One of the best and weirdest animated films i have seen for a long time!

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2003)

The story of one little girl, straying into the fantastically bizarre world of director Miyazaki's imagination, has turned into one of the decade's landmark releases.
Disney fully embraces the Japanese anime tradition and produces a 21st century classic to turn the head of many of their usual audience. The story begins normally enough with a little girl, named Chihiro (Rumi Hiragi), moving home with her parents before getting lost on a country road and winding up in front of suspicious tunnel. As the family pass through the tunnel, they arrive in a very desolate looking place that contains an old theme park.
The discovery invokes strange mysticism about the park that violently envelops her parents and leaves her left in a strange place to fight for her rite of passage in an unusual situation involving faceless spirits, ignorant toads, and two frightening grandmother figures who take the very name she has been born with.
As the story progresses, it proved that this was not going to be standard animated fare as the ideas the film presents to its audience are varied and well created, with more than a touch of twisted imagination to make this unlike any film Disney would produce.
It gave the audience a chance to laugh with and mourn the characters being shown on screen as they all change either physically or mentally with the removal of their names (such as Chihiro's case) and made drastically different personas for the viewer to absorb.