24 Years On, Japan Still Can’t Quit the Studio Ghibli Masterpiece That Made Hollywood Bow
Twenty-four years on, Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away still rules Japan’s living rooms—2025 rental charts crown the 2001 classic the nation’s top comfort watch, outpacing fresh releases and reminding Hollywood who set the bar.
If you were waiting for Japan to finally move on from 'Spirited Away' in 2025, I have bad news: it is not happening. Two decades on, Hayao Miyazaki's bathhouse fever dream still owns the country's rental charts like it just opened last Friday.
Where these numbers are coming from
This isn't a vibe check or a Twitter poll. The rankings come from Geo Corporation's annual data shared via PR Times. Geo runs 900-plus rental shops across Japan, which makes their year-to-date numbers a solid snapshot of what people are actually taking home. The window here is January 1 through November 15, 2025.
The 2025 rental Top 10 (so far)
- Crayon Shin-chan: Our Dinosaur Diary (2024)
- Detective Conan the Movie: The Million Dollar Five-Star Mystery (2024)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- The Boy and the Heron (2023)
- My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
- Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem (2017)
- Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom (2024)
- Doraemon: Nobita's Art World Tales (2025)
- Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony (2024)
- Princess Mononoke (1997)
What jumps out (besides the soot sprites)
'Spirited Away' isn't just hanging around; it's the most-rented Studio Ghibli title of the year and sits at No. 3 overall, behind the newest 'Shin-chan' and 'Detective Conan' movies. That's wild staying power. Also wild: three Ghibli films in the Top 10, and two of them are from the 80s and 90s. 'My Neighbor Totoro' is at No. 5, and 'Princess Mononoke' rounds things out at No. 10.
'The Boy and the Heron' is still flying high at No. 4 after its 2024 Oscar win, which tracks. But the real story is the classics outpacing a lot of shiny new releases with bigger campaigns and modern animation tech. Ghibli doesn't chase trends. It basically sets them and then watches everyone else try to catch up.
Quick bit of context for 'Mononoke': it once held Japan's all-time box office crown with 20.18 billion yen. Decades later, it's still pulling renters. That isn't nostalgia; that's longevity. Meanwhile, Totoro remains the universal comfort blanket it has always been.
As for the rest of the list: the family staples are doing what family staples do (hey there, Doraemon x2), 'Overlord' sneaks in for the dark fantasy crowd, and yes, that 'Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem' listing is from 2017. The label is a little odd, but the Minions are eternal, apparently.
Why 'Spirited Away' refuses to budge
This is one of those rare films that works across age brackets without feeling like homework. Parents rent it for kids, teens rediscover it, and adults come back to it when life gets loud. It's gorgeous, strange, funny, gentle, and a little dangerous, which is exactly why it still hits. It's not a fad. It's a ritual.
One more detail worth noting: these are physical rental charts. Streaming trends are their own beast. But when people make the trip to a store and choose a disc, this is what they pick. And in 2025, they're still choosing Chihiro.
So, do you think anything modern is going to knock 'Spirited Away' off its perch anytime soon? Or are we doing this again in 2030? I'm not betting against the bathhouse.