Spirited Away (2001)

The review calls it one of the greatest screen fantasies and a perfect coming-of-age fable that brought Japanese animation to wider Western audiences. It singles out the remarkable stream of memorable hand-drawn images enabled by the dreamlike logic.

This is a wonderful film and one of the year’s best. It enchants with its painterly drawing style, rich details, and a story of a girl navigating a fantastical spirit world.

The critic hails it as a masterpiece of animation and unparalleled genius that reaffirms faith in cinema's power. It is a startlingly original work blending cultural resonances with dazzling, sensual hand-drawn animation and a gorgeous score, elevating it above even Disney heights.

Prepare to be astonished by this visual wonder from a master animator with a fierce and fearless imagination. It is a heroic adventure story with a magical, fairy-tale quality and lessons on love, identity, and greed.

The critic deems it a masterwork and the culmination of Miyazaki’s career, a joy and wonder whose fantasy world is both universal and distinctly his. It singles out the moral intelligence and superb craft of the Studio Ghibli animators in telling the heroine’s quest for identity.

The critic hails the film as a richly detailed fantasy embedded in Miyazaki’s personal universe, with universal fairy-tale appeal. He singles out the message of empowerment through labour as Chihiro builds identity and purpose via her work in the bathhouse.

The review hails Spirited Away as a fresh, fantastical experience that will feel bizarre yet rewarding to British audiences accustomed to Disney fare. It singles out the fluid, organic animation and the empathetic character journey of Chihiro for particular praise.

The magic of the original survives intact in the re-voiced version. Miyazaki’s comic touches and astounding flights of fantasy still win the day in this charming fantasy with substance.

The critic praises Miyazaki's imaginative reimagining of Alice in Wonderland as an Asian folk dream, highlighting the textured and exhilarating set pieces like bathing the Stink God, and notes its celebration of individualism and nature.

The critic calls it a beautifully drawn and wonderfully composed work of art that takes viewers on a rocket-fuelled flight of fancy with tenderly conceived characters. The superb hand-drawn animation combines hallucinatory fantasy with psychological acuity, wit, playfulness and charm, making the masterpiece claim plausible.

The film is an epic and marvelous anime fantasy with a towering, lost dreaminess. Miyazaki conjures phantasmagoric, shifting morality of dreams unlike any other animator.

The critic praises the film's strong power of invention and how its visual imagery matches the plot's unique vision. Chihiro's vulnerable, trusting innocence is singled out as unforgettable and deeply affecting at the center of this mythical journey.