Chihiro, whose family is moving to a new town, is as sad and lonely as an only child in the backseat can be. Along the way, her parents stop at what what seems to be an abandoned theme park: quaint, run-down buildings and winding streets almost swallowed by the tall grass and hills. Little stone statues will remind Ghibli fans of Totoro, that whimsical forest spirit who embodies Japan's leading animation studio like a mouse does for a certain nationless global media entity. Ghibli fans will also know that those whimsical spirits won't remain stone for long.

Spirited Away is the second big U. S. theatrical release of a Studio Ghibli film, part of a deal between Ghibli and Walt Disney (through Buena Vista Entertainment), following the highly-heralded (but unfortunately less-well received) release of Princess Mononoke in 1998. Say what you will about Disney (and we will in a moment), The Mouse gives these English-dubbed releases of Japanese animated features the first-class treatment: big name voices, terrific sound mix, and decent media (though no Happy Meal prizes to date). This adaption of Spirited Away was overseen by Kirk Wise, co-director of Beauty and the Beast and John Lasseter of Toy Story. The film is being released in two-versions, one subtitled, and one dubbed by American actors including Suzanne Pleshette and David Ogden Stiers. For once I was happy to choose the dubbed version, since reading words at the bottom of the screen is not what I want to do while so many incredible pictures flash by everywhere else.

As a matter of fact, after a couple years catching up on Studio Ghibli films via Hong Kong DVDs and out-of-print VHS tapes, I'd forgotten how breathtaking animé looks on the big screen: this medium is all about big screen, with vistas towering above and below, to infinity and beyond. The subtle touches: clouds, leaves, smoke, water, little details in the corners of the screen that get cut off or lost in made-for-tv versions — all as lovingly and delicately and patiently created as Bonsai trees. Scott McCloud, in his marvelous Understanding Comics talks about that comic tradition in which simple line character drawings are set against realistically-detailed backgrounds. The effect, he says, is "iconic": as with those two-dimensional paintings which are deliberately simple in order to make room for a Divine Presence, so the more abstractly-drawn characters invite the viewer to occupy the simple lines and experience the comic so much more subjectively. No doubt this is one reason fans of animé find the medium so compelling.

Another reason people like me love Miyazaki's brand of animé is that his narrative and visual sensibilities are so danged weird: or, more accurately, entirely different than mine: his imaginative vision draws upon traditions and sources I know not of and receive as unyieldingly and unexpectedly Other — the net effect of a ride through the theme park of Studio Ghibli is to emerge, in C. S. Lewis's memorable phrase, with a sense we have "enlarged our being."

For example: the centerpiece of the not-so-abandoned theme park in Spirited Away is not Cinderella's Castle, but "the Bathhouse of the Spirits." These include the "Radish Spirit," a giant walrus-mustachioed blob of vegetable plasm and countless creatures like him. Or unlike him. Or unlike anything you've ever seen. Trying to explain this film feels like trying to describe a dream: Uh, let's see... the disembodied heads on the floor bounce around like puppies, then turn into a giant baby, while the real giant baby turns into a mouse, who is then carried aloft by a tiny big-eyed bird...

Let me try again. Yubaba is the witch who runs the bathhouse; she's right out of Lewis Carroll, or some 19th century political cartoon, with a huge head and blue eye-shadow and big jeweled rings. After Chihiro and her parents (they've been turned into pigs) are trapped in the theme park, the girl signs a work contract with Yubaba, giving up her name in the process and taking the new name, Sen. "That's how Yubaba controls you," Sen is told. "She steals your name. If you forget it, you'll never find your way home." Her adviser in these matters is Haku, a boy who can turn himself into a dragon (or vice versa) who is likewise under Yubaba's evil spell, having forgotten his true identity.

How interesting that such a film comes from Ghibli founder and resident genius Hayao Mizayaki after he has himself signed a contract with Disney, whose animated features have become the precise opposite of surprising or daring — with, of course, the exception of the Disney films issued as part of their relationship with Ghibli and, more locally, Pixar (creator of Toy Story and Monster's, Inc). It is possible to view Disney's linking up with genuinely-innovative animation units as the best (or, one good) use of their vast corporate resources in a long time; one can also view these relationships as a tad sinister. Miyazaki himself has expressed reservations about Disney, yet despite these he signed a deal with the, er, Mouse, which may yet turn out for the best for everybody: provided, of course, he doesn't forget in the process his own unique identity.

For, as Spirited Away suggests, even good spirits can become corrupted and dehumanized by greed or encrusted with the pollution churned out by a thoughtless consumer society. Indeed, the bathhouse is the place where good spirits gone bad can clean up their act. Miyazaki continues to sound the ecological warning that was such a central theme in Princess Mononoke, and is an ever-present thread in nearly all his films. With its emphasis on the consequences of greed and references to Japan's recent economic bust, this film seems to speak, and seeks to learn, from painful experience.

Too much of any good thing can make you forget who you are. Even the bathhouse, which is for replenishing the gods, can be overdosed on: a Kabuki-like "No Face" only returns to his docile self when he is spirited away from the spa by Chihiro to live with Yubaba's good twin in the countryside.

Most significantly, it is this very sense of moral center which Studio Ghibli films acknowledge that sets them apart from so much animé, a medium whose matter runs the gamut from children's stories to porn, and a good deal of which involves such piggish indulgence in sex and gore that anyone who plunges in will surely be in need of a good soul-cleansing afterward.