In 2003, Ghibli won their first (and to date only) Oscar for Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, an extraordinary coming-of-age fable in which Chihiro, a headstrong 10-year-old girl, finds herself trapped in the spirit realm and takes a job at a ghostly bathhouse. Miyazaki was 60 years old when Spirited Away was released in Japan in 2001; Takahata was 65. In the decade leading up to Spirited Away’s release, Ghibli had tried to nurture younger filmmakers in an attempt to find successors for those two men at the company’s heart, but it still remained unclear if there was anyone capable of carrying on their work.