Chihiro is sulking in the back of the car on the way to a new house. Her father takes a wrong turn to a tunnel. On the other side is an empty town with a restaurant full of food, and her parents eat it and turn into pigs. When the sun sets, the town fills with spirits and a boy named Haku tells Chihiro she has to get a job or disappear. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and is still the highest-grossing film in Japanese history in admissions.
What Happens In The Bathhouse
Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse, takes Chihiro’s name and gives her a new one, Sen. She works with Lin, scrubbing tubs, and the boiler is run by Kamaji, who has six arms and soot sprites for staff. A stink spirit turns out to be a river god full of bicycles. No-Face, a quiet masked spirit, follows Chihiro inside and starts eating the staff. Haku is a dragon with a stolen seal, and Chihiro takes a train across the water to Zeniba, Yubaba’s twin, to give it back.
Why It Is The One Everyone Starts With
The train scene, with Chihiro and No-Face sitting in silence as the sea goes by, is the most quoted single sequence in anime. Every creature in the bathhouse is a different design. Miyazaki made it for the ten-year-old daughters of his friends. It was released in 2001 in Japan, 2002 in the US, and it has never gone out of cinemas for long.
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125 minutes in HD above. Free, no account.