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Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are travelling to their new home. Chihiro's father decides to take a shortcut. He stops in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park, which her mother insists on exploring over Chihiro's protestations. Crossing a dry riverbed, they find a seemingly empty restaurant stocked with food, and Chihiro's parents immediately begin eating. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an enormous bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. Upon returning to her parents, however, Chihiro discovers that they have been transformed into pigs! She soon discovers that she cannot cross the now-flooded river. Haku finds Chihiro and instructs her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji—a yōkai, a kind of supernatural entity—who commands Soot Sprites that feed coal into the boiler. When asked, however, Kamaji asks a worker named Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse and cursed Chihiro's parents. When Chihiro meets her, Yubaba tries to frighten the young girl away, but eventually gives her a work contract. As Chihiro signs the contract with the two kanji used in her name, Yubaba absorbs the second kanji, and renames her Sen. Chihiro soon forgets her real name. Haku later explains that Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and that if she complete forgets her name like he once did, she will never be able to leave the spirit world. The other workers, except for Kamaji and Lin, frequently mock Sen. While working, Sen invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. The spirit of a polluted river arrives as Sen's first customer. After she cleans him, he givers are a magic medicinal dumpling as a token of gratitude. Meanwhile, No-Face demands food from the bathhouse workers, giving nuggets of gold in exchange. When Sen declines the gold and leaves, No Face angrily swallows some workers, and starts demanding excessive amounts of food! Meanwhile, Sen sees a horde of paper cutouts attacking a dragon, she recognizes that it is actually Haku metamorphosed into a dragon. She beckons him to take refuge in her quarters, but the paper figures are right on his tail!

In a word, Spirited Away is sublime. On the one hand, it presents a wonderful, magical and enchanting world the likes of which we have never seen before on screen. On the other, it is about a young girl discovering herself, and how transformative it is for both her and the people that she comes into contact with. The film is at once accessible—with Chihiro on a quest to not only survive, but rescue her parents from their curse—and deep as it is full of rich, thought-provoking details that reverberate beyond the film; such as the river spirit who is stinky and disgusting merely because humans have been carelessly throwing trash into him! The film is also enriched the more one knows about Japanese culture. In addition to the concepts of yōkai and natural things such as rivers having a spirit entity, parts of the film are made all the more unnerving due to its relative realism and parallels to modern Japan. One thing that is lost in translation, however, is the symbolism in the signage in the so-called abandoned amusement park. In addition to a hinted at Buddhist connotation, the signs collectively suggest that the human interlopers are being watched by many, many eyes; akin to receiving stares in a place that you don't belong!

The film is full of compelling characters. The most intriguing of which is No Face. He isn't akin to the river spirit, and it is left open as to what he represents. On one extreme, he could represent the people who don't have their own identity or a true sense of self, and on the other, he could be the manifestation of capitalism and consumerism. Whatever No Face represents, it is thought provoking that Chihiro not only saves everyone from him when he goes on a rampage, but also 'saves' him from himself in the process! Spirited Away is full of themes—ranging from supernaturalism to environmentalism to Western consumerism—and is well worth a deep-dive into what Dir. Miyazaki was aiming at, in addition to the meaning of the symbolism he incorporated into the film. Some of that symbolism, such as Chihiro's parents turning into pigs, is readily understandable for English-speaking audiences, but some, such as the aforementioned eyes, are much more difficult to fully grasp. This film is a masterpiece that works on a multitudinal of levels, and genuinely earns its emotions. A must see!