to be his most compellingly aesthetically beautiful movie released by Studio Ghibli so far.
