Spirited Away: Review By Dan

When I saw my bud moviegeek's review of Spirited Away, and noticed that it was by the same director as Princess Mononoke, I just had to check it out. And while Spirited Away is very good, it didn't quite reach the same epic level as Mononoke did in the end for me.

The story involves a little girl named Chihiro Ogino, who is traveling with her parents to a new house, and along the way they are detoured. They happen upon what seems like a ghost town, and while Chihiro's parents are busy stuffing themselves with food they find, she wanders around the town until she discovers a bathhouse, but it's no ordinary bathhouse, its for spirits, and only comes alive at night. She is then caught up their mystical world until near the very end of the movie.

Miyazaki is a master of creating fantastic, visually striking worlds, and bizarre creatures/monsters. Some of the style of spirits from Princess Mononoke is apparent here, especially with the character No-Face, a black spirit with a white mask that follows Chihiro around and causes trouble for her. I find Miyazaki to be for anime what Guillermo Del Toro is for live action when it comes to creature design.

And as with Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away is accompanied by a sweeping musical score that sets the perfect mood for the movie. Sometimes a scene is immensely helped if the music flows smoothly with it, and Spirited Away never stumbles to that degree.

The reason why I didn't feel it was as good as Mononoke is it just didn't seem as big or vital of a story. In Miyazaki's former, its imperative our hero succeed or it would have dire consequences for everyone and himself for that matter. In Spirited Away, there was only one scene I can think of that Chihiro seemed to be in any real danger. Both are easily at the top of their genre, but that is how I feel they stack up.

To sum up, intelligent dialogue, a worthy story, wonderful creatures, and a good transformation of the main character by the end.