Spirited Away Review

Spoilers, please watch the movie first!

The movie begins with Chihiro and her parents driving to their new house they are going to move into, which Chihiro is clearly disillusioned with.

As they are driving, they accidentally take a wrong turn. They decide to continue along this unmarked road, believing it may have a shortcut to their new house they can see off in the distance.

Chiriro’s a gate and decide to explore the area, much to her dismay. As her parents walk through the gate,
they emerge out the other side and find an abandoned town.

They continue to explore the town, and are caught by surprise with the aroma of some food, they quickly sit down at the place serving the food and begin to eat stating that they will pay back the owner of the shop once he returns.

Chiriro, who is still fearful of the entire town, decides against eating the food and continues to explore the town. She eventually reaches a bridge and is quickly warned by Haku to leave as fast as she can.

While I could continue on with my play by play Synopsis, this is a review, and you should’ve already watched the movie, right? So why don’t I get into why I actually love this movie so much.

Reason 1: Visuals

If you haven’t already noticed, this film is beautiful. Every frame is extremely well drawn - this is actually a full hand drawn movie - and clearly a lot of care was put into each frame. Here are some of my favorite stills from the movie.

Obviously every image above was a single frame, and many of the things that make this film look so good are in the animations which a single image is unable to capture.

Reason 2: Storyline

The writers of this movie put a lot of care into this storyline. Not once during this movie I felt confused or bored, I was always in anticipation for what happens next. The movie quickly manages to make us root for Chiriro to save her parents and get back to her life. The emotional parts of this movie all feel heartfelt and don’t feel forced at all, and the storyline feels complex and well built while not being incredibly confusing or dense.

Reason 3: No Antagonist

While you might claim that Yubaba is the antagonist of the story, she doesn’t directly cause or create any of Chiriro’s obstacles and doesn’t seem to antagonize Chiriro. So she is not a good person, she isn’t an antagonist either. I really enjoy films without antagonists because they don’t fall into the classic Good vs. Evil cliche many films with antagonists fall into. Tension in the story needs to be created through character relationships and situation, and setbacks need to be created from complex story elements and structure.

This is the first blog style review I have ever written for a movie. The reason why I choose this movie is because I saw it’s extremely high ratings across the board and decided to watch it. This is actually the first Japanese movie I have watched, and needless to say I am very impressed.

Thanks for reading!