A beautiful blend of an adventure and fairytale.

Rating: 9/10 (3 July 2012)

You really don't have to be into anime to appreciate some of the movies that the genre has to offer. Some of them are being simply so good and captivating that basically everybody should be able to get grabbed by it. And I feel that this is one of those movies, that is being a great blend of adventure and fairytale elements.
It's really a movie that speaks to your imagination. It's set in a fantasy world, that still feels and looks a lot like our world and the movie is literally loaded with some great and impressive looking fantasy creatures, with the one even bigger and more amazing than the other.
In essence this is a mankind versus nature type of movie, in which nature does a lot of fighting back! I can definitely see how "Avatar" got 'inspired' by this movie and it features some similar themes and at times also a similar type of atmosphere in it. And I should say though that I liked this movie far better than "Avatar"! The themes worked out better and were overall more effective and as a whole the story of this movie worked out more pleasantly.
I should admit though that the movie can get quite hard to follow at times, will all of its things that are happening and characters that are in it. But this is a 'problem' I have with basically every anime and it very rarely ever ruins the movie experience for me, so it's no complaint or problem really.
The movie has some great strong characters in it that can hold their own, amidst all of the great and powerful looking creatures in this movie. And there really are a whole bunch of characters in this movie but this never becomes anything distracting and the movie also never looses its focus. All thanks to some great storytelling skills of course, by Hayao Miyazaki.
The animations are absolutely great looking and help to give the movie a great and effective fantasy atmosphere. What I also like about it is that's being such an easy thing to exaggerated things when your animation it, especially all of the action but everything in this movie feels 'real' and doesn't goes over-the-top with things, despite the presence of lots of fantasy elements and characters in it.
Another thing worth mentioning is the musical score by Joe Hisaishi. Some great stuff!
Whether you like anime or not, this is a great fantasy-adventure movie for everybody, everywhere!
9/10
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