not perfect, but pretty close

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2004)

Action? Adventure? Romance? History? Sci-Fi? I think I know how to please all those tastes. Now,I'm not a fan of Japanese animation. I find the characters and stories of most anime movies quite over the top. However, this movie completely blew me away. I can sum up my perception of this movie in this sentence: It's not perfect, but it's not far from it either. Everything about this movie is astounding. The animation is an amazing, the music is beautiful, the characters are very interesting, but the story is by far the best feature of this film. I won't give anything away, because I just wouldn't be able to do it justice. It does deal with a lot of Japanese mythology, and that might turn some people off, but it didn't bother me, or take anything away from the movie. It's also a bit violent, so I wouldn't recommend it for young children. Another great aspect of this movie is that they got the voice's perfect. Voices are contributed by Claire Danes, Billy Crudup, Billy bob Thorton, Gillian Anderson, Minnie Driver, just to name a few. And it's done so well, you would never suspect that it was dubbed.
This movie introduced me to Hayao Miyazaki, the writer and director. He's a legend in the animation industry, and almost a god in the Japanese film industry. It seems that Miyazaki just can't make bad movies. He was also responisible for Spirited away, and Castle in the sky, two anime movies that made quite an impact worldwide. So if it's action, or adventure, or romance, or sci-fi...heck, this movie has got it all, so you can't go wrong.