SEN TO CHIHIRO NO KAMIKAKUSHI

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REVIEWS

• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  70/100
  It's a fantastic movie for children, but doesn't hold up well under scrutiny.

  Moving away can be a tough situation, especially when you’re still a child. Your parents probably have a good reason to relocate… Changes in the economy, lucrative opportunities at work, declining property values and rising crime rates… But how is that supposed to matter to you when you’re being uprooted from your routine, removed from the home you’ve grown attached to, and being forced to say goodbye to your friends? Anybody in that situation would be bummed out, and Chihiro is no exception, sulking in the back of her family car, hugging the one reminder she has of the life she’s leaving behind, a bouquet of flowers. There’s nothing she can do but pout as her family gets closer and closer to their new home, but when her well-meaning father takes a shortcut and winds up getting them lost, that sense of worry and disappointment gives way to something far more ominous.

  At the end of a lonely, suspiciously unpaved path, past a wasteland of ancient shrines, Chihiro and her family are stopped in their tracks by an old statue outside of the mouth of a tunnel. Guided through said tunnel by sheer curiosity, Chihiro’s parents wander through it, with their reluctant daughter in tow, and what they find on the other end was more than they could have possibly imagined. Thinking the structures at the other end to be an abandoned theme park, her parents find a booth of fresh food, which they almost immediately begin to chow down on, even as the whole world seems to go to hell around them. As the park’s true inhabitants begin to make their ghostly selves known, Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs, and the terrified girl suddenly finds herself stranded alone at a bathhouse for wayward spirits, and if this unwitting stowaway wants to have any chance of rescuing her folks and escaping this supernatural spa of spooks and spirits, she’ll have to leave her spoiled, selfish upbringing behind and grow up fast under unforgiving circumstances.

  This is only the second Studio Ghibli title that I’ve reviewed(Yes, this is the first one I’m posting… remember, I do things weirdly), and it couldn’t be more different from the first one. To start, this film was actually directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, and not by the recently departed Isao Takahata, and you can tell the difference from the visuals. It’s worth mentioning that in some of Ghibli’s films, the animation budget is, perhaps, much higher than it needs to be, as there isn’t always much going on in terms of action, and aside from the obligatory flying scenes, some of their work can skew heavily towards realism. In Spirited Away, however, the animation is just as fluid and lavish, but it’s being used for so much more. Studio Ghibli doesn’t really have any bad looking films, with even it’s lesser titles at least being nice to look at, but even among a filmography that’s full of beautiful artwork and vivid animation, Spirited Away still manages to be right up near the top as one of their best looking, if not THE best looking, titles ever released by the prolific studio.

  In any Ghibli title, you’re going to be able to expect a very high visual standard, consisting of… At the very least… Fluid animation, graceful character movements, expressive faces, and highly detailed, immersive environments. Spirited Away has all of these, but it also adds so much more that helps it to stand out among it’s peers. The bathhouse, as well as the spirit town surrounding it, is a huge setting with no shortage of different locations to explore, and every single inch of it that we’re allowed to see is rich with detail and personality. The cast of characters, from the main ones all the way down to the hundreds of spirits inhabiting the area, are incredibly diverse, offering enough unique designs to fill out an entire here’s Waldo book, and while a ton of them were obviously pulled from Japanese mythology, they’re still drawn in such a way that the youngest of viewers probably won’t be afraid of them. They also all have their own individual mannerisms and styles of movement that must have taken an unbelievable amount of effort to nail down.

  Purely in terms of aesthetic and style, Spirited Away is probably the most visually identifiable title of the Ghibli canon, which is probably why it’s lived on to become the Studio’s flagship title. It’s hard to say what it is, exactly, but once you get past the instantly recognizable creature designs of Haku, Yubaba and the Noface, Chihiro and her parents just have a certain quality that none of Miyazaki’s other human characters have. It’s like a slightly realistic look, not so much as to make them look realistic themselves, but just enough to distinguish them from more traditional-looking anime characters. Look at any other of Hayao Miyazaki’s human characters, and they most likely have the big eyes and simplistic facial structure that Chihiro and her parents were somehow able to avoid. If this was intentional, then it was an especially brilliant move, as it adds another layer of separation between Chihiro and the denizen of Yubaba’s business. I’ve seen this kind of design choice in Takahata’s work, but I can’t think of any other Miyazaki project like it.

