This movie was great, however...

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2002)

Upon viewing the original Japanese version of Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi), I was left saying, `wow, I've never seen any North American cartoon pull off so much in a children's cartoon.' The movie's theme and storyline was clearly directed at kids, however the imagery and select content from the movie would easily be difficult for some teens to digest (at least the squeamish ones). Which is probably why this movie was given a PG rating for North American release.
Spirited away is a story about a young girl (Chihiro) which ends up trapped in an abandoned amusement park full of old Gods. Chihiro is not welcome in this world of the spirits and Gods. In order for Chihiro to remain safe in this world, she must meet a purpose in the world. Chihiro goes to meet the evil witch (Yababa) which owns a bathhouse for the Gods to apply for a job. Yababa is reluctant, but accepts her to work at her bathhouse. Yababa makes Chihiro sign a contract to work, but Yababa steals 3 out of 4 characters of her name, leaving her name only as Sen (I assume you really need to know Japanese in order to understand how this works). From here the story gets quite interesting and no shortage of entertainment (the synopsis above only summarized approximately the first 20% of the movie).
For people who have seen Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime), the violence level and maturity is in the same ball park (they are both by Studio Ghibli which is why I used this comparison). Spirited Away contains scenes of vomiting, and blood. The vomit scenes are NOT extremely detailed, but for some people I viewed the movie with (ages range from 19 - 25), were graphic enough. Blood appears primarily in one scene, it was well implemented and used tastefully, but for parents, a little less blood probably would have been suffice in most cases. For every graphic, there is the extremely cute scenes. The imagination to make this movie is extraordinary. So many original ideas in character design and little side details that are rare in most one dimensional Disney story lines. The movie is filled with many extremely cute little scenes (but not too cute to make grown men turn away saying, `what the hell is this'). And primarily, there is no singing during the whole 2 hours and 6 minutes of the movie.
All in all, I loved the movie. I would suggest it to children 10+ or ones that have a strong sense of maturity. There is no killing or senseless violence in this movie. But the one scene with blood and some vomit is my personal reason for knocking up my opinion on the age issue. For adults taking their kids, you just might enjoy this more than your kids will. It's a good solid movie. I give it an 8.5 / 10 (I am very picky).