Netflix’s new anime movie features a 9-minute Spirited Away Easter egg

My Oni girl is a charming, emotional fantasy in which the details are not quite right. The ending of the Netflix anime film in particular raises a lot of questions about what an oni actually is in this setting, and about the rules for the hidden village where these creatures from Japanese folklore live in isolation. Still, amid the debates about what drives certain events in this film, anime fans can take a moment to appreciate the extended riff on Hayao Miyazaki’s. Ghostly away that director Tomotaka Shibayama (A mustache gone) and co-writer Yuko Kakihara (The pharmacist’s diaries) was about 30 minutes into the story.

The plot focuses on shy schoolboy Hiiragi Yatsuse, who clearly wants to be liked and hopes to help others. But those desires make him an easy target for his classmates, who continue to take advantage of his good character. However, when he helps runaway oni girl Tsumugi out of a small moment of trouble, his compassion leads him to a much bigger, stranger world. Tsumugi has left her hidden oni village to search for her missing mother. Hiiragi offers to help, and they run away together, heading to a remote shrine where Tsumugi’s mother is supposedly found.

In one of the several episodic chapters of their journey, Tsumugi separates from Hiiragi and is injured by a mysterious flying creature. Hiiragi finds her unconscious in a forest and carries her to the first building he comes across… which happens to be a large, luxurious spa and bathhouse. That’s the first clue My Oni girl is located in reference area.

The first person Hiiragi asks for help is a bald, bearded man with glasses who works at the inn and is close to the woman who runs the inn. He appears to have a soft heart and is easily impressed as a hard worker.

But the real decider of Hiiragi’s fate is the lady who runs the bathhouse: a strict, terrifying woman who says she has no reason to do him any favors. He ignores all her other questions and asks her again and again if he can stay and let him work for a living. She eventually breaks down and gives him a temporary job.

Hiiragi impresses everyone at the spa with his hard work, even though he seems to be able to handle the toughest jobs, including a lot of scrubbing:

Tsumugi, meanwhile, dreams that she is traveling on a mysterious train with a ghostly figure. That train runs across the surface of an endless snow plain:

Eventually, Tsumugi wakes up and feels better, and the two move on, after a cheerful farewell with all the members of the bathhouse gathering to see them off.

It’s not that these images are particularly similar (although the trains are the closest), or that Shibayama drew directly from Miyazaki’s framing, character design, or visual style for My Oni girl. It’s more that the bathhouse portion of his film feels broadly familiar in its plot details, and winkingly familiar in its specific interactions. The entire segment lasts about nine minutes – big for an Easter egg, but a small part of a feature film, and just one of a number of adventures Hiiragi and Tsumugi have on their journey. It is not intended for copying Ghostly away or capitalize on its fame, and it works well as a story element even if you’ve never seen Miyazaki’s film.

But it’s a nice little distraction once you notice it. Shibayama continued to work Ghostly away as a digital ink-and-paint artist, and this feels like a relatively subtle reference to that film – an echo of the most famous project he worked on, just for fun, for the anime fans who might notice.

However, despite all the common plot elements, it hit home My Oni girl what I remembered most Ghostly away was a tranquil nighttime shot of Naoya – the Kamaji equivalent, although he also has elements of Lin – vaping at night on the balcony of his bathhouse, overlooking the city. That shot has the same solemn, melancholic feel of a very similar shot of Chihiro in Ghostly away Eating a dumpling on the balcony in the evening her bathhouse, overlooking the sea that appeared and surrounded the building.

Both shots are pauses in the action, where one character steps away from everyone else and from the drama of the adventure. It’s an interesting story choice to have the same included My Oni girl it’s about a very minor character, rather than the main character, and certainly the sequence within it Spirited away is sweeter, sadder and stranger.

But I enjoyed it My Oni girl‘s extended riff on Miyazaki’s masterpiece, seen through a completely mundane lens, sans gods and monsters. In a way, the series feels like Ghostly away AU fanfic – the equivalent of a story that moves the characters into an everyday, modern setting, without the colorful fantasy elements, but with familiar dynamics and characters. It’s a cover version that doesn’t live up to the original song, but plays with it in a fun way.

My Oni girl is currently streaming on Netflix.