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Spirited Away is what I would classify as a masterpiece. This is a film destined to go down in history as one of the greatest animated films of our time. The story follows a ten year old girl named Chihiro as she finds herself trapped in a world where she does not belong. With her real name stolen by the sorceress Yu-Baaba, Chihiro, or rather Sen as she becomes known, must work hard as a cleaner at a bath house for spirits, until she can rescue her parents and return to the human world.

Opening scene Where can I begin in describing this film? The DVD menu, while simple, is quite effective. In my humble opinion it could have been a bit more interactive but then again, sometimes the best beauty is in simplicity. The second disc also offered a good look at the making and dubbing of Spirited Away. Now for the film itself. Have you ever put on a movie and within the first two minutes, you knew that you were going to love it? This is what Spirited Away was for me. As the film opens to Chihiro lying in the back seat of her father's car, en route to their new home, clutching a bouqet of flowers given to her as a goodbye present, you begin to get that feeling of a fantastic film. The mood is just right, the lighting is just right. The scenery is full of detail and colour that to be honest, I don't think are properly represented in the screen captures I took off my computer's DVD drive. You really need to see this film in action to understand just how vivid the artwork is.

Chihiro and Haku For a basic rundown of the story, Chihiro's father decides to take a shortcut to get to the family's new home, and they find themselves at the entrance of a tunnel. The family walks through the tunnel and find themselves at what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. As her parents sit to eat at a food stall despite Chihiro's protests, the young girl takes a look around. As she stumbles upon a bath house, a boy appears and tells her that she should not be there, and tells her to get across the river before it gets dark. As shadowy figures appear all over the streets, Chihiro goes to find her parents, but they have been turned into pigs! She tries to cross the dried up river she and her parents crossed to enter the park, but the river is now full of water, and Chihiro finds that she is turning into a ghost. As if this isn't enough, a ship full of ghosts pulls up. Terrified, Chihiro runs away and is found by the mysterious boy.

Chihiro is turning into a ghost The boy, Haku, says he wants to help Chihiro. He gives her some food from this new world and she becomes normal again. Following his instructions, Chihiro is given a job by Yu-Baaba, the sorceress who runs the bath house. It is hard work, and Chihiro is stripped of her name and made to answer to the name of Sen. However, Haku tells her what her real name is, although he cannot remember his own name, and a quest to save her parents and return to the human world ensues.

No Face The characters to be spotted in this story are as varied as they can get. Aside from those previously mentioned, there are several other very important characters to be seen. One of the most important by far is the character of "No Face". This character, classified as a monster by Yu-Baaba, takes a liking to Chihiro. However, he tries to make friends by giving people things such as gold. When he goes crazy and begins to eat the workers and trash the bath house, it is up to Chihiro to correct the situation, being able to take pity on No Face and showing him that he does not have to buy frienships. There are also the characters of Zeniiba, who is Yu-Baaba's twin sister, Rin, who befriends and helps Chihiro while at the bath house and Kamajii, who works the bath house's boiler room and helps Chihiro in getting a job.

The Stink Spirit Something that I feel must be mentioned is how real situations are brought to light in the story. For instance, there is the Stink Spirit. This character is in fact a Water God who has been polluted by the acts of mankind. This was inspired by a real occurance in the life of the film's director, who once helpd clean a river. It even had a bicycle lodged in the mud, and this is recreated in the film as the workers pull a bicycle and other bits of garbage out of the Water God. I personally thought this was a very neat addition to the story as it reflects what we are doing to our environment. Another example of this was how Haku could not remember where his home was. As it turned out, Haku was a river spirit, but his river had been filled in to make way for urban development.

Tapping her shoe Something that truly stands out in this film for me is the level of detail given to the characters. When you see Chihiro's movements, it appears to be a real little girl, rather than a drawing. The blowing of her hair in the car is not overdone but looks very real. When she puts on her shoes, she taps it in the ground to make sure it is on properly before running off. These are little details that are not really needed, but which serve to provide a very real feel to the story. While I am speaking about the character of Chihiro, I should mention that her character development is fantastic. At the start of the film she is a whiny, spoiled kid. However, by the end she has matured a great deal, but this maturing of her character does not seem unrealistic at all. The experiences she went through and how she dealt with them were done in precisely the right way to provide what i consider to be a near flawless character evolution.

Yu-Baaba Haku is another very interesting character. He has a dragon and a human form, and is of great help to Chihiro. He has apparently known her since she was very young, but is also Yu-Baaba's personal assistant. He is controlled by Yu-Baaba and made to do her dirty work until the spell is broken. Yu-Baaba herself is also very interesting. As evil as she is, she is not immune to having some very human traits. She can become overcome with joy, such as when she hugs Chihiro for getting rid of the stink spirit and is a very overprotective mother who spoils her oversied baby, Bou. Rin and Kamajii both seem reluctant to help Chihiro at first, but as the story progresses you see that they both help her where they can. You are also introduced to Yu-Baaba's twin sister, Zeniiba who very much seems to play the role of a caring grandmother when you meet her towards the end of the film.

Haku comforts Chihiro after taking her to see her parents Personally, I loved how the issue of friendship and love was dealt with in this film. It shows many faces, including forgiving for wrongs done, helping someone despite danger and inconvenience caused to oneself, to a simple helping hand, advice or comfort. It was very beautifully done, and something that I personally was pleased with is how the director dealt with this theme. At no point was it forgotten that Chihiro was ten. It also had a very real feel at the end when Chihiro had to leave Haku behind to return to the human world. While Haku did say that he would stop being Yu-Baaba's apprentice, the fact remains that he is not a human. He is a river spirit and must remain in his world, even if he can show up sometime or the other.

Beautiful artwork The artwork, animation and sound. The art was fantastic. It was very detailed and vivid. The high point of this I think was while the group was while Chihiro was on the train looking out of the window. The animation was very smooth, I couldn't see any inconsistencies anywhere. The sound quality was pretty good, as would be expected from a theatrical release film. Many of the films sounds were taken from real life environments and not only created in a studio, and it shows. However, what truly blew me away was the music. It fit very well with the scenes, and the ending song was simply beautiful. Now I don't speak Japanese so I don't have a clue what the lyrics were, but the melody of the song together with the background images used in the end credits was very fitting to the movie, unlike many of the Hollywood blockbusters that stick a fast paced Hip-Hop or Rock song onto the end credits to a black screen.

The end The dubbing quality of this film was amazing. It is not very often that you find a truly well done job when a Japanese Anime is translated into English, but this was probably one of the best I've seen. I'm not a great fan of Disney, but they deserve a lot of credit for doing a dub the way it should be. This is not however, to say the job was perfect. I didn't watch the entire movie with subtitles on to see what the original dialogue was, but there were some changes made that did not have to be made as the original dialogue would still fit into the lip flaps when translated. I also found that Disney tried to emphasise the love theme too much. At points where this was not stated blantantly in the original dialogue, the english dialogue was reminding us that Chihiro was going to find Zeniiba because of love for Haku. The original let us know this theme without reminding us so much, so it was more subtle.

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Type.................: DVD-Rip

Size/Time............: 700mb/2:04

Video/Audio Format...: XviD

Genre................: Cartoon

Targeted Age Range...: 3 and up

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