  Being that this is a Studio Ghibli production, the animation isn’t the only thing you can expect to be top notch. The music, composed by longtime Hayao Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi, is amazing, the kind of whimsical full-orchestra score that you’d expect to see in a Disney or Don Bluth production. If you think I’m pulling that comparison out of my ass, then please, listen to Reprise and try to get through it without thinking of An American Tail, or any heartfelt movie moment when characters are tearfully reunited. Of course, that’s also kind of my only real problem with this soundtrack… As tearfully wonderful as it can be, it also feels a bit generic, like a lot of it’s tracks just sound like they’d be from some other movie. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great, and they do their job with the story, it’s just that when all’s said and done, it’s just a little forgettable. Even the ending credits song, Always With Me, which is a charming song with a folksy indies feel to it, was just recycled from a scrapped movie that it was originally written for.

  As for the English dub, well, my thoughts there are a bit more complicated, and that’s mostly due to the fact that the sub and dub for this film are radically different creatures. It’s a very Disney-sounding dub, especially when compared to the Disney output of the early 2000’s. The adaptive trade-off can be broadly boiled down to ‘personality vs. subtlety,’ as the new version adds a bit more life to the cast, but also skews the dialogue to be a lot more accessible to the average English speaking child. For most of the cast, the acting in the dub is really good, with a couple of obvious stand-outs being Jason Marsden in the role of Haku, which he knocks out of the park despite sounding nothing like the original(and noticeably female) Japanese seiyuu, and the legendary Suzanne Pleshette playing the dual roles of Zeniba and Yubaba in a performance that’s far superior to the original. Fun fact, this isn’t actually the late Pleshette’s only anime role… She also had a small role in Trigun, believe it or not!

  Of course, there are other surprisingly big names in the cast… Michael Chilis and Lauren Holly play Chihiro’s parents(I don’t think their last name is mentioned in the movie, but I’ve found them credited as The Oginos), and I’m guessing they were instructed by the director to make them sound like ignorant yuppies, because that’s kind of how they come across, with a few minor dialogue changes and their over-all delivery. One particularly weird choice was Susan Egan as the character Lin, who sounds uncannily similar to Meg from Hercules… Which makes sense, because she also played that character. I don’t know if that’s just how she naturally talks or what, but it’s still such a strange connection. You look at Lin, you don’t think “Hey, she probably sounds like Megara!” And yet, you’ve got the same voice actress, doing the exact same performance. David Ogden Stiers, a certified Frasier and Disney legend who passed away this year, played the role of multi-armed boiler man Kamaji, and he did a much better job creating a new performance.

  And that leaves us with Daveigh Chase, a somewhat forgotten child actor who had this as one of her three defining roles when she was still a child… Chihiro is one of her signature characters, along with Lilo from Lilo and Stitch and the little girl from The Ring, and I’m sad to say, any brilliance she might have shown in those other two roles is lost here. Well, okay, maybe that’s not entirely fair. She doesn’t do a terrible job, and I’m willing to give her the benefit on the doubt and chalk her performance up to bad direction, but DAMN is she hard to listen to at times. The original performance by Rumi Hiiragi, who was only slightly older than Daveigh at the time, sounds a bit too old for her role, bringing a deeper register to the character, but she also did a stellar acting job, with emotion and voice control beyond her years. Daveigh’s performance, on the other hand, is mostly full of screaming and lines that sound like they just used the first take each time, but she does sound more believably childlike, but for my money, I’ll take good acting over authenticity any day.

  If you’ve only ever owned the original Disney DVD, then you won’t know anything about the adaptive script, which, ho boy, they made a ton of changes when they dubbed this title. I’ll be fair, none of the changes were so bad they had to be removed in later releases, like that disastrous mistake they made at the end of Kiki’s Delivery Service, but it still comes off a little condescending at times. It’s well intentioned enough, but it goes too far at several points. There were a lot of dialogue changes to put events in a more clear context and add more foreshadowing to the story, but adding pig noises to the scene where the Oginos have just started eating the spirit’s food was a bit ridiculous. There’s more explanation given to certain Japanese ideas, with the ‘break the seal’ bad luck curse scene being a smart and necessary example, but I don’t think kids need to be immediately told that Haku’s a dragon just because we don’t see him transforming before flying off, and the last words added to the ending come bafflingly out of nowhere. Also, it puts a lot more emphasis on a romance between Haku and Chihiro, which kind of misses the point of their relationship. It’s a fine dub, but I prefer the original Japanese.

