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I
Love Paying Too Much for Soda
Review:
Spirited Away/Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
Anime
(Movie)/Information
Title
rating: PG
-One
full-length anime movie (2001, English version 2002); complete
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| It's not every day an actual
anime gets a wide cinematic release. I'm not talking about
Akira playing in a small art house three states over--I'm
talking about watching anime in the Cineplex down the street
while eating a small popcorn the size of your head and an
eight-dollar Coke. Spirited Away is the first "serious"
anime (I think I'll discount the three Pokemon movies and
the Digimon movie because they just don't count) to get a
wide release since Princess Mononoke oh so many years ago.
You owe it to yourself to see this movie in the theater. While
it may not need the THX certified sound system, you will
get to see a beautiful piece of cinematography on the big
screen. |
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Miyazaki, the director of
Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicaa of
the Valley of Wind is good. He is damn good. For you
math majors out there, Miyazaki=Good + Z where Z =
damn. For you people who major in making fun of math
majors (or as we call them here,
Medieval Studies Majors), that means Miyazaki is better
then your Grandmother's lasagna, Guy Fox Day, and
your first kiss all rolled up into one and sprinkled
with fairy dust. His resume is impressive: Princess
Mononoke was one of the first wide anime cinematic
releases in America, Castle of Cagliostro helped boost
the 30-year Lupin series, and Spirited Away became
the highest-grossing movie in Japan ever (yes, over
Titanic). Ebert also has a crush on him or something,
as he and the skinny guy gave two thumbs up to Spirited
Away and are awesome about ranting how Miyazaki makes
the world a better place.
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The secret
ingredient is evil.
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Anime
(Movie)
Spirited Away continues Miyazaki's
tradition of weaving a good story. Chihiro is a ten-year-old
girl moving to a new home in a new town. En route to her
new house, she and her parents get lost and end up wandering
into what looks like an abandoned theme park but is in fact
a resort for spirits. While her parents gorge themselves
on the food they find, Chihiro goes exploring, and as dusk
approaches she meets a boy who tells her to get the heck
out of the lodge.
When she finds her parents
again, they have been turned into rather plump pigs (mmmmm,
ham). Chihiro, distraught, is again found by the boy whom
we now know to be named Haku. He gives her some spirit food
so she can remain in the world of the spirits and tells
her to get a job (like all good orphans should, I say) so
that she can help her parents. Eventually she sees Yubaba,
the evil witch who runs the resort; the massively-headed
woman gives Chihiro a job on the condition that she will
get Chihiro's birth name and Chihiro's name will change
to Sen. The only catch is, when Chihiro forgets her real
name she will become Yubaba's servant forever. Since Chihiro
values her freedom and air free of Yubaba's Old Smelly Lady
stench, she wants to find a way out of her fix--thus Chihiro
and Haku's adventure featuring countless spirits and monsters
(each wackier than the last) begins.
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Keep in mind this is a kids'
movie. While some anime movies (like Grave of the Fireflies)
might make you want to hang yourself right then and there,
this film has a happy ending that will make you feel good
about life ... but just because it's a kids' movie doesn't
mean all you 40-year-old fanboys can't enjoy it. Spirited
Away works on a variety of levels: at its base, it's about
Chihiro trying to save her parents and help those who help
her, but the film is also a call for moderation (Chihiro's
parents turn into pigs after eating five times their body
weights in food). It's also a tale about work ethic--Chihiro
starts the movie as a fairly annoying brat, but by the end
she learns the value of work and the value of helping those
in need.
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Oh God, what am I touching!
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That's
my special area.
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One thing every viewer of
every age will get out of this movie is the amazingly imaginative
animation. Miyazaki, or the Korean animators chained to
their desks and routinely beaten by the guards (I dunno,
it happened in Clerks), put an amazing amount of work into
each cel. Some scenes look like they've been done completely
in watercolor. The sprits themselves are numerous and varied,
from the creepy frog to the Radish Spirit, and provide the
film with variation and visual stimuli.
Now, keep in mind that I've
only seen the dub version at this point. Say what you want
about Disney, like how Walt's head is in cahoots with the
brains of Hitler and Kennedy, but they can make a damn good
dubbing cast when they want to. Never having heard the original
Japanese I can't say how good it is in comparison or how
accurate the translation is, but you won't be running out
of the theater screaming about bad dubbing with this puppy.
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Information
I didn't really research the
fandom on this movie (term papers call, you know), but I
found the official English site here
and this
site if you want to view the Disney trailer for the
film. In addition, Nausicaa.net's
Spirited
Away page has ridiculous amounts of info on it including
detailed theater listings for America and Canada, so don't
hesitate to check it out. For those of you reading this
after the theater run's ended, I laugh at your expense.
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Overview
When you get down to it, there's
nothing bad about the wide theatrical release of an anime,
especially when it's as high quality as Spirited Away is.
If there's any chance you can see it in a theater, see it
then. If you're reading this review too late, either build
a time machine and travel back in time to October 2002 or
(as a less expensive option) buy the Region 1 DVD, which
I'm sure will prove to be excellent.
Who would I kill as a favor
to the people who made this movie?
Earnest Hemingway (hey, it's
hard to think of really cool people to kill, and yes I know
he's dead but I do have a time machine you know)
In layman's terms, 5 out
of 5 stars.
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