Miyazaki made Spirited Away so that his 10 year-old granddaughter and her friends would have a sense of Japanese heritage and culture. © 2002 Nibariki. TGNDDTM. All rights reserved.

Questions at the Hollywood premiere comparing Spirited Away with Princess Mononoke (did he think the English dub of Spirited was better than that of Mononoke; did he think that Spirited had a better chance of box office success in America) seemed to highly annoy him. He made it clear that each of his films has been made because of a particular creative inspiration. With Spirited Away he had noticed that some of his granddaughter's friends, girls about 10 years old, seemed very apathetic, only interested in passively watching modern popular culture, unaware of Japan's rich cultural past. He felt that he should make a film for 10-year-old girls that would both introduce them to their heritage and encourage them to develop a sense of self-reliance and responsibility. How he feels about the success of his films depends upon how closely he thinks each comes to achieving his particular goal for it. He does not compare his films with each other or with any other movies. "I frankly am not a big fan of valuing, evaluating a film's worth based on box office receipts," he said through interpreter Linda Hoagland. "I believe that a film should represent a very intimate personal encounter between what's on the screen and an individual's heart. To try to reduce the value of that to numbers on a page is not something that I can be a fan of." A query as to whether he was excited about the possibility of Spirited Away or a future film of his winning an Academy Award brought a dismissive, "Doesn't interest me." (Suzuki immediately added that it certainly interested him!) Another question as to whether Studio Ghibli would ever make any sequels to its popular movies, as Disney is doing today, drew an even brusker, "Never!"

Miyazaki strongly affirmed his commitment to traditional cel animation. One questioner commented on, "...an incredibly detailed Chinese-style vase. It's shockingly realistic looking, really beautiful; but it looks real and I'm guessing that it was done digitally. And indeed, in this film you seem to have used more digital effects than you have in any of your previous films. Maybe you could talk about the digital effects." Miyazaki replied, "You're wrong. That's hand drawn, that Chinese vase. It's also not Chinese; it's a Japanese vase from the Imari area. All of the drawings are hand-drawn. All of the artwork that's featured as design in the bathhouse in the film is all hand drawn. We've, you know, given it a little sort of elegance boost with digital technology."

He elaborated in reply to a second question about what percentage of Spirited Away was digital. "Fundamentally, the animation is all pencil drawn. In a few scenes we turned to digital, for instance to create patterns on the waves or to show bubbling water, water bubbling up. As we headed into production on this film I gathered my staff and I said to them, 'This is a two dimensional film. This is our strength.' And there is a fundamental difference in thinking and approach between 3D movies and 2D, and I'll give you an example. For instance, I don't know if you noticed, but Yubaba's head, large as it is, is not identically the same in every scene. Depending on my mood and her mood, the size of her head changes. This is an emotional relationship that we developed to scale with the audience that we'd have to abandon if we wholeheartedly embraced 3D. I'm holding on to my pencil."