Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven In 2001 the world-famous Hollywood popularity contest known as the Academy Awards (aka: the best films of December) introduced a category called "Best Animated Feature." It was long overdue, of course, and as it turns out it's really the only category I care about. Most of my favorite non-animated flicks go overlooked each year, so it's thrilling to see all my favorite cartoony ones pop up in a single category (Shrek took it that year). In July of 2002, Disney released a brilliant movie called Lilo & Stitch, which featured some of the most lovable and hilarious characters ever to grace the animated screen. It quickly became my favorite Disney flick of all time, and I thought even as I left the theater after seeing it once, "You know, this movie is a shoe-in for Best Animated Feature." But I was wrong. Spirited Away won instead. Chihiro aspires to scale Mt. Portapotty. Being the first anime ever to win a Best Anything at the Oscars is enough to turn some heads. Disney owns the rights to this movie in North America, and opened it in two or three theaters in various outhouses on the moon so they could be certain no one would ever see it, then quietly released it on DVD a few months later. But their wily schemes didn't thwart me, no sirree! I wasn't lucky enough to drive seven hours out of my way to pay outrageous popcorn-and-Pepsi prices to see it on the big screen, but I did shell out twenty bucks at Target to catch it at home. And like Miyazaki's brilliant Princess Mononoke and Kiki's Delivery Service before it, Spirited Away really knocked me off my feet. Characters: Almost all the characters in Spirited Away are great; the gruff old boiler man with a soft spot, the enormous spoiled baby, the money-grubbing malicious bathhouse owner, and countless strange and exotic spirits of all shapes and sizes. This movie does everything big, and its cast is no exception. If I were a legitimate movie critic, I'd say something like "the characters in Spirited Away make this magical journey come alive", or at least stick my thumbs up. Well, one of them, at least. "I've had a piece of corn stuck in my teeth for a week now. Can you climb in and get it out for me?" The one character in the film I genuinely did not like is the one who is most important. The main character is a ten-year-old Japanese girl named Chihiro. Chihiro does a lot of moping, whining, complaining, crying, and passing from one shade of depressed and solemn to the next throughout the story. Not without reason, of course; her circumstances certainly dictate these emotions, and no fault there. But watching a little girl frown a lot, especially in a cartoon, does little to make the viewer like her. The movie places too much emphasis on helping me sympathize with Chihiro, and not nearly enough to help me fall in love with her. Fortunately, the aformentioned cast helps pick up Chihiro's slack. Almost instantly we meet a mysterious stranger named Haku, who befriends Chihiro and helps her come to grips with her strange surroundings. Later we meet the movie's "villain" Yubaba, a cruel woman who steals Chihiro's name (and assigns her another one: Sen) and forces her to work in her bathhouse. And even later we meet No Face, a demon spirit who doesn't say much, but it sure is fun to watch him work! All of Chihiro's friends and enemies make for an interesting viewing experience to say the least. Definately a good thing, since I found Chihiro herself to be so lackluster. Story: The story opens as Chihiro and her family are moving to a new house (Chihiro isn't happy about it). Her father takes a wrong turn on the way there, however, and they end up outside a tunnel that leads to what they believe is an abandoned amusement park. Upon exploring, Chihiro's parents find a huge buffet of the best food they've ever tasted, sit down to fill their faces, and get inadvertantly turned into pigs. Remember, kids ten and under should be safely secured in their child seats in the back of the vehicle. Without her parents, Chihiro is whisked away to the bathhouse of the spirits by a soft-spoken yet helpful boy named Haku. She is told that, unless she gets a job working there, she'll never get back to her own world (and in fact, she'd probably be turned into a pig herself). She's passed off from one bathhouse worker to the next until she ends up in front of the owner Yubaba, a greedy and downright mean old hag who does give Chihiro work, but only threatening to turn her into a lump of coal and changing her name to Sen. Sen then has to cope with the other denziens of the bathhouse as she gets used to her new life. Under the guidance of her seemingly indifferent mentor Lin, Sen manages to eke an existence out for herself and overcome her status of "filthy human." Spirited Away is the story of a young girl who