  A few years ago, I was reviewing a series called Petite Princess Yucie, where I pondered the merit of reviewing children’s media. On the one hand, yeah, kids will watch anything, but as adults, is it our job to judge the quality of the media we show them? I had a tentative answer for this question, but I’ve changed my tune a bit recently. As long as it’s subjectively safe, and doesn’t contain any harmful lessons, yeah, kids should be able to watch anything. The Magic Voyage is a piece of shit, but I still liked watching it as a kid, and I’d have bitten you if you tried to stop me. I hate Nightmare Before Christmas, but I’d still rather let a kid watch that then Coco, which advocates how noble a choice it is to give up on your hopes, dreams and personal fulfillment just because your toxic, unsupportive family arbitrarily says so. Yeah, I really hated Coco. But from that perspective, Spirited Away is a fantastic movie to show to children, as it’s full of imaginative visuals, bright colors, and it teaches a lot of important lessons, which I’ll get back to in a minute.

  Having said that, even if children’s media is safe for it’s target audience, that doesn’t exempt it from criticism, as adult like to watch that kind of thing too, and I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of kids out there reading reviews. You read reviews to see that reviewer’s opinion, and in my opinion, Spirited Away is not one of Studio Ghibli’s best titles. That’s not to say it’s bad by any means, but in terms of writing, it comes up short in a lot of areas. To start, Spirited Away is severely lacking in characterizations. One of the reasons that I feel the actors for Haku, Zeniba and Yubaba did the best job is because they had the most to work with… Particularly with the old mutant biddies, both of whom sport deliciously fleshed out identities, personalities and an interesting dynamic between each other. The character of No-Face feels confusingly pointless and could have been written out with nothing really being lost(Insert Sin Cara joke here), and while Lin has a more important role in the story, I can’t say I know anything about her by the end.

  The same could be said for Chihiro. She does manage to grow and develop through the story, but the change is vague, as she’s basically just tougher and slightly more wise by the ending. Aside from refusing to eat with her parents, it takes her all the way until the third act to start showing agency and making decisions, and none of those decisions are ever more complex than ‘do the right thing.’ She’s a likeable character and you do feel for her, you do want her to strive, survive and succeed, but out of all the things in this movie that might stick with you after seeing it, she’s just not one of them. Some of the dangers she gets into don’t even wind up coming back… She starts to fade away, which gets dealt with and resolved by Haku and never comes up again. She signs away her name, which she remembers again when Haku reminds her, but between those two points, I couldn’t recall her forgetting her name ever being a thing in the story. Like, okay, I guess that’s important, but where was it stated that she forgot her name at all?

  Part of this weakness is probably due to Miyazaki’s writing style. I’ve heard several rumors about the conception of this story, like that it was written as a present for Miyazaki’s niece, or that Chihiro was based on someone’s daughter, and while I can’t find source information to prove these rumors, they do explain a lot, like how the story seems to be woven together from a bunch of mismatched morals and fables, and how it teaches a lot of small lessons to the viewer, and why Chihiro is such a lego brick. It feels like a story that somebody wrote so they could hide a bunch of these lessons underneath the story so a young viewer might subliminally pick up on them. As I said before, most of these lessons are good ones, and there’s really nothing wrong with teaching them, but there really doesn’t seem to be any sort of unifying theme between them, making the story feel like more of an anthology held together with a tenuous thread of a story than any sort of grand fable.

  Of course, there’s one more problem with that approach, and it’s a much worse one. Out of the lessons that this film tries to teach, you’ve got all of these important gems like ‘don’t be greedy,’ ‘be respectful,’ ‘finish what you start,’ ‘be grateful to those who help you,’ ‘good deeds will come back to you,’ and ‘if you help one person, everyone else will expect it and take advantage of you…’ Okay, I said they were mostly good, give me a break. Anyway, the problem with these lessons is that you never actually get to see anyone learn them. I’m serious. These lessons are taught directly to us, and not to any of the characters. The only lesson Chihiro actually learns is that the working world is hard, but was that ever important? I know the pig scene comes to mind, but Chihiro already knew not to steal food, and her parents had their memories of the event wiped. Most of the lessons are things a character already knows, or something completely inconsequential that only the observer will pick up on, like the lesson revolving around Yubaba and her sheltered baby.

