Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001) is the highest-grossing Japanese-language film in history through most of its post-release history, the only non-English film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and the work most often used to introduce viewers to Studio Ghibli. Its place in the studio's catalogue and in Japanese cinema is the subject of substantial critical literature.
Production
Production of Spirited Away began at Studio Ghibli in mid-1999. Miyazaki drew the storyboards personally — production proceeded without a completed screenplay, with the storyboards extended as work progressed. Backgrounds were supervised by Yoji Takeshige and painted under Kazuo Oga's general art-direction supervision in traditional gouache on board, even as the rest of the production used some digital composition. The film released in Japan in July 2001.
Reception
The film's Japanese box office of approximately ¥31.6 billion held the Japanese-film record for nearly two decades, broken only by Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in 2020. The 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was the first non-English-language winner of that category. Spirited Away's subsequent place in academic film and anime literature — particularly in writing on environmental themes in Miyazaki's work, on Japanese folk-religious imagery, and on the representation of capitalism in children's media — is substantial.