Chihiro Ogino, a 10-year-old girl, moves with her parents to a new
town when they become lost and find what appears to be an abandoned amusement park.
Chihiro's father insists on exploring it, and she and her mother
reluctantly accompany him. Chihiro's parents sample the food at an
unattended stall. After Chihiro wanders off and finds a grand bathhouse,
a boy approaches and warns her to leave before nightfall. When Chihiro
runs back to her parents, she finds they have been transformed into pigs, and the park starts to swarm with black spirits.
She eventually learns from Haku, the boy she had met earlier, that
her family has become trapped in the spirit world. He also reveals that
he had known her since she was a child. Haku brings Chihiro to the
bathhouse where he tells her to see Kamaji, a six-armed man who works
the boiler room, to ask for a job. Rejecting Chihiro's request, Kamaji
entrusts her to Lin, a bathhouse worker. Lin takes her to see Yubaba,
the witch who runs the bathhouse. Denying Chihiro's request to work,
Yubaba eventually allows her to work on the condition that her name is
changed to Sen (千), the first character
of Chihiro's name. Having been told from Haku that Yubaba controls her
servants by taking their names, Chihiro is warned that if she forgets
her real name, she will be trapped in the world forever.
While working as Lin's assistant, Sen allows a mysterious masked
spirit to enter. Later, a "stink spirit" enters the bathhouse. Sen
eventually cleans the stink spirit, revealing himself to be a spirit of a
polluted river. In return for restoring his health, the river spirit
bestows upon Sen an emetic dumpling.
Sen eventually realizes Haku is actually a dragon. While still a dragon, Haku is seriously injured by shikigami
in the form of paper birds. Yubaba decides that the injured Haku is no
longer of any use to her and leaves her servants to kill Haku. Sen
attempts to protect Haku, however, at which point, the shikigami are
revealed to be controlled by the spirit of Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister.
Zeniba informs Sen that Haku stole her gold seal
on Yubaba's orders and demands that the gold seal be returned. In the
process, Zeniba transforms Boh, Yubaba's large baby son, into a mouse
and Yubaba's bird into a smaller bird. Yu Baba's other servants are
transformed to look like Boh. Haku and Sen manage to escape from Zeniba
and fall into the boiler room again, where Sen feeds Haku part of the
dumpling. Haku coughs up the gold seal and a black slug, which Sen
crushes with her foot. Kamaji gives Sen train tickets to visit Zeniba so
that she can beg her to lift the curse on the seal. Boh, in his mouse
form, and the bird accompany her.
Meanwhile, the masked spirit that Sen allowed into the bathhouse
reveals himself as a monster called "No Face (Kaonashi)." No Face, who
swallows one of the servants, a frog, in order to speak, offers gold to
the staff in exchange for large quantities of food. As No Face continues
to eat, it grows in size. Its insatiable appetite causes it to swallow
several other employees and it ultimately reaches immense proportions.
Later, Sen feeds No Face the remainder of the dumpling, causing him to
regurgitate everything and everyone it has eaten. Restored to his prior
inoffensive form, No Face also accompanies Sen to Zeniba's house.
Haku regains consciousness and learns that Sen has gone to see
Zeniba. Yubaba, enraged by both the damage caused by No Face and Sen's
departure, orders Sen's parents to be killed. Haku appears and warns
Yubaba that something precious to her has been replaced, and she
realizes that Boh has disappeared. Telling her that Boh is with Zeniba,
Haku proposes should he return Boh, Yubaba will allow Sen and her
parents to return the human world. Yubaba agrees on the condition that
Sen pass one final test.
Sen, Boh, and No Face arrive at Zeniba's house and find Zeniba to be
friendly. Zeniba says Sen's love broke the seal's spell, and the slug
Sen killed was the curse Yubaba had used to enslave Haku. Haku appears
in his dragon form to pick up Sen and Boh, while No Face remains with
Zeniba. Realizing that Sen once fell into the Kohaku River as a child,
she guesses Haku is the spirit of the river who saved her, freeing Haku
from Yubaba's spell.
Haku returns Boh to Yubaba, and Sen, now called Chihiro, is offered a
final test to guess her parents from a group of pigs. She correctly
answers that none of them are her parents. Haku leads her towards the
entrance of the park and promises they will see each other again.
Chihiro reunites with her parents, who do not recall their experiences,
and the family departs from the park. It is implied that a period time
has passed and it is unclear whether or not time passed at the same
rate.
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