  All of this feels indicative of one other major rumor I’ve heard about the film, although this one has a bit more backing… Miyazaki is the kind of story-teller who doesn’t like to put story first. From what I’ve heard, he was still writing this movie while it was being animated and story-boarded, which is a distinct departure from the norm, but I believe it. Out of every movie of his that I’ve seen, the only one I refuse to believe was written this way was Princess Mononoke, which had a superb story. But Spirited Away feels way too underwritten in contrast, and it shows in some very weird ways. I wouldn’t go as far as calling Chihiro a Mary-Sue, but her flaws are way too simple, she never has to struggle in making her decisions, and it feels like she was just created to be a role model. There’s also a ton of small contrivances I can’t get over, like the Boiler man having an extra train ticket, or the river spirit just happening to give her an object that would wind up helping her twice, or Yubaba just happening to have taken an oath to give a job to anyone who asks.

  I feel like the best way to illustrate why this story doesn't quite come together as written is to shine a very specific light on Chihiro's final challenge in the film, so be warned, the rest of this paragraph is spoiler territory. At the end of the movie, Yubaba presents Chihiro with one final challenge; Her parents, now in the form of mindless pigs, are mixed in with other pigs, and she has to pick them out. Almost immediately, she realizes the truth, that her parents aren't among them. Now, how does she figure this out, exactly? Yes, I know she was told to remember what her pig parents looked like earlier in the film, but I don't think that's enough. What about these pigs gives away the fact that her parents aren't among them? What was she looking for? It's never explained to us, and I can't pick a solid answer by analyzing the scene. Out of every challenge she overcame throughout the movie, none of them would logically have given her the knowledge or experience to answer this riddle. It's a random event with no connection to the overall story beyond the most starchly literal, just like the river spirit, just like No-Face, just like Yubaba having a twin... The only glue that holds all these story beats together is Chihiro's involvement in them. At times, this story feels distressingly like the earliest ever versions of The Hobbit, when it was just a collection of barely related fables featuring Bilbo as their one reccurring character.

  I don’t even feel like Haku’s relation to Chihiro, which I won’t spoil as it’s supposed to be this huge revelation, really mattered in the end. It’s foreshadowed in some strangely disconnected ways, with a brief line from Haku early on being the only really connection it gets to the story, and it just kind of winds up feeling random. But hey, if you look at it as a story of a girl trying to survive in a perilous situation where both her and her parents’ lives are on the line, it’s still a fine movie. The pacing is great, the story never drags or gets boring, and the larger writing issues can be ignored by anyone who just wants to sit back, enjoy the visuals, and root for Chihiro as she struggles against all odds to save the day and get back to normal society. Also, I like how there’s no clear villain, and there’s actual nuance to the conflict. As I said before, it’s not a bad movie, in fact it’s more than competent enough to be worth your time, but I don’t think it deserves to be held up among the greats… Not among the anime film medium at large, or even among it’s Studio Ghibli peers. Could be worse, though… It could be Earthsea.

  Spirited Away is available from Gkids, on both DVD and bluray formats. The original Disney DVDs are out of print, but it’s still fairly easy to find. A manga adaptation that’s mostly just a compilation of still from the movie is available from Viz Media.

  If I’m being brutally honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Studio Ghibli. It’s not that I hate them or anything, and it’s not like I have any specific issue with them, it’s just that it really doesn’t appeal to me personally. I’m not really into Miyazaki’s approach to story-telling, and while I strongly prefer Takahata’s approach, it also doesn’t always work. There are only about three or four titles of theirs that I’ve come to love, two of which I’ll be reviewing this month, but as for the rest, I’m just ambivalent to them. Unfortunately, Spirited Away falls into the latter category. I respect it as a children’s movie, but I don’t really understand what people get out of it when watching it as adults. Sure, there are movies in the Ghibli canon that have a lot less plot than this one, are plotless, but they use this shortcoming to their advantage, whereas Spirited Away is all plot with little sense of character or cohesion, and that’s worse in a lot of ways. I don’t regret seeing it, I’d be happy to watch it again, but I still expected more from it. I give Spirited Away a 7/10.

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• 

  unimportantuser

  100/100
  I don't know what to put here.

