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Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke

The story behind the movie

Inthe Muromachi period, in Japan; an Emishi village is attacked by a hideous demon. The last Emishi prince, Ashitaka, kills it before it reaches the village, but it manages to grasp his arm and curse him before its death. The curse grants him superhuman strength, but it also causes him pain and will eventually kill him. The villagers discover that the demon was a boar god (boar kami), corrupted by an

wise woman tells Ashitaka that he may find a cure in the western lands that the demon came from, and that he cannot return to his homeland. Heading west, Ashitaka meets Jigo, an opportunistic monk who tells Ashitaka he may find help from the Great Forest Spirit, a deer-like animal god by day and a giant Night Walker by night. Nearby, men on a cliffside herd oxen to their home of Iron Town, led by Lady Eboshi, and repel an

attack by a wolf pack led by the wolf goddess Moro, whom Eboshi wounds with a gun shot. Riding one of the wolves is San, a human girl. Down below, Ashitaka encounters San and the wolves, who rebuff his greeting. He then manages to rescue two of the men fallen from the cliff and transports them back through the forest, where he briefly glimpses the Great Forest Spirit. Ashitaka and the survivors arrive at Iron Town, where he

is greeted with fascination. Iron Town is a refuge for outcasts and lepers employed to process iron and create firearms, such as hand cannons and matchlock muskets. Ashitaka learns that the town was built by clearcutting forests to mine the iron, leading to conflicts with Asano, a local daimyō, and a giant boar god named Nago. Eboshi admits that she shot Nago, incidentally turning him into the demon that attacked

Ashitaka's village. She also reveals that San, dubbed Princess Mononoke, was raised by the wolves and hates humankind. San infiltrates Iron Town to kill Eboshi.

Ashitaka intervenes and quickly subdues Eboshi and San while they are locked in combat. Amidst the hysteria he is shot by a villager, but the curse gives him strength to carry San out of the village. San awakens and prepares to kill the weakened Ashitaka, but hesitates when he tells her that she is beautiful. She decides to trust him after the Forest Spirit heals his bullet wound that night. The next day, a boar clan led by the blind god Okkoto plans to attack Iron Town to save the forest.

Eboshi sets out to kill the Forest Spirit with Jigo; Eboshi intends to give the god's head to the Emperor (who believes it will grant him immortality) in return for protection from Lord Asano, while Jigo desires the large reward being offered.

Ashitaka recovers and finds Iron Town besieged by Asano's samurai. The boar clan has been annihilated in battle, and Okkoto is badly wounded. Jigo's men trick Okkoto into leading them to the Forest Spirit. San tries to stop Okkoto but is swept up as his pain corrupts him into a demon.

As everyone clashes at the pool of the Forest Spirit, Ashitaka saves San while the Forest Spirit euthanizes Moro and Okkoto. As it begins to transform into the Night Walker Eboshi decapitates it. Jigo steals the head, while the Forest Spirit's

“I hate all of you humans!”

- San, “Princess Mononoke”

body bleeds ooze that spreads over the land and kills anything it touches. The forest and kodama begin to die; Moro's head briefly comes alive and bites off Eboshi's right arm, but she survives. Enraged, San attempts to kill Eboshi again, but is stopped by Ashitaka, who consoles her and encourages her not to give up.

After Iron Town is evacuated, Ashitaka and San pursue Jigo and retrieve the head, returning it to the Forest Spirit. The Spirit dies but its form washes over the land, healing it and lifting Ashitaka's curse.

Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises San he will visit her in the forest.

Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises San he will visit her in the forest. Grateful to Ashitaka and San, Eboshi vows to build a bettertown. The forest begins to regrow as a single kodama emerges from the brush. After Iron Town is evacuated, Ashitaka and San pursue Jigo and retrieve the head, returning it to the Forest Spirit. The Spirit dies but its form washes over the land, healing it and lifting Ashitaka's curse.

Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises San he will visit her in the forest.

Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises San he will visit her in the forest.

Inthe late 1970s, Miyazaki drew sketches of a film about a princess living in the woods with a beast. Miyazaki began writing the film's plotline and drew the initial storyboards for the film in August 1994. He had difficulties adapting his early ideas and visualisations, because elements had already been used in My Neighbor Totoro and because of societal changes since the creation of the original sketches and image boards. This writer's block prompted him to accept a request for the creation of the On Your Mark promotional music video for the Chage and Aska song of the same title. According to Toshio Suzuki, the diversion allowed Miyazaki to return for a fresh start on the creation of Princess Mononoke. In April 1995, supervising animator Masashi Andodevised the character designs from Miyazaki's storyboard. In May 1995, Miyazaki drew the initial storyboards. That same month, Miyazaki and Ando went to the ancient forests of

Yakushima, of Kyushu, an inspiration for the landscape of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and the mountains of Shirakami-Sanchi in northern Honshu for location scouting along with a group of art directors, background artists and digital animators for three days. Animation production commenced in July 1995. Miyazaki personally oversaw each of the 144,000 cels in the film, and is estimated to have retouched parts of 80,000 of them. The final storyboards of the film's ending were finished only months before the Japanese premiere date.

