Spirited Away

Miyazaki’s most successful movie in the West, Spirited Away, is released.  The fantasy tale follows a girl named Chihiro as she attempts to save her parents in a world of spirits.

After I started production, the key animator, the art director and the producer came out on holiday with me and we had this blackboard and tried to draft out which direction the film was going in. I explained, “I think we’ll be able to do this kind of story, with this kind of ending,” and then Suzuki-san (the producer) said: “Ah. That will take three hours. I don’t want to make a three-hour movie!”