Reviews

*SPOILERS* It's been several years since I've seen Spirited Away, I remember it being a solid movie, but I've always been of the opinion that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was my favorite Studio Ghibli movie, despite the fact that it is often excluded from Ghibli's catalog of movies since it wa...

The movie in question was, of course, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, a film notable for being not only the only piece of Japanese animation but also the only hand-drawn animated film to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Long before Miyazaki was my favorite animator and one of my favorite directors, I stumbled across Spirited Away.

Spirited Away is also one of the few animated films where you surrender nothing when faced with the choice between its subbed or dubbed presentation.

What I loved about Spirited Away was that it's so richly detailed with wonderfully interesting spirit characters.

The visuals of the film are forever imprinted in my head, and on the note of the visuals the animation in this film is magnificent.

Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)

After seeing this film, I became very interested in Hayao Miyazaki, the writer and director of the film, and I will be planning watching his other films My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle sometime soon.

I immediately considered it as my new favorite animated movie and while the film has been challenged by a few other great films since, it still holds that place today.

It is some of the best animation I've ever seen in a film or any other medium, and that's probably the highest praise I can give to an animated film.