Inspired by John Ford, an Irish-American director best known for his Westerns, Miyazaki created Irontown as a "tight-knit frontier town" and populated it with "characters from outcast groups and oppressed minorities who rarely, if ever, appear in Japanese films."

He made the characters "yearning, ambitious and tough."[16] Miyazaki did not want to create an accurate history of Medieval Japan, and wanted to "portray

“I can deal with forest gods. It’s humans I’m worried about. Remember, you can’t trust men.”

– Lady Eboshi

the very beginnings of the seemingly insoluble conflict between the natural world and modern industrial civilization.".The landscapes appearing in the film were inspired by Yakushima. Despite being set during the Muromachi period, the actual time period of Princess Mononoke depicts a "symbolic neverwhen clash of three proto-Japanese races (the Jomon, Yamato and Emishi)."

Princess Mononoke was produced with an estimated budget of ¥2.35 billion (approximately us $23.5 million). It was mostly hand-drawn, but incorporates some use of computer animation in approximately ten percent of the film. The computer animated parts are designed to blend in and support the traditional cel animation, and are mainly used in images consisting of a

“The Forest Spirit gives life and takes life away. Life and death are his alone.” – Moro

mixture of computer generated graphics and traditional drawing. A further 10 minutes uses inked-and-painted, a technique used in all subsequent Studio Ghibli films.

Most of the film is colored with traditional paint, based on the color schemes designed by Miyazaki and Michiyo Yasuda. However, producers agreed on the installation of computers to successfully complete the film prior to the Japanese premiere date. Telecom Animation Film Company and Oh! Production helped animate the film. Toei Animation

and DR Movie helped with the painting process.

Two titles were originally considered for the film. One, ultimately chosen, has been translated into English as Princess Mononoke. The other title can be translated into English as The Legend of Ashitaka, and it contains an uncommon kanji that represents "a legend passed down from ear to ear without being recorded in official history", according to Miyazaki. In a Tokyo Broadcasting System program, televised on November 26, 2013, Toshio Suzuki

mentioned that Miyazaki had preferred The Legend of Ashitaka as the title while Suzuki himself favoured Princess Mononoke, though the former title was eventually reused for the first song on the soundtrack.

A central theme of Princess Mononoke is the environment.[27] The film centers on the adventure of Ashitaka as he journeys to the west to undo a fatal curse inflicted upon him by Nago, a boar turned into a demon by Eboshi. Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons said that the film "makes heroes of outsiders

in all identity politics categories and blurs the stereotypes that usually define such characters". In the case of the deer god's destruction of the forest and Tataraba, Smith and Parsons said that the "supernatural forces of destruction are unleashed by humans greedily consuming natural resources". They also characterized Eboshi as a businesswoman who has a desire to make money at the expense of the forest, and also cite Eboshi's intention to destroy the forest to mine the mountain "embodies environmentalist evil". Deirdre

M. Pike

writes that Princess Mononoke is simultaneously part of nature and part of the problem. Mononoke represents the connection between the environment and humans, but also demonstrates that there is an imbalance in power between the two.

Two other themes found in the plot of Princess Mononoke are sexuality and disability. Speaking at the International Symposium on Leprosy / Hansen's Disease History in Tokyo, Miyazaki explained that he was inspired to portray people living with leprosy, "said to be an incurable disease caused by bad karma", after visiting the Tama Zenshoen Sanatorium near his home in Tokyo. Lady Eboshi is driven by her compassion for the

disabled, and believes that blood from the Great Forest Spirit could allow her to "cure [her] poor lepers". Michelle Jarman, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Wyoming, and Eunjung Kim, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said the disabled and gendered sexual bodies were partially used as a transition from the feudal era to a hegemony that "embraces modern social systems, such as industrialization, gendered division of labor, institutionalization of people with diseases, and militarization of men and women. " They likened Lady Eboshi to a monarch.[33] Kim and Jarman suggested that Eboshi's disregard of ancient laws

and curses towards sex workers and lepers was enlightenment reasoning and her exploitation of disabled people furthered her modernist viewpoints.

Kim and Jarman conclude that Lady Eboshi's supposed benevolence in incorporating lepers and sex workers into her society leverages the social stigma attached to marginalized groups, pointing out that the hierarchical structures within Irontown still support the stigmatization of lepers and sex workers.

In many stories and myths, we are often presented with a situation in which nature (what is not made by humans) is contrasted with culture (anything that is made by us). Myth often presents us with a need to balance the two: too much nature and we have barbarism & no civilization; too much civilization and we have a dehumanized, mechanized bureaucracy. Princess Mononoke is a

captivating, animated film by Hayao Miyazaki that vividly explores and represents the conflict between nature and culture. The film depicts a clash between human civilization and the natural world, where humans exploit resources and destroy the environment to build their cities and wage wars.

