Some enchanted evening...

Rating: 8/10 (19 June 2003)

I really quite liked this film. I don't know why, as I don't consider myself to be a big anime fan. However now because of this I'm seriously considering giving it another chance and seeing other works (I haven't seen Princess Mononoke yet). It actually has a refreshingly simple plot but set in a quite complex yet enchanting world. I sat there thinking "what kind of drugs was the writer on to come up with this stuff?", tho I realize that a lot of the components probably draw on Japanese myth & legend. While it's "dark" it's not "black", altho you fear for the characters at certain points.
I listened to the English version. My only preference for listening to the Japanese version was simply due to it being in DTS on the region 4 DVD, which I prefer over DD5.1. However the fact that it's an animated cartoon removes the necessity of listening to it in it's original language and putting up with reading subtitles as for cartoons all audio is dubbed. It makes no difference. The English dubbing in my words was exemplary anyway and took nothing away from the film. For a real-life movie I'd always prefer subtitles over dubbed voices because, quite frankly, you can't put into the words the same emotion with a voice-over actor that the original actor can. But for an anime, that's not a factor, mostly due to it's economical frame rate in comparison to western style animation.
It's wonderful and one that my nieces & nephews are enchanted by as well.