LOS ANGELES, May 29 — Following the successful release of My Neighbour Totoro in 2018, fellow Studio Ghibli animated classic Spirited Away is making its way into Chinese theatres on June 21, nearly two decades after its worldwide debut.

It was the world’s highest grossing anime film for 15 years, remains Japan’s biggest box-office hit of all time, and is the only non-English film to have won the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

This June, a month short of its 18th anniversary, Spirited Away will be shown in Chinese theatres for the first time.

The story follows the adventures of Chihiro, a 10-year-old girl who gets lost on her family’s moving day, after they take a stroll and accidentally enter the spirit realm.

When Chihiro’s parents are transformed into pigs on account of their greed, two stern yet kind-hearted souls agree to take her in, but she ends up enslaved by the mean, magical owner of a bathhouse that caters to all manner of weird and wonderful spirits.

The success of Spirited Away brought international recognition to its animation studio, Studio Ghibli, and its co-founder and frequent feature director Hayao Miyazaki, prompting a new wave of attention for 1988 animation My Neighbour Totoro and paving the way for Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo and The Wind Rises.

As The Hollywood Reporter points out, segments of China’s cinema-going audience are already well acquainted with Ghibli’s output, distributed without official licensing through DVDs and downloads.

Totoro ended up taking US$26 million (RM109 million) from its December 2018 Chinese theatrical release, and Spirited Away is expected to surpass that amount.

Should Spirited Away exceed US$27 million in Chinese returns, it will overtake 2016’s Your Name and once again become the highest-grossing anime of all time. — AFP-Relaxnews