The movie also highlights the consequences of this behavior, as the spirits of the forest fight back, resulting in a battle for the survival of both sides. As the colonizers destroy the spirit of the forest, they must come to accept the consequences as it destroys the world and landscape around them. In a specific scene during the film, the tribe of boars are led by their leader Queen Okkoto and Nago who attack Irontown because they feel that the humans have taken over their natural habitat.

(Miyazaki, 1997)

This attack represents the wild environment of the natural world and its fierce resistance to human interference, while humans represent the force of industrialization and civilization, which seeks to conquer and dominate the natural world. Suggesting to the viewer that the preservation of nature is necessary to maintain a peaceful functioning society, and if one abuses the other, destruction will ensue. Princess Mononoke portrays a thought-provoking and visually stunning narrative on the importance of preserving nature and coexisting with the world around

give a simple answer or resolution to this conflict. Rather, it highlights the importance of balance, cooperation, and respect between humans and the natural world. Dan Jolin of Empire said that a potential theme could be that of lost innocence. Miyazaki attributes this to his experience of making his previous film, Porco Rosso, and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, which he cites as an

example of mankind never learning, making it difficult for him to go back to making a film such as Kiki's Delivery Service, where he has been quoted as saying "It felt like children were being born to this world without being blessed. How could we pretend to them that we're happy?" Duality is central to Eboshi's characterization. Benjamin

Thevenin, Assistant Professor of Theater

and Media Arts at Brigham Young University, said Eboshi does not fully understand the harm she does to the spirits. Her focus is on creating a safe home for her people. She holds no malicious intent toward nature and its spirits until they begin attacking her people. Once nature attacks, she gathers her soldiers to protect the inhabitants of her town, a place where all are

are welcome. Irontown is a haven for former sex workers and lepers. She brings them to Irontown and gives them jobs, hospitality, and a kindness that they have never experienced before. The same treatment goes for all Irontown's inhabitants, not just the sickly and the scorned. Lady Eboshi treats everyone equally, no matter the race, sex, or history of the individual,

– Moro

“Ashitaka, can you save the girl you love?”

creating a caring community. While Eboshi hates San and the forest spirits, she keeps a garden in her town. Her care for the garden implies that her intention is not to ravage nature to no end, but rather to help her own people. Thevenin concluded that although Eboshi can be seen as the film's villain, she is also a hero to the citizens of Irontown and to humankind in general.

Another theme in this film is between individualism and societal conformity.

According to University of Bristol professors Christos Ellinas, Neil Allan and Anders Johansson, this struggle can be seen between San, a strong individualistic force, and Eboshi, the leader of a great

society. San has fully committed to living with the wolves in the forest and to renouncing her association with the human race. Eboshi has vowed to sustain her society of Irontown by any means including destroying the environment. The people of Irontown have a cohesive ideology and agree with Eboshi to protect Irontown at the cost of the environment's destruction. This conformity can be found within their society, because “even though there is an envisioned culture at which an organization abides to [sic], achieving coherence at lower aggregation levels (e.g. individuals) is increasingly challenging due to its emergent nature”.

TheBuddhist principle of karma is at work in the characters of Lady Eboshi and Ashitaka with different results for each. Lady Eboshi destroys the forest to ensure the livelihood of her people and also for her own personal gain. This selfish personal quest ends up having ramifications that reveal themselves at the film's end. Lady Eboshi, taken from the earth with no regard for the damage she inflicts, turns against her when she ends up losing one of her arms. Lady Eboshi seems to learn from this, becoming more in tune with nature and using that karmic lesson to better her-

Ashitaka works in an opposite way to Eboshi. Ashitaka does not go out of his way to damage nature though at the start of the film he does kill the demon boar in order to save his village. When as a result Ashitaka is cursed, he does not take his anger out on nature and still treats all living things with respect. He also protects life in general, doing the right thing for all whom he meets and mediating between others in order to prevent further violence. Having this mindset despite the affliction he is suffering from and being able to overcome his curse shows that he is a pure soul who will be rewarded for his actions.

Princess

Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan on July 12, 1997.[42] The film was extremely successful in Japan and with both anime fans and arthouse moviegoers in English-speaking countries. Since Walt Disney Studios had made a distribution deal with Tokuma Shoten for Studio Ghibli's films in 1996, it was the first film from Studio Ghibli along with

Sky to have been dubbed into English by Disney; in this case, subsidiary Miramax Films was assigned to release the movie in the US on October 29, 1999. In response to demands from Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein to edit the film, one of Miyazaki's producers sent Weinstein a samurai sword with the message: "No cuts." Promotion manager, Steve Alpert, revealed that Weinstein had wanted to

minutes "despite having promised not to do so." When Alpert informed him that Miyazaki would not agree to these demands, Weinstein flew into one of his infamous rages and threatened Alