Tuesday, December 17th, 2002

Spirited Away

Saw Spirited Away tonight, and I loved it. Unequivocally. I haven’t seen much of Miyazaki’s stuff before, just Princess Mononoke, and the English dubbed version at that. I’m not ashamed to admit that I lost track of the plot in Mononoke fairly early on and by the end was just appreciating it for the animation, and I sort of expected the same result with Spirited Away.

Happily, I enjoyed Spirited Away completely, no disclaimers. Miyazaki creates a wonderfully imagined and realized fantasy world that’s just amazing to visit. It’s the story of Chichiro, a young girl who becomes trapped in a fantasy world at a spa for the supernatural and must rescue her parents and escape. Every scene is an absolute joy to behold, from the animated balls of ash working the boiler room to the flight of paper dolls doing battle with Haku the wolf-dragon, there’s a vibrancy and – for wont of a better word – spirit that permeates every cell of this film. And while there is a fair bit of CGI in the film for special effect sequences, it is still very much a hand-drawn traditionally-animated film, and I think it’s telling that it was more breathtaking to me than any computer-generated animation I’ve seen yet. All the computer processing in the world still can’t measure up to someone with pencil, paper and vision.

Ironically, Ian and Vic walked out of there claiming to have found it incomprehensible. This astonishes me – this had the most coherent, albeit simple, plot of any anime I’ve ever seen. Savages.

So yeah, if you’re partial at all to anime, fairy tales or just great fantasy films, go find a theatre screening this film and watch it. It’s just terrific.

np – Stereolab / Emperor Tomato Ketchup

By : Frank Yang at 11:24 pm
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. 12/18/02 9:32 am

     Vic says:

    All I saw was a giant baby, some dancing dust mites and the Baba Yaga twins.

    I’d rather be home programming.

    At least I got membership pass for cheap movies in the future.

  2. 12/18/02 9:35 am

     Frank says:

    and that is because you are a savage.

    I guess all Alice In Wonderland was to you was dancing playing cards and obsessive-compulsive rabbits

  3. 12/18/02 3:30 pm

     ian says:

    I am not a savage. I just like a plot which doesn’t make me go "Where the heck did <em>that</em> come from?" <a href="http://…/ title="Crazed Monkey: Spirited Away">Read my review</a>.

  4. 12/18/02 3:32 pm

     ian says:

    Damn comment system. Try here: http://…/

  5. 2/25/03 10:44 pm

     San says:

    OMG! this movie was the BEST!

  6. 4/16/03 2:57 pm

     Joanne says:

    I love this Movie, Specially Haku…he’s so adorable…heheheh….i wish i could be that gurl Sen(forgot her real name srry).heheheh:D

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