Spirited Away is a very highly acclaimed film from the much renowned Studio Ghibli. It's also one of the most flawed films I have ever seen.

The trouble I find with most anime is that they tend to rely on wild leaps of the imagination to push the story forward. I'm not sure if this is down to bad translation or just differing attitudes to story, but I tend to like to know why things are happening, especially if they are essential to the story.

A prime example of this in Spirited Away, and two examples of some of the most on-the-nose, expositional dialogue I've ever heard, would be when the evil witch is giving the girl a job. She says "That stupid oath I took to give work to anyone who asks." Right.

Who would make you take that kind of oath?
Who did you make this oath to when you seem to be the big boss around here?
And if you made that oath, why did it take so long for this poor girl to get a job?

It's just horrible writing to plug a hole in the story.

The other example is right at the end of the film when the girl is riding on the back of the boy in dragon form. Out of the blue she goes "I've just remembered something. When I was a kid I fell in a river called Kohaku, so your real name is Kohaku." And she's right.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Seriously, I have no idea how this Miyazaki guy got to be so big when he's writing shit like that. I actually stopped the film and skipped back a minute to make sure I hadn't missed something when that line came out of her mouth. And then I paused it for a few minutes to self-harm after I had the horrific confirmation.

The film seems to rely on happy coincidences and unexplained events far too much. There's the No Face monster that comes out of nowhere and decides to help the girl. Then eats people and chases the girl. Then gets on a train with the girl. Then does some knitting. And that's the last we see of it. There was absolutely no pay off to that plot thread.

There's also something about the witch giving you a fake name, and if you forget your real name you can't go home, but this is never explained. If I forgot my name, my mum wouldn't lock me out. She'd take me to the hospital.

All the creatures in this world seem to hate humans at the start, and this is also never explained and doesn't make any sense at all because the majority of the work force are human, and they seem to forget that the little girl is human as soon as she gets a job.

This big dragon flies into her house at one point, and she assumes it's the little boy Haku. Based on nothing. And then carries on calling it Haku until it turns out it actually is Haku. Can I get this girl to pick some lottery numbers?

There's a scene where this big turd monster comes in for a bath, and then it turns out that it isn't a turd monster, it's some dragon that we've seen a glimpse of before and never see again. And that dragon leaves a little turd for the girl to pick up, which she then spends the rest of the film feeding to anything with an open mouth. How she knows it would solve all their aliments I will never know. Is dragon shit an everyday remedy in Japan?

The ending of this film was just terrible. After investing 2 hours, I wanted a bit more than "You guessed right. Off you go." It's also very selfish, because she doesn't get rid of the evil witch and save the world, she just frees her parents and herself and goes home, leaving all those people and creatures that helped her to an eternity of slavery.

Overall, the film was very pretty to look at, and I did enjoy some of the quirks, but for me it was ruined by the sheer amount of plot holes. Coincidence is not good story telling, and I'm actually stunned that this film gets the praise it does when it doesn't make any sense.