  It almost feels unnecessary for me to review this movie. Everybody knows about it. Everybody (who knows what they’re talking about) knows it’s a masterpiece. Is there really anything else I can add to the discussion surrounding this movie? No, but I still wanna talk about it anyway because I love this movie & actually have yet to review a Studio Ghibli movie. But first a little history. I originally watched Spirited Away for the first time back in 2018 a few months after I had just gotten into anime proper & knew who Hayao Miyazaki was. More importantly though, I knew the reputation this movie had going into. I watched it….. & I liked it. I’ll be honest I wasn’t overly impressed with it or saw why it garnered its reputation, but I enjoyed the film overall. Though I did watch it the same day I watched Akira for the first time, which at the time, I thought was a completely incomprehensible piece of shit. That stance has changed since then but the point is, I would’ve thought anything was good coming off Akira the exact same day I watched it. Going forward in life I just kinda moved on & didn’t think about Spirted Away too much. But in 2019 as I realized I was running out of Studio Ghibli movies to watch (as in I was close to seeing all of them). I went on a sort of Ghibli binge & started to not only watch the ones I missed, but even rewatched some of my favorites/ones I wanted to get a new opinion on, & thus brings us back to Spirted Away. I rewatched it….. & I fucking loved it. Whatever prevented me from really seeing Spirited Away as a masterpiece back then no longer applied, I was enthralled with movie & for a week I couldn’t take my mind off of it. I know this introduction was rather lengthy but I honestly felt this was necessary because I wanted to apply some groundwork as to why this is now my second favorite, & at times my favorite Miyazaki movie of all time. Spoilers inbound btw

  I think what I love most about Spirited Away is the narrative, but more so the narrative structure. I love coming of age stories & Spirited Away is one of the best in my honest opinion. Chihiro does start out as an unlikable brat, but what do you expect? She’s only 10, has to move away to a different town from all her friends, & then gets thrusted into this fantasy world that she knows nothing about, & on top on top of that, is filled with all these weird fantasy creatures that nobody knows about. But throughout the movie we get to see Chihiro adapt to this environment. We see her overcome these impossible odds. We get to see her grow up. It’s simplicity executed to perfection & what makes this story even better is the storyboarding. If there’s one thing Hayao Miyazaki is a master at it’s crafting/mapping settings. I won’t bore you with excessive details like how Chihrio exactly got from outside the bath house to Yubaba’s room. But I feel like if Yubaba’s bath house was a real place that I could visit I would know the layout exactly & wouldn’t have to consult anybody thanks to Miyazaki’s storyboarding. The world just builds together & flows so fluently that I was never lost, I knew exactly where I was at all times. But even better is the pacing. This movie is just right, it knows exactly how long it needs to stay somewhere, it knows exactly when to transition into the next scene, & it knows how to keep me engaged & never question how much longer I have left in the movie. This movie is 2 hours long but I was never bored because of how excently paced the movie was. What else needs to be addressed is the world building. I more or less alluded to it when talking about the storyboarding but can we take a moment to appreciate how meticulously crafted this world is? From the pig farms, the market where Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs, the aforementioned bathhouse, Yubaba’s office & her baby’s room. The train station that takes Chirio & No Face to Zeniba’s hut in the swamp. I remember everything about this world precisely because of the excellent worldbuilding. Miyazaki knows just how long he needs to keep us in these environments as to make them memorable. Hell, even the small town that Chirhio’s family is moving to at the beginning of the movie I can tell you about how the family even ends up in the Spirit world in the first place. I won’t pad with the details of course (this review is already pretty lengthy as it is, I’m 2 pages in & I’m still talking about the story/world for fucks sake). I don’t know if I’ve said peace with this segment yet or not but Spirited Away is a very dense, layered world with a lot of meat to chew on & for that I think it’s super commendable & deserves respect.

