If you do not know who Hayao Miyazaki is, you are missing out on one of the greatest animators to date. Even the animators at Walt Disney are in awe of this man. The executives at Disney fell so much in love with his work, that when they got the chance to create the English language voice overs for Spirited Away they did not delete any scenes. They also made sure the dubbing in English did not take away from the translation from Japanese to English. Spirited Away won the Academy Award in 2003 for best animated feature.
Plot: I am not commenting on the cast, because I feel that this is not so important in an animated feature. Plus, the main voices are done by kids who work for the Disney Channel. The plot is amazing. A young girl, Chihiro, is traveling with her parents to a new town. She is not looking forward to a new school and meeting new people. She whines all the time, and she pouts when she dos not get her way. Her dad makes a wrong turn to get to their new house. They go to the entrance of an old amusement park. They go exploring, and they smell delicious food. Her parents find a place filled with large quantities of food, and they sit down and eat. Chihiro does not want to eat the food. She wants to get out of there. The sun sets, and a boy tells her she needs to go. Chihiro goes to find her parents. Someone has turned them into pigs!
The story begins there. Now she must try and find out how to rescue her parents. Haku, a strange boy who lives in this place tells her that she has come upon a bath house for gods and spirits. She must ask the witch, Yubaba, who runs the bath house for a job so she can stay. Only then will she have a chance to get her parents back. In her quest she finds confidence in herself. She grows as an individual. She is not the whiny child anymore, but a brave girl not afraid to do something for love. I will not teel anymore of the story. You have to see it. The plot is as rich as the animation.
Conclusion: This film is amazing. Do not let the fact that it is an animated film fool you. Japan does many animated films even for adults. Spirited Away is such a great story. You find yourself forgetting they are animated characters, and you can see them as human beings. Hayao Miyazaki makes you care about his characters.