Netflix’s anime movie My Oni Girl features a 9-minute-long Spirited Away Easter egg

polygon.com:

My Oni Girl is a charming, emotional fantasy where the details don’t entirely add up. The ending of Netflix’s anime movie in particular raises a lot of questions about what an oni actually is in this setting, and about the rules governing the hidden village where these creatures from Japanese folklore live in isolation. Still, between debates about what drives certain events in this movie, anime fans might take a moment to appreciate the extended riff on Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away that director Tomotaka Shibayama (A Whisker Away) and co-writer Yuko Kakihara (The Apothecary Diaries) dropped about 30 minutes into the story.

The plot focuses on shy schoolboy Hiiragi Yatsuse, who clearly wants to be liked and hopes to be helpful to others. But those desires make him an easy mark for his classmates, who keep taking advantage of his good nature. When he helps runaway oni girl Tsumugi out of a small moment of difficulty, though, his compassion leads him into a much bigger, stranger world. Tsumugi has left her hidden oni village to look for her missing mother. Hiiragi offers to help, and they run off together, headed to a distant shrine where Tsumugi’s mother supposedly can be found.

In one of several episodic chapters in their journey, Tsumugi separates from Hiiragi and is wounded by a mysterious flying creature. Hiiragi finds her unconscious in a forest and carries her to the first building he finds… which happens to be a large, fancy spa and bathhouse. That’s the first hint that My Oni Girl is headed into referential territory.

The first person Hiiragi approaches to ask for help is a bald, bearded man with glasses who works at the inn and has a close relationship with the woman who runs it. He turns out to have a soft heart, and to be easily impressed by a hard worker.

But the real decider of Hiiragi’s fate is the lady who runs the bathhouse — a stern, fearsome woman who says she has no reason to grant him any favors. Ignoring all her other questions, he asks her