Spirited Away - Japanese Blu-ray Review

Spirited Away, in my opinion at least, is Hayao Miyazaki’s magnum opus, and having only been released on Japanese Blu-ray a few months back, I decided to give it a quick review. ‘Spirited Away’ (千と千尋の神隠し ‘Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi’) was released in 2001 to universal critical and commercial success. A heroes-journey tale of a timid girl whose family is sucked into a magical world, where she must struggle to save both herself and her parents. The original Japanese (and other Asian-region) DVD releases had several issues most noticeably a strong red/pink tint, as well as window-boxing the image substantially on all four sides. The US DVD release largely addressed these issues, although the image was a little red.

Spirited Away Old Japanese DVD vs New Japanese Blu-ray

Wow. The new Blu-ray is a lot sharper, also the the pink tint has gone entirely. A there is a tiny bit more picture visible at the bottom of the frame. Colors seem sensible on the Blu-ray too, if anything they might be a touch too cool, the sharpness of the image can be quite overwhelming and possibly even to the point of being distracting: I noticed visual effects that I simply hadn’t seen before (shimmering effects in the water), and assumed some George Lucas-eque revisionism was at play, but reviewing the original DVD, they were there just hard to see.

For once I’m happy with a ‘new’ edition.

Conclusion

Five out of Five. If you love Spirited Away – the new Blu-ray edition is definitely worth getting. However per the usual Japanese crazy pricing – it costs around 80 US dollars. A US edition will be along shortly, and will probably retail for about a third of the price.