  Phew, now that I’m done with that mouthful, I guess I should talk about the characters, which are also excellent. Honestly, none of them outside of Chihiro & Haku really get development. But they don’t need to, as most of them serve a purpose in helping Chirhio find her way in this world & keep her identity as so she doesn’t get trapped & can’t go back to her world. All of them are not only characterized extremely well, but they’re also memorable and have easily identifiable character traits. Out of all the characters in this movie, my two favorites are Rin & Zeniba. I like them the most because they’re guiding figures for Chihrio in this strange world. Rin is the tough love but caring type & is like a sister figure for Chihiro. It kinda saddens me how Rin has long since lost her identity & is destined to forever stay in the spirit world working for Yubaba, but I also like to think of that as Rin’s motivation for even helping Chihiro in the first place, she knows Chihiro really doesn’t belong in the spirit world & wants to do whatever she can to help her keep afloat in this strange world & make it back to her world safely. Zenida is Yubaba’s nicer sister that ends up helping Chihiro by revealing one of Yubaba’s secrets that will help Chihiro get back to her world. She’s a sweet & loving granny figure even preferring that Chihiro call her such. She’s honestly such a sweet old woman, I almost think it would be worth going through what Chihiro went though in this movie just so I could go to her swamp & have a conversation with her. But I can’t forget Haku, the guy who even helps Chihiro realize what kind of situation she’s in to begin with. He’s heroic, loyal to his friends, & caring, but he’s also not afraid to stand up to authority going against Yubaba directly at several points in the movie. It’s actually revealed near the end of the movie that Haku is the spirit of the Kohaku river, a river that Chirio almost drowned in as a child. It’s hinted throughout the movie that Chihiro & Haku have a stronger connection than it originally seems & when this is revealed, it hits hard. Even the minor characters in this movie such as Kamajii, the human spider who’s the heart of the bathhouse as he operates the mechanisms this bathhouse needs to even run in the first place. The three heads of Yubaba who have a really funny scene in the movie where their disguise getting revealed by Yubaba results in them hopping out the room making “hup hup hup” sounds. The way this scene is directed & the way they exit the room inparticular with the same expression they had on their faces earlier just makes me laugh everytime I think about it. I’d of course be remiss if I didn’t talk about Yubaba. Yubaba, isn’t exactly my favorite Ghibli villain, I don’t think she’s as layered as Kushana from the Nausicaa movie. Or in a somewhat unique position for an antagonist like Fujimoto from Ponyo (as in he’s not really a bad guy more so an overprotective father who tries his best). But I do think she is written well & isn’t just a blank face evil villain. She’s not a nice person but I at least understand her motivations & where she’s coming from. The reason she has to operate her bathhouse on such a constant schedule is because spirts often come to be cleansed of their wrongdoings or what have-you so that they can then pass on & leave the spirt world in peace. Her bathhouse prevents Chaos from spreading & destroying the world essentially. She’s also a mother who tries her best to provide for her son too. She’s not exactly the most morally correct person but she’s not supposed to be. She’s supposed to be Chihiro’s greatest obstacle on he journey of both self discovery (at 10) and finding her way back home. I think I’ve covered about as much as I can with this segment. The characters in Spirited Away are excellent. Easily my favorite cast out of any Studio Ghibli just because of how memorable all of them are.

  I honestly really don’t know how I’m gonna talk about the art & animation because I mean what is there to really say? It’s Studio Ghibli. We all know their animation is the best in the business, we all know the background art is extremely detailed, we all know the character designs have that charm with them, we all know about this stuff. I don’t think you really need me to repeat what others have said (as if I haven’t been doing that throughout this review). But alright, if you want me to explain why Spirited Away’s art and animation is phenomenal, just watch either one clip of the movie, or look at an image on google. Those two things will say more about this aspect than I ever could. I will however talk about the voice acting, which is excellent. Chihiro despite being a brat at the beginning of a movie has a somewhat soft-spoken demeanor to start off & I really like that. The rest of the cast all bring their A game & there isn’t one dull performance to be found throughout this movie. Even no faces moans just leave off this feeling that I can’t really describe but it’s there god-damnit. The music is of-course, spectacular. Shocker I know, but it’s so good. Joe Hisaishi doesn’t miss with his orchestration, his pianos, anything really. This man is so damn good at what he does & the music matches the atmosphere of this music so perfectly I couldn’t imagine anybody else doing it.

  To end it off. Spirited Away I think I can safely call my favorite Miyazaki/Ghibli movie. I just get so much out of it. I haven’t watched it since 2019 but as you can tell from this review, I still think about it so much. It’s a movie about self discovery, about life, about growing up. To quote Miyazaki “I would like to make a film to tell children its good to be alive.” Spirited Away is a movie that means a lot to me & should not be dismissed. It needs to be watched by everyone. This isn’t just a good kids movie, it’s a good fucking movie no matter who you are & it does in fact hold up. I don’t know how I’m supposed to end this exactly. But Miyazaki is a mastermind, this movie is a masterpiece. Uh yeah, I’m leaving lol.

