As revisiting Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 animation feature film “Spirited Away” yesterday, I marveled again on the vivid and mesmerizing qualities of its endlessly fascinating fantasy world. Even though the movie does not explain that much on the whole, we instantly accept its singular magical world of spirits and creatures right from the start thanks to its confident handling of mood and details, and we are alternatively intrigued and touched by many of those unforgettable moments in the film.

The opening part introduces us to Chihiro Ogino (voiced by Rumi Hiiragi), a young little girl who is moving to somewhere along with her parents. When they seem to be near their destination, Chihiro’s father decides to take a shortcut through some remote forest area, and then they arrive at a gate leading to what simply looks like an abandoned resort town. Although Chihiro cannot help but feel quite nervous, her parents insist that they should look around whatever is in this abandoned area, and the film provides several lovely moments of serene beauty reminiscent of the finale of Miyazaki’s subsequent work “The Boy and the Heron” (2023) as they walk further into this oddly empty region.

Needless to say, it turns out that Chihiro’s instinctive feelings on this area were right. When she later happens to be alone by herself, she encounters a mysterious handsome boy named Haku (voiced by Miyu Irino), who warns that she and her parents must leave the area before the night comes. Alas, her parents are transformed into a couple of big pigs when she belatedly comes to them, and she soon gets trapped inside the area, which shows its hidden sides once the night begins and then a lot of odd entities appear here and there to Chihiro’s shock and surprise.

Again, Haku comes to the rescue. He takes Chihiro to a big bathhouse which is the center of this very strange area, and we come to gather that this is actually a spa region for millions of many different spirits to come and then go. The mood becomes a bit suspenseful as Chihiro must hide her true identity for a while under Haku’s instruction, but the film takes some time for paying more attention to this hidden magical world unfolded in front of her eyes, and that is a sheer visual feast for our eyes to say the least.

Thanks to some help from Haku and a couple of sympathetic bathhouse employees, Chihiro eventually encounters Yubaba (voiced by Mari Natsuki), an old but powerful witch who has ruled over the bathhouse and its numerous employees. While being as cranky and tempestuous as the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Yubaba eventually agrees to employ Chihiro in exchange for not transforming her into a piglet, but, of course, there is a catch. She literally takes away Chihiro’s name as giving her new name, and Chihiro must not forget her original name completely for not getting stuck in Yubaba’s world forever.

As Chihiro begins to work in Yubaba’s bathhouse as “Sen”, the story becomes a bit more leisurely as Miyazaki and his crew dole out one awe-inspiring moment after another. We get to look more into here and there in the bathhouse, and we admire more of its grand and intricate design which is an odd but striking cross between European and Japanese style. We see more of various spirit figures in the bathhouse, and you will be delighted for the appearance of those dust bunnies from Miyazaki’s great animation film “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), which incidentally work for an old spirit taking care of the giant boiler inside the bathhouse with his six spider-like arms.

One of the most awesome highlights in the film comes when a highly stinky entity suddenly comes into the bathhouse. While it instantly shocks and repulses everyone in the bathhouse including Yubaba, Chihiro is ordered to handle this stinky client alone by herself, but, what do you know, her plucky efforts lead to an epic visual catharsis to behold, which also indirectly gives us a bit of environmental message to reflect on.

Meanwhile, we also get to know more about how much Haku has been held against his will under Yubaba, but, again, the movie takes time as moving onto the unexpected tranquility of its last act along with its young heroine. Along with her several unexpected spirit friends including a rather hideous entity nicknamed “No-Face”, she goes to a certain place outside the bathhouse by a sort of magic train, and, again, Miyazaki lets us observe and appreciate more under the leisurely atmosphere of the film. I have no idea on why and how this extraordinary train exists, but it intrigues and then enchants me nonetheless with small but interesting touches here and there (The operator of the train, whose face is deliberately never shown, somehow took me to a similar dude in classic Japanese TV animation series “Galaxy Train 999”, for example).

And then there comes a surprising moment of poignancy to linger on you along with the lovely score by Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator Joe Hisaishi. I will not go much into details, but I can tell you instead that this touching moment will be quite emotionally resonating if you are familiar with those “Earthsea Cycle” novels written by American science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin (Incidentally, one of them was adapted into an animation feature film by Studio Ghibli in 2006, but the result has been regarded as one of the lowest points in the history of Studio Ghibli).

In conclusion, “Spirited Away”, which deservedly garnered the first Oscar statue for Miyazaki (He subsequently received the Honorary Oscar and then won another Oscar for “The Boy and the Heron”, by the way), remains quite fresh and alive as brimming with style and imagination, and it can also be regarded as another pivotal point in Miyazaki’s legendary career. In contrast to the sheer scale and ambition of “Princess Mononoke” (1997), the film just shows him simply enjoying himself a lot in his own creative area without feeling much need to prove himself anymore, and this trend has been continued during last two decades with varying degrees of success. I must confess that I am not that enthusiastic about “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004), “Ponyo” (2008), “The Wind Rises” (2013), and “The Boy and the Heron” compared to many of you, but we all can agree on that they are all as distinctive as you can expect from a Miyazaki animation film nonetheless, and maybe I will regard them with more admiration and appreciation someday just I do to “Spirited Away”.