Spirited Away Recap: The Whole Movie, Scene by Scene

Chihiro is sulking in the back seat. Her family is moving to a new town and she doesn’t want to go. Her dad takes a shortcut, the road runs out, and they end up at a red building with a long tunnel through it.

On the other side there’s an empty town full of restaurants. One of them has food laid out and nobody serving it. Her parents sit down and start eating anyway. Chihiro won’t.

She walks off alone. A boy finds her on a bridge and tells her to leave before dark. By the time she runs back, the sun is down, strange shapes are filling the streets, and her parents are two huge pigs still eating at the counter.

The boy is Haku. He gives Chihiro a berry from this world so she stops fading, then tells her the only way to stay safe is to get a job here. Anyone without one gets turned into an animal.

She goes down to the boiler room first. Kamaji, an old man with six arms, runs the furnace with a crew of soot sprites. He says he doesn’t need help, but he gets a worker named Lin to take her upstairs.

At the top of the bathhouse is Yubaba, the witch who owns it. Chihiro keeps asking for a job until Yubaba gives in. She signs a contract, and Yubaba lifts most of her name off the page. From now on she’s Sen.

Later Haku shows her the pig pens and gives back the card from her going-away present. Her real name is written on it. He says Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and he can’t remember his own.

Sen’s first real job is scrubbing the big tub, the one nobody wants to touch. On her way she sees a pale masked figure standing in the rain and leaves a door open for it.

Then a spirit made of sludge shows up, and Yubaba puts Sen on it. The smell clears the whole hall. Sen notices something stuck in its side and pulls. Everyone grabs the rope and pulls with her. Out comes a bicycle, trash, fishing line, all of it.

It was a river spirit, buried under everything people threw in it. It laughs, gives Sen a little dumpling and flies away, leaving gold all over the bathhouse floor.

The masked figure is No-Face. He saw how much everyone wanted the gold, so now he makes it out of his hands. The staff wake him up, feed him and fight over him. He grows huge and starts eating them.

Sen doesn’t want the gold. She’s watching a white dragon chased across the sky by paper birds. It’s Haku. He crashes into Yubaba’s room, bleeding.

One of the paper birds is a spell from Zeniba, Yubaba’s twin sister. She appears, turns Yubaba’s giant baby Boh into a mouse, and says Haku stole her golden seal. Haku knocks her paper form apart with his tail and falls down a shaft, dying.

Sen feeds him half the river spirit’s dumpling. He throws up the seal and a black slug that was cursing him, and she squashes the slug. Then she gives No-Face the other half. He spits out everyone he ate and follows her out quietly.

Kamaji gives Sen old train tickets he’s been saving for decades. The train only goes one way now. She gets on with No-Face, Boh as a mouse and Yubaba’s bird, now a tiny fly.

The ride is quiet. The water goes on forever, shadowy passengers get on and off, and it gets dark.

Zeniba turns out to be the gentle sister. She doesn’t care about the seal much. She makes tea, gives No-Face a place to stay, and has everyone help make Sen a hair tie for protection.

Haku shows up at Zeniba’s door as a dragon. Sen climbs on and they fly back.

In the air she remembers something. When she was little she dropped her shoe into a river and fell in after it. The river carried her back to shore. It was the Kohaku River, and that’s Haku’s name. The river was filled in and built over. As soon as she says it, his scales fall away and they’re both falling, holding hands.

Back at the bathhouse, Yubaba has one last test. A row of pigs, and Sen has to pick out her parents. She looks at them and says none of them are. She’s right.

Her contract disappears. Haku walks her to the edge and tells her not to look back until she’s through the tunnel. She doesn’t. Her parents are waiting there like nothing happened, and the car is covered in leaves. Her hair tie is still in her hair.