At the 75th Academy Awards, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won best animated feature in the second year of the category’s existence — and, to this day, it is the only hand-drawn feature (mostly; computers were used sparingly) to win the honor.

The eighth film from Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli — following such classics as 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro and 1997’s Princess Mononoke — is set in a local bathhouse in Bunkyo, the district of Tokyo where the writer-director was born. Miyazaki, then 59, wrote a screenplay that follows 10-year-old Chihiro as she attempts to save her parents, who have been ...