Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is hands down one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a powerful and beautiful story about coming of age, poetically and whimsically told, a journey simultaneously through adolescence and a mythical world, stunningly animated in vivid and imaginative Ghibli fashion, that somehow all makes perfect sense while making no sense at all. The protagonist Chihiro finds herself passing through a gate into the magical world of the “kami” (the gods) and loses both her parents and nearly her own identity in the process. She must overcome the challenges she faces while working in a bath […]