Chihiro is a ten year old Japanese girl, annoyed that her parents, Akio and Yugo, are moving to a new town, and sulking when her father gets lost driving in the woods. Crossing through a foot tunnel they find that the buildings on the other side are all old fashioned, making Chihiro’s father think that this is perhaps some sort of deserted theme park. The restaurants are all empty but one has plates of inviting food on the tables and her parents start to eat while Chihiro explores, finding a plush and impressive bathhouse, but she is warned to leave by a young boy, named Haru, who she meets there. Night falls suddenly and the empty streets are quickly filled with spirits and apparitions who arrive to use the bathhouse, making her realise that they have strayed into the Land Of The Spirits, but once Chihiro gets back to her parents she finds their greed has turned them into snorting pigs. Haru saves Chihiro and she goes back to the bathhouse where the spirits are bathing, meeting a six-armed man called Kamakji who stokes the boilers, and is taken by the overbearing Lin to see the bathhouse’s manager, a crone called Yubaba, who has a small body and a gigantic head. She steals Chihiro’s name through magic, as she has done with Haru, and calls her ‘Sen’ instead, keeping her identity like a trophy and Chihiro is put to work in the bathhouse under Lin’s supervision. An evil-smelling spirit covered in sticky slime comes in for a bath and with the help of a large black-clad masked figure called No-Face, Chihiro cleans it, revealing it to be a river god who gives Chihiro a dumpling in return, but it tastes revolting and she does not eat it. No-Face swells in size after eating one of the bathhouse workers and demands more food, producing gold and throwing it around the building. Chihiro is surprised to see Haru, transformed into a dragon, and badly injured. Outside Yubaba’s office she overhears that Haru was cursed after stealing a magical seal from Zeniba, Yubaba’s equally grotesque sister. The enraged Zeniba arrives at the bathhouse and turns Yubaba’s gigantic baby, which stays in her office, into a mouse. The now enormous No-Face demands that he be brought Chihiro to eat, but when she confronts him she gives him the dumpling she was given by the river god, his eating it making him violently sick, regurgitating all he has eaten and returning him to normal size and severely weakened. Chihiro manages to find the stolen magical seal and she, the mouse / baby and the apologetic No-Face take the train to the swamps to return the seal to Zeniba, but her plan is foiled by Haru, who has fallen for Chihiro and in his dragon state, healed by her feelings for him, flies her back to Yubaba’s bathhouse. But as she flies over the rivers of the spirit land she remembers a faint memory from her past, and it is this which enables her to get away from the assorted spirits and perhaps rescue both herself and her parents. The most popular Japanese film ever made, taking a staggering $230 million in Japan alone (more than three times the take of Matrix Reloaded) Spirited Away will amaze those whose only exposure to Japanese anime has been either the dreadfully animated offerings cluttering up children’s TV or lurid manga, showing the amazing breadth and imagination of Studio Ghibli and its’ founder Hayao Miyazaki. Drawing on ancient Japanese myths and fables, and the Land Of The Spirits itself resembles endo period Japan, the movie is layered with vivid visual references and jokes both subtle and not so, and as with Miyazaki’s films there are cross-references to situations and characters to others in his output, but not to the degree where such touches become distracting. Although animated in a different way to American cartoons, each frame is photographed three times, meaning that one second comprises eight frames where as western studios usually only shoot each drawing twice, meaning sixteen separate drawings per second, Spirited Away has nevertheless a lush and sweeping visual style, and the wide range of characters from the impassive, masked No-Face to the grotesque Yubaba and her equally bizarre baby, to slightly cuter characters such as soot-sprites, essentially balls of black fluff with eyes, are all fascinating. The bizarre nature of some, or perhaps most, of the movie might make it unsuitable for very young children or those easily scared, but otherwise Spirited Away should appeal to any audience willing to enter the quite dazzling world of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki.