Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away came with built-in expectations. After the exhausting but highly successful production of Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime, 1998), the director announced his retirement from filmmaking. It was a promise he reneged on when meeting the ten-year-old daughter of a friend.

Spirited Away has won many awards including an Oscar in 2003 for Best Animated Feature.

Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki has created a wonderfully bizarre world with superb visual design.

The title ''Spirited Away'' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy. The picture is being promoted as Disney's ''Spirited Away,'' although seeing just 10 minutes of this English version of a hugely popular Japanese film will quickly disabuse any discerning viewer of the notion that it is a Disney creation. The towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film is an unmistakable obsession of this director. Actually, rather than Disney's ''Spirited Away, the movie could better be considered Mr. Miyazaki's ''Through the Looking Glass.''