Spirited Away’s Minecraft Reconstruction Is Still Magical

Today is the 15th birthday of acclaimed Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away. As a token of gratitude to the Japanese movie that opened up so many virgin minds to the wonderful and sometimes bad world of anime, Minecraft user Alan Becker has reconstructed the entire world of Spirited Away (and a little of My Neighbour Totoro) in Minecraft. We covered him two years ago, but since then, he’s made astounding progress.

Alan Becker

The project now includes the road protagonist Chihiro and her parents drive on in the beginning of the movie, the nearby forest, the entrance to the spirit world and everything inside that spirit world: The bath house, cottages and even Chihiro’s little sandals. Special attention was paid to the colour palate, textures and proportions of Spirited Away’s every detail:

“Extensive research was done to make the Japanese houses as accurate as possible, including watching many Japanese house tours on YouTube,” Becker explained in a recent video. No kidding — the amount of thoughtfulness that went into this build is astounding. Every house, even outside of the spirit world, has its own tatami room.

Last March, Becker put out a call for help building the Spirited Away world, which he had worked on for five years by himself. The application process requires a five-sentence paragraph detailing the applicant’s strong interest in Ghibli Minecraft reconstructions.

Now that he has 16 builders, he hopes to craft a massive-scale Ghibli build of Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service and so on. Good luck to him!