This was pretty much the first anime that I ever saw (not counting walking through the living room when the five year old kid my mom used to babysit insisted that we put Pokemon on for her), and I'm glad I let my best buddy talk me into seeing it at an art-house cinema.
I'd never even heard of Hayao Miyazaki when I saw this, and I had some misgivings when I heard that the Disney Corporation had imported this film (don't get me wrong, I grew up seeing classic Disney movies, but their more recent stuff just leaves me cold somehow). But I went along with it and I'm glad that I did!
I'll admit, when I first "met" Chihiro, I wanted to smack her for being a whiny git (proof of how good Miyazaki is at creating characters we can relate to and identify with, and how effective Daveigh Chase was in bringing that character to life), but by the end of the movie, I was cheering for her, as she grew from being a bit of a sniveling wimp to a confident girl who's sure of herself in whatever world she enters. The art design just blew me away at how lush and evocative it is. The spirits and oddball creatures in the spirit realm are convincingly real and weird, yet somehow they're also very familiar.
