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When the slick technology of computer animation has all but chased hand-drawn 2-D animation  from the multiplexes, Japan’s Studio Ghibli doggedly continues to show how simpler magic can still inspire wonder.

That’s not to suggest a film like The Secret World of Arrietty is in any way lacking in sophistication. This latest 2-D feature from the company co-headed by the great Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) is as captivating as almost any Ghibli production, once again presenting a world of delicate beauty, wonder and poignancy. It’s a great family film to be sure, but is such a cinematic treasure that it dissolves such pat categorization.

If there’s a Ghibli title the movie most echoes, it may be Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), about a young witch making her way in the world. This movie is also named for and centres around a young heroine, Arrietty, the only daughter in a family of four-inch people living beneath a country house. Hence, also as in Kiki, we’re presented with a secret world of fantasy overlapping our own (perhaps a reflection of the Japanese folk belief in kami, sometimes translated as "spirits").

Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler) is a Borrower, the name she and her family give their race. They’ve made a comfortable home from bits and pieces "borrowed" from the house; if the larger inhabitants above have noticed a button missing, odds are the little ones have found a use for it.

On the night of her first borrowing, Arrietty is seen by the sickly Shawn (David Henrie), who’s been sent to the country for care and who previously glimpsed Arrietty in the garden.

"Don’t be afraid," he whispers gently, half-asleep, as if half-dreaming.

Arrietty’s father (Will Arnett), however, isn’t convinced, and soon insists the family pack up to search for a new home. Arrietty can sense Shawn’s gentle benevolence but the old biddy of a maid who  lives in the house is also onto the Borrowers’ presence. And so the noose tightens on the tiny family.

Based on the novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton, the movie is rendered in what may strike some viewers as an almost naïve visual style, with some backgrounds evoking Impressionist watercolours. That’s precisely part of the film’s gentle charm - this is mostly a world of giant trees, leaves, tall grasses and raindrops, and the painterly style gracefully serves the setting and atmosphere.

Then there’s the nature of the storytelling, so rich and dense due to the deliberate pacing. Compared even to the wondrous output of the American-based Pixar, which cheerfully admits Ghibli’s enormous influence, this is such a still, often serene film, punctuated with effective moments of silence – as when Arrietty asks her mother if they’re putting the whole house inside a bag she’s helping sew…and her mother simply looks ahead sadly, without a word. Such precise nuances of body language are a Ghibli hallmark, and among the most memorable details in the studio’s oeuvre.

Finally, and perhaps most special of all, is the innocent sensibility suffused throughout. In his review of My Neighbor Totoro, Roger Ebert notes the film has "no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults." In other words, no manufactured, false melodrama that simplifies life into crude, black-and-white terms. In The Secret World of Arrietty, the only "villain" is a mostly goofy old biddy of a housemaid, who just wants to prove she’s not senile.

This is such a simple tale, simply but wondrously told, with an affecting underlying theme -- trust, and how much more frightening we make our world when we don’t grant it..