Spirited Away is about Chihiro Ogino, a 10 year old girl who move into a new town with her parents, only to discover that they get lost and later, they found an abandoned amusement park and Chihiro's dad insists them to explore the park. However, a boy name Haku warns Chihiro that this park is forbidden and that she must leave the place before nightfall. Chihiro finds her parents, only to find them transformed into pigs and the entire park gets full of black spirits on nightfall. Now Chihiro works for a creepy old lady, Yubaba, as a servant, changes her name from Chihiro to Sen and if she forgets her real name, she would be trapped in the spirit world forever, Now Chihiro must find a way to save her parents and escape the spirit world, as she learns to accept her life through adulthood on her own. The story is just fantastic and really engaging, as we see a young girl trying to face the toughest situations on her own and believing in herself on what she can do to help the people she loves. Also, there are a lot of touching moments in Spirited Away, my favorite has to be the one where Chihiro sits with a black spirit "No Face" in the train station, as the music plays peacefully in the background.
Spirited Away looks STUNNIG!!!!! The animation made by Studio Ghibli is still the best looking anime, out of all the Miyazaki movies out there (except Mononoke, that's impossible to top). The Japanese culture style of the film really fits into this strange spiritual fantasy film, full of strange but fascinating creatures, spirits and those cute black furballs that appear are also strange but cute. Character designs are very fluid and they really act like actual human beings, like it really brings strong emotions to the character's as they progress through the story on saving Chihiro's parents. Voice acting is fantastic, but the dubbing is perfect, thanks to the wonderful support of Pixar and John Lasseter. Lasseter and Pixar have great respect to the anime industry and to Hayao Miyazaki, cause John loves the works of Studio Ghibli and never make dumb changes to the film so that it's stays true to the work of the director and the English cast that John assembled is fantastic. All the actors voicing the characers were great, including Daveigh Chase, Tara Strong, Jason Mardsen, Suzanne Pleshette, David Ognen Steirs and so on.
Spirited Away is just a groundbreaking masterpiece by Hayao Miyazaki. If I were you, I would see it again, rather than describing how spectacular the film is and why anime has the balls to bring true originality than most of the garbage Hollywood brings nowadays. Spirited Away is a must-own film for any anime fan out there wanting to experience this great film on their TV's.
