Again, not what I expected

Rating: 9/10 (21 February 2017)

I remember looking up on Amazon.com and seeing that this film was seemingly the most reviewed anime thing on the entire website! It was that alone that made me want to watch this. Yeah, I'm like that. I admit that I was confused as to how a lot of the movie didn't really focus on the title character. He didn't even appear until 32 minutes into the movie! Now, this is still a great movie. You simply can't go wrong with this animation from the creator of "Castle In The Sky" which I looked at recently. I am so impressed at how this artwork holds up after all these decades. Honestly, it seems on par with his newest stuff like "Ponyo"!
I had no idea that they were actually going to get into some pretty deep issues here. This movie features two daughters whose mother is away sick. In this sense, it actually improves on better movies like "Spirited Away" because we actually get to see the supernatural stuff weaved into their everyday lives. It also helps that they have this awesome catbus. Yeah, literally a giant cat that's also a bus. It makes little sense, but dang do I love looking at that guy. I'm surprised at how short it was, seeing as how Miyazaki was known for making longer films. ***1/2