Aided by fine sound design and an exemplary musical score from regular Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi, the film boasts the detail and visual scale that mark Miyazaki's inimitable style. Simply perfect, from beginning to end.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2025

With an overall presentation that truly elevates it beyond a film and into an experience, Spirited Away earns its status as Hayao Miyazaki ’s magnum opus.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 6, 2025

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is perhaps the greatest of all animated movies. It’s bizarre yet beautiful, creepy yet whimsical, and chock full of rich themes and unforgettable characters and imagery. It is a bona fide masterpiece.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2024

10-year-old Chihiro's adventurous coming-of-age journey as she conquers her fears and makes new friends against Spirited Away's dazzling animation is as delightful as it gets.

| Aug 27, 2024

It’s a testament to a passionate filmmaker whose voice transcends the medium, elevating animation to the realm of art. It’s also, in this critic’s opinion, Hayao Miyazaki’s undeniable masterpiece.

| Jul 31, 2024

Spirited Away reminds me of how our friends, our work family, or the people we pass by in life can become more familial than our blood relations.

| Jan 2, 2024

Spirited Away is one of those films that you have to see at least once in your life: a milestone in animation that shines both in form and substance. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 2, 2023

A careful reframing of the typical coming-of-age narrative, Spirited Away displays a fondness those infinitely awkward years, while showing us all how important they were in making us who we are today.

| Aug 1, 2023

As with every Miyazaki picture, Spirited Away wants to at once amaze and familiarize you with an impossible dream, but it remains unique within his oeuvre for cementing that narrative desire into the essential groundwork of the story.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 31, 2023

Listen to Miyazaki's message. Be good. Be strong. Then sit back and bask in his brilliance.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 17, 2023

Visually, this is a magnificent example of Japanese animation. The story is another matter. At times, the shifting plot is almost too complex for explanation.

| Original Score: B | Jul 17, 2023

This is an animated film of graphic splendor, with its realistic, often painterly backgrounds and characters who are as fanciful as the Wild Things of Maurice Sendak.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 17, 2023

In Miyazaki's hands, mundane actions like pulling a lever or pouring a cup of tea become beautiful endeavors.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 17, 2023

Spirited Away has all the hallmarks of great Japanese design and there are many, many moments of wit and breathtaking beauty.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 17, 2023

The film is strewn with casual poetry. Its colors, often blue and green, are muted and weak, like a tear-spattered love letter.

| Jul 17, 2023

All in all, Spirited Away is a better animated feature film than anything to come out of Disney in the last 50 years.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 17, 2023

Spirited Away is no secondhand fairytale retread; it's a fully imagined universe, populated by wondrous beings and haunting landscapes.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 17, 2023

Spirited away is so visually imaginative that it bears its thematic burden without ever seeming weighed down by it.

| Jul 17, 2023

The plot starts suffering from dèjá vu before it's even half over. There are only so many octopus men, stink spirits and pig people you can take before they all start to blend together.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 17, 2023

Backgrounds have been fashioned with the delicacy of fine water colors. But for all that, Spirited Away left me pretty cold. Emotionally it's remote; narratively it seems to always be circling and never landing.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 17, 2023