has to rise up and topple insurmountable obstacles. Moving to a new town certainly doesn't seem like a big deal when you have to tend to the bath of a massive stink spirit twenty times your size (and potency). Sen leaps each hurdle presented to her, showing the other bathhouse workers that there are more important things than gold , and helping Yubaba's spoiled brat child stand on his own two feet before finally freeing her parents from Yubaba's curse and returning home . It doesn't get any points for novelty, but the excellent way the characters carry it from one scene to the next, showing Sen meet challenge after challenge and becoming the stronger for it, and the way the timeless themes of friendship and hope are woven into it make for an inarguable six hamhams. Animation: Spirited Away is what I wish all anime looked like. Make no mistake about that. Most cartoons that feature a multitude of clearly non-human characters (even my beloved Lilo & Stitch) tend to oversimplify the designs and movements of those alien creatures. One big no-no I see a lot is the lack of any kind of muscles in a non-human character, making him/her/it look too smooth. Another is a distinct lack of detail in the way of body language - just because your character has seven eyestalks and no mouth doesn't mean he can't look sad or angry. *grumble grumble* "Wonka would have at least hired me some oompa loompas..." This is the biggest reason I gave Spirited Away such a high animation score. The non-human characters, even the ones way in the background that have nothing to do with the plot, are detailed down to the last hair. Watching how the stink spirit lumbers through the streets, or No Face's shadowy form phasing in and out of the light, or Haku's dragon form in flight is nothing short of mesmerizing. And they are all of them overflowing with expression and color (watching the radish spirit hop up and down joyfully remains one of the greatest, if creepiest, parts in the movie). This isn't to say the human characters (chiefly Chihiro and her parents) are plain; absolutely not. You can count on one hand how many times Chihiro smiles throughout the story, but when she does you notice it. And her adorable hands-flailing style run is absolutely endearing. Miyazaki has a very solid gift for letting his images tell his stories, and Spirited Away is an excellent showcase of that talent. Culture Shock: Spirited Away is the embodiment of Japanese mythology which, obviously, I know nothing of. This usually counts against the Culture Shock score a lot more than one hamham, but I came to realize that being lost in an enormous strange world of completely foreign design is what the movie is all about, and I can hardly fault a flick for that. Besides, Spirited Away seems to rely on a lot of pieces of Japanese culture that even modern Japanese folks know little about. Early in the movie, as Chihiro's dad is driving them through some woods, Chihiro asks her mother, "What are those stones? They look like little houses." Her mother responds dismissively "Some people believe little spirits live in them." The spirits are marginalized, forgotten, and not something to be believed in; that's the world Chihiro knows. This is why people shouldn't put clothes on their animals. How much of the movie is based on actual legend and how much is pure fiction, I don't know. But the way the story moves along, it doesn't really matter. All you need to know is that Chihiro is lost in a huge and scary world she is completely ignorant to - if you're equally ignorant, you get to take the journey with her. For all the praise I give it, I still don't like Spirited Away better than Lilo & Stitch (or, heck, even as much as its predecessor ). This, however, is a testament to the quality of those movies, and not to some hidden shortcoming in this one. Spirited Away is not the same sappy textbook "coming of age" film on all the feel-good lists. We're taken through a long string of frightening and nailbiting scenes even before we get to the meat of the movie. It's a whole different kind of unlikely protagonist taking on a whole different set of obstacles, and it has frog people in it to boot. Now that I've had a year to reflect, I'm glad Spirited Away took the Oscar. Ten years from now Lilo & Stitch will have four sequels, a TV series, countless toys and video games, and Links Official Site Animenation Listing IMDB Listing probably a ride or two at various Disney theme parks to remind the world of its existence. Miyazaki's masterpiece, however, will only have its award blurb on the DVD box. Denied that, who can say how many people would miss out on watching one of the most imaginative anime movies ever made? Besides, it could have been worse. Treasure Planet could have taken the award. Overall Rating:

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