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• 

  SteveFreeling

  100/100
  Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning adventure celebrates its 20th birthday.

  I'll never forget October 28, 2018, for two reasons. The first is that it was my 20th birthday. The second is that it's the day I went to see a movie. It was a movie I already owned on Blu-ray and had seen several times, but that couldn't dull my enthusiasm. The movie in question was, of course, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, a film notable for being not only the only piece of Japanese animation but also the only hand-drawn animated film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. More than that, Spirited Away is that rare Oscar winner that actually lives up to its hype. Miyazaki has crafted an ode to the best parts of the human condition that masterfully explores fear and how to overcome it, the follies of greed and gluttony, the importance of compassion and selflessness, the importance of friendship, the true definition of bravery, and the triumph of the human spirit, all through the eyes of a child. The result is one of Miyazaki's most intensely satisfying films, one that many consider his finest hour even some 20 years after its arrival in Japan, and one that this Miyazaki fan certainly counts among his favorites.

  

  10-year-old Chihiro Ogino (Daveigh Chase in the 2002 Disney dub, Rumi Hiiragi in Japanese) is not at all pleased with the fact that her parents Akio (Michael Chiklis, Takashi Naito) and Yuko (Lauren Holly, Yasuko Sawaguchi) have decided to move to the middle of nowhere, not wanting to leave her friends behind or to have to deal with a new school that's "gonna stink." As if that wasn't enough, however, Akio takes a wrong turn and the family ends up in front of a creepy tunnel rather than at the door to their new home. Moreover, Akio decides he wants to see what's on the other side. When Akio and Yuko stuff themselves on some unknown food at an oddly empty restaurant and mutate into pigs, it seems like Chihiro's situation can't get any worse. However, a boy named Haku (Jason Marsden, Miyu Irino) gives her carefully laid-out instructions on how to survive in this ghostly world. First, she must ask Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers, Bunta Sugawara), the six-armed man who operates the boiler, for work. Since Kamaji already has all the help he needs, he has Lin (Susan Egan, Yoomi Tamai) take Chihiro to see Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette in her final film, Mari Natsuki), the witch who rules the bathhouse. The sorceress first tells Chihiro to leave, playing up her scare tactics but Chihiro, not one to hang her parents out to dry, persists, informing Yubaba right up front that she won't leave without a job. Yubaba concedes, but not without taking Chihiro's name, giving her the name Sen, and beginning to drain her memories, a process Haku soundly annuls the next morning by returning Chihiro's name. He also warns her that she won't be able to go home if she completely forgets her name, recalling that he can't remember his own name. This doesn't spell a sudden end to Chihiro's troubles in the spirit world, however. Aside from Lin, the other workers in the bathhouse look down on Chihiro with what can safely be called genuine disdain. Not only that, but Chihiro will also soon have to deal with a polluted spirit, a gluttonous No-Face, and even Yubaba's identical twin sister Zeniba (Pleshette, Natsuki) on her way to rescue her parents.

  

  Goodness. Two decades later, and we're still talking about Spirited Away. One of the foremost reasons is its storytelling, Miyazaki stuffing the film, all 124 minutes of it, with enough heart, depth, and meaning, and, yes, enough thrills and light scares, that it's nigh-impossible not to get swept along in the depths of Chihiro’s ghostly adventure. Each character has either a story or a purpose, often both, and none come off as superfluous to the film, including a money-grubbing frog. It's perfectly understandable why Chihiro isn't happy with the move. She has friends in her old home, friends she doesn't want to leave behind, and it's not like she's grousing for nothing. When I was 10, I know I wouldn't be very happy if my parents suddenly decided to leave my hometown where all my friends lived. Haku has a well-developed backstory that Miyazaki reveals in manageable increments throughout the film, the bond that eventually forms between himself and Chihiro arguably forming the film's emotional backbone just as much as Chihiro's lost parents. While Chihiro's parents make a foolish decision, Miyazaki doesn't portray them as the worst parents of all time. While Lin initially teases Chihiro, it's clearly devoid of genuine animosity. While not a likable character or a good person by any means, even Yubaba is entertaining. For as scary as he can sometimes be, No-Face is not the evil monster some might expect him to be. Through it all, we see Chihiro find the bravery she never knew she had during her venture to rescue her parents and the resulting character transformation and trampling of fear is something truly special to behold. Moreover, little bits of the story reveal themselves with repeated viewings, and it all serves to make Spirited Away a film that's equal parts exciting and emotionally satisfying.

