by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

With films like the epic Princess Mononoke and the wondrous children’s tale My Neighbor Totoro, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has pushed anime further than any other towards respectability. He eschews the giant robots, big-eyed bimbos, histrionic angst and thinly-veiled rape fantasies that make up too much of the genre’s raw material, pursuing instead a singular, fully-realized vision—a distinct language of his own that at the same time, most anyone can understand.

Miyazaki’s latest, Spirited Away, sees that language perfected. The film’s basis is an archetypal tale of a young girl, Chihiro, whose parents have been kidnapped by the spirit world. In classic fairy-tale fashion, she must stand up to the witch Yubaba and win them back through courage and hard work. As with all of Miyazaki’s work, however, there is no great contrast between good and evil. His villains are never purely villainous, his heroes never glowingly perfect.

What really astounds, however, is how Miyazaki can manufacture the most outlandish characters and situations, and then make them seem perfectly natural and reasonable to the viewer. Of course obese radish spirits ride elevators in a ghostly bathhouse. Of course Yubaba’s twin sister is attended by a hopping, one-handed lamppost. Of course a boy/dragon river spirit can be viciously attacked by a flock of paper cut-outs, a spider-armed curmudgeon command a labour force of enchanted cinder-balls, or a trio of severed heads hop around a witch’s parlour.

To an extent, Spirited Away reflects Japan’s return to Shintoism and frustration with spoiled youth in these days when the economic elastic has snapped back. But to frame it that way is to sell it short. Spirited Away speaks in a deeply magical fashion that transcends age and culture. Although they’ve undervalued Miyazaki’s work in their marketing of it, Disney should be commended for buying up his Studio Ghibli—stuff this precious deserves the whole world’s attention. :

Spirited Away opens Friday, Oct. 4

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