Spirited Away (Animated Film)

          For this week's theme of animated film, I was deciding between watching this and The Lego Movie. I have heard great things about The Lego Movie, but it has never really seemed very interesting to me. I have not heard of one person who has seen Spirited Away (besides Evan who doesn't count because he's seen everything). It is the top animated movie on IMDb, so this certainly caught my attention. I decided to watch Spirited Away, and I am pretty sure I gave my computer a virus in the process. This happened because I searched some very sketchy websites for an English version of this film. I decided to go with the Japanese version however, due to ease of access, and due to the fact that I heard anime films are supposed to be better in their native languages. I watched with English subtitles.
          Besides some Pokemon movies when I was younger, I have never really watched anime (not actually sure if Pokemon counts as anime). Either way, this is the first anime film I have seen in Japanese. It was... interesting to say the very least. It is definitely very imaginative. I wonder if Japanese people think our cartoons are this odd, trippy, or frightening. I am honestly surprised this was classified as a family/kids movie, as if I had watched this as a kid, many of the monsters, spirits, semi-human creatures, and gory scenes would have scared me to death. It reminded me a bit of Alice in Wonderland mixed with a Narnia-like plot. However, even after saying all this, I did enjoy the film. I have even considered watching another Miyazaki (the director) film, even though I likely won't. I certainly understand why this movie is so highly rated, and for a cartoon film I truly enjoyed it. It had a very unique plot that kept me interested. The acting was hard to judge due to the fact that is was voice-over and not in my language. However, the emotions seemed to fit the scenes well. The animations looked like typical anime to me, but I was definitely impressed by several of the vast land/oceanscapes that were drawn out in this movie. The imaginative designs of the characters impressed me as well, and Haku's dragon-form was a visually appealing character. This was a very charming movie, even though some parts of it really did not seem to make much sense to me. I would guess that they make more sense to someone familiar with Japanese culture. I heard that this movie also has some sort of underlying metaphor to child prostitution in it, and this makes sense after thinking about it. It is interesting to try to guess what the director's message was with this film. In all I might recommend this film to others, but only if they are very open to foreign culture-shock type movies. I give it 8 soot balls out of 10 (btw the soot balls were my favorite characters in the movie).