  

  Equally important—Spirited Away is an anime, after all—the animation is absolutely stunning; when has Miyazaki ever delivered anything less? Every color is nothing short of striking. Each character is fully detailed and Masashi Ando’s character designs are well-suited to the film while clothing is full of natural textures. Each location, from the town we see in the film's opening to the bathhouse where the bulk of the film takes place, is mesmerizing. Every object is well-detailed—is that a box of Kit Kat bars in the car at the film's opening? Every creature is well-drawn and believable within the world the film creates, while the CGI such as that used during the train sequence enhances rather than denigrates the film. All things considered, the team at Studio Ghibli did a real job animating Spirited Away.

  

  Another key to the film's rampant success is its voice acting—in both English and Japanese. Chase and Hiiragi are excellent as the film's young protagonist, Chihiro Ogino. While each has received more than her fair share of criticism from a handful of fans who prefer one audio track or another, each effortlessly brings Chihiro to life and makes her likable, sympathetic, and easy to root for. Marsden and Irino are equally impressive as Haku, a mysterious boy who claims to have known Chihiro ever since she was very small. Egan and Tamai are also excellent as Lin, the bathhouse worker who takes Chihiro under her wing and takes on a sisterly role as the film progresses. Pleshette and Natsuki are also rock-solid in their dual role as Yubaba, the wicked witch who rules the bathhouse and Zeniba, her twin sister who ends up taking on a very different role from the one many viewers might expect from judging solely by her first appearance. Stiers and Sugawara effectively make Kamaji, the six-armed operator of the boiler room, gruff but likable. Chiklis and Holly, and Naito and Sawaguchi are also solid in their brief time as Chihiro's parents. Overall, Spirited Away couldn't have better voice acting—it's full of life, character depth and purpose dubbed and subbed. Watch both and enjoy both; I guarantee you won't regret it.

  

  Miyazaki's longtime collaborator Joe Hisaishi lends Spirited Away one of his very best musical scores. From the moment One Summer's Day, a somewhat melancholic piece of which several variations play at key moments throughout the film, plays over the film's opening scene, we know Hisaishi's about to deliver something special. Dragon Boy is genuinely thrilling. Sen's Courage is very effective in both scenes in which it plays, evoking a sense of dread in one scene and a sense of catharsis in the other. No-Face also effectively conveys a sense of dread, the unknown, and otherness with its drumbeats and metallic tones. Reprise is an extremely satisfying piece that features in one of the film's most intensely satisfying and memorable scenes. To top it all off, the film closes with Yumi Kimura's Always With Me (Itsumo Nando Demo), a bittersweet piece accentuated by Kimura's voice and the harp she plucks expertly throughout, Wakako Kaku's lyrics reflecting perfectly on the two hours that preceded it despite the song not being created specifically for the film. The incredible sound design also helps pull it all together, with each sound effect fully realized to make the film just that much more involving.

  

  My affection for Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away knows no bounds. It is my second favorite film produced under the Studio Ghibli banner, just behind Castle in the Sky, as well as one I consider an all-time favorite, anime or otherwise. Its story is one of the filmmaker's very best, its principal characters rank as some of his most likable, its animation ranks with the best of them, and Joe Hisaishi's incredible musical score is also one of his very best. The resulting film is every bit as relevant and engrossing in 2021 as it was in 2001 (if not more so), as touching as it is beautiful, as haunting as it is poignant, and as captivating as it is unforgettable. I've kept coming back to it since the first time I saw it at age 19 and it never ceases to amaze me. Its core story of overcoming one's fears continues to satisfy time and again with repeated viewings, its characters are all too easy to get invested in all over again, its animation continues to amaze with each new watch, the voice acting is faultless in both English and Japanese, and Joe Hisaishi's musical score continues to send a chill down the spine. The film is uplifting, poignant, exciting, emotionally satisfying, and consistently rewarding with repeated viewings. The fact that even those who don't consider themselves fans of anime often count Spirited Away among their favorite films speaks volumes to its beauty and power. It deserves its reputation and every award it won, including but not limited to, the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year. If you haven't, see it ASAP. Trust me, it's worth it. All in all, Spirited Away is above reproach as a film, and I'm awarding it my highest recommendation.

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