A New Wave of Praise for a Studio Ghibli Classic
More than two decades after its release, Spirited Away is once again near the top of the best animated movies conversation. In a recent feature, Collider named Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 fantasy the number one film released after 2000, calling it “the most perfect movie” of the last 26 years thanks to its beautiful story and incredible animation, as well as its Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Another Collider ranking of the best animated movies places Spirited Away behind only three titles: My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, and Pinocchio, underlining how rarefied its company has become. With a 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and enduring popular affection, the latest Spirited Away ranking doesn’t feel like nostalgia. Instead, it prompts a fresh look at why this Studio Ghibli classic still feels uniquely complete as both cinema and animation.
Storytelling That Treats Childhood with Unusual Respect
Spirited Away’s story is simple on paper: a girl named Chihiro wanders into a spirit world and must find the courage to save her parents. What critics still respond to is how Miyazaki refuses to reduce her journey to a tidy empowerment slogan. Chihiro begins as, in Miyazaki’s words, “a lazy bum,” inspired by his friend’s ten‑year‑old child, yet the film trusts that her “inner resources are as rich as Chihiro.” Her coming‑of‑age unfolds through work, small acts of kindness, and mistakes, not speeches. The movie’s most memorable beats are often quiet: crossing a bridge without breathing, riding a train through flooded plains, feeding a lonely No Face who, producer Toshio Suzuki notes, reflects real men desperate to connect. Environmental, anti‑consumerist, and labor themes are present, but they emerge organically from Chihiro’s emotional reality, giving the film a depth that rewards viewers returning at different ages.
Timeless Worldbuilding, from Bathhouse Architecture to No Face
Part of what keeps Spirited Away feeling modern in every new ranking of the best animated movies is its worldbuilding. Miyazaki’s bathhouse is at once industrial and mythic, a place of boilers and contracts as much as spirits and gods. Every room, corridor, and soot‑covered corner feels designed for function first, fantasy second, which paradoxically makes the fantasy more convincing. Character designs are equally grounded. Chihiro’s plain clothes and awkward movements echo the real child who inspired her, while No Face’s masklike face and shifting body visualize the producer’s description of him as someone who longs to enter others’ hearts but lacks the means. The result is a world that never chases trendiness or overt spectacle. Instead, it feels oddly familiar, as if it had always existed just out of sight, helping the film age like a hand‑crafted myth rather than a product of any specific moment.
Why Its Emotions Hit Differently from Modern Blockbusters
Compared with many contemporary animated blockbusters, Spirited Away moves at a gentler, more patient pace. Big story turns arrive, but Miyazaki lets them breathe instead of punctuating every beat with jokes or rapid‑fire action. That approach places the film in the same critical conversation as other emotionally intense works that Collider ranks above it, such as My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies, which chase what one writer calls “emotional purity.” Spirited Away is more layered and stranger, trading direct devastation for a low, accumulating hum of fear, wonder, and melancholy. Childhood anxiety, labor, greed, and loneliness are dramatized through tasks and encounters, not villains that must be vanquished. In an era where many animated films resemble live‑action blockbusters with brighter colors, Spirited Away’s emotional depth feels distinct: less about cathartic triumph, more about learning to move through an overwhelming world without losing yourself.
A Film That Keeps Finding New Audiences
That emotional nuance may explain why Spirited Away continues to resonate so strongly in the streaming age, where young viewers encounter it with no memory of its original release. Miyazaki has said that children understand the film deeply despite its fantastical nature, pointing to moments like Haku’s warning not to breathe while crossing the bridge. Kids intuit the stakes, even if they cannot articulate them. Adults, meanwhile, return to the movie and notice different layers: labor politics in the bathhouse, the ache of forgetting one’s name, the way greed literally distorts bodies. As lists debate the exact Spirited Away ranking among the best animated movies ever made, its influence is quietly visible in films that try to balance spectacle with introspection. Yet few match its particular mixture of gentleness and terror. That might be why, for many viewers, it still feels as close to “perfect” as animation gets.