Spirited Away [2003]

Product Details

Director : Hayao Miyazaki, Kirk Wise
Actor : Rumi Hîragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takashi Naitô, Yasuko Sawaguchi
Format : Animated, PAL
Binding : DVD
EAN : 5060034570851
Number of Discs : 2
Product Group : DVD
Region Code : 2
Release Date : 2004-03-29
Running Time : 116minutes
Studio : Optimum

ASIN : B000087JI1

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll's Alice, Chihiro plunges into an alternate reality. On the way to their new home, the petulant adolescent and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they turn into pigs, and Chihiro discovers they're trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. An oddly familiar boy named Haku instructs Chihiro to request a job from Yubaba, the greedy witch who rules the spa. As she works, Chihiro's untapped qualities keep her from being corrupted by the greed that pervades Yubaba's mini-empire. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba's kindly twin, Zeniba. The resolve, bravery and love Chihiro discovers within herself enable her to aid Haku and save her parents. The result is a moving and magical journey, told with consummate skill by one of the masters of contemporary animation. --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews

kids love it (2008-09-13)

My 7 & 10 year olds love this and watch it lots. I was pleasantly surprised as it is not the usual box office, Disney wonder. I first heard of it when Jonathon Ross raved about it. He was right - the animation is great and the story is quite interesting (to me) and fascinating (to my children). Nice to see eastern cartoons that are not just kungfu rubbish, but are well thought-out.

I Liked It, But Not As Much As I Thought I Would (2008-08-27)

There are plenty of reviews on here saying how great this film is and explaining it's story so I won't do any of that here. I watched this film dubbed in English, so it may have lost some of the magic that certain films only have in their original language, but that still couldn't take away from the actual story in front of me which, if I'm honest, I didn't think was great enough to deserve all these 5 stars. Once you get passed the sheer absurdness of the whole thing, the film is enjoyable and very funny, but that's about it, I wasn't left with any feeling of enlightenement, or that i'd just witnessed one of the greatest films ever made. It's a cute film but that's it really. I'd like to see it again, because I really do wonder whether I've missed something that all these reviewers seem to have seen, but I can't really recomend this film as one of the greatest I've ever seen, because it just isn't. Good for fans of anime. For everyone else, approach with caution.

Extraordinary, beautiful, haunting and unforgettable (2008-08-27)

My young nephews and nieces settled me down with them over the August Bank Holidays to watch `Spirited Away', which I duly did to humour them, not having ever watched an Anime film before. As the film rolled I became increasingly transfixed and mesmerised. This was no cutesy Disney cartoon but a deeply complex and beautifully intricately woven web of extraordinarily beautiful images with deep, dramatic undertones, resonances and subtexts. The image of `No Face' in particular stays in my mind and decorates my dreams (in the nicest way possible), such was its vividness and dramatic reverberation, as does the journey of the train through the swampy everglades by night. I recommend this film unreservedly to all, adults and children alike, and truly envy all those who will be watching it for the very first time. The quality of the imagery is unsurpassed and the storyline utterly compelling. The film received many awards, including the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Animated Feature, the first Anime film to win an Academy Award, also winning the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival. Oh, you lucky, lucky people, to be watching this extraordinary film for the first time!

Probably the best film I've ever seen (2008-02-07)

I just loved this film so much, watching it felt like a dream. I'm always sceptical about films with so much hype but this lived up to it and more: The story is beautiful, the animation is superb and the setting and characters ooze with charm. After watching this I am gradually checking out the Ghibli back catalogue and am yet to be disappointed by any of them. Howl's moving castle would have to be my favouite so far (After Spirited away of course!)

One of the best animated movies ever (2008-01-21)

I first saw this on a UK satellite channel in the middle of the day while channel surfing; and for the first time ever I sat all the way through something I'd accidentally found. A spectacular film, Spirited Away filled me, a cynical 20-year-old, with wonder throughout. The story is wonderful and Chihiro is easy to relate to - female viewers will remember being like Chihiro and male viewers will remember girls who were.If I had to pick a negative point, I'd say the ending with the "granny" character seems a little contrived. This character comes out of nowhere and makes everything all better, and is a little twee, but it's not a major point.The animation is great, with none of the awful 2-frames-per-second, siezure-inducing, brightly coloured Pokemon-style dross that most people think of when you say "anime" to them. This version is the Japanese version with English subtitles, which obviously has excellent voice acting, insofar as I can tell as I don't speak Japanese; I have the English dubbed version too and the voice acting is good in that too, especially Chihiro. For once, a good English dub!A great film for newcomers to the genre and hardcore anime fans alike.

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