The Art of Spirited Away by Sanjeev Beekeeper licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

From Studio Ghibli, I’ll be presenting a film, which is one of Hayao Miyazaki’s Masterpieces coming of age Fantasy, called Spirited Away. I’d say that it’s one of the finest animated films, because it was created in the traditional bedrock of animation, a frame by frame drawing. He personally draws thousands of frames by hand,  because “everything starts with the human hand drawing” as he once said. Then, digitize it to enrich the visual look.

To summarize things up, it basically begins with a 10 year old girl named Chihiro, who is annoyed about having to move to a new town. While driving to their new house, Chihiro’s father goes to a shortcut which later discovers a mysterious tunnel that leads to what appears to be an abandoned theme park. To have found a restaurant fully-stocked with unattended food, Chihiro’s parents start to eat. However, Chihiro wonders away by herself. While she explores, she finds a bathhouse, where a boy appears and warns her to leave before it gets dark. She runs back, only to find that her parents have transformed into pigs. 

Throughout the film, Chihiro will encounter many obstacles along the way, which only makes this the beginning of an extraordinary adventure that she will never forget. Chihiro will meet no more humans in the bathhouse. She will be placed under a spell by Yubaba, who steals her name and gives her a new one, Sen. Unless she can get her old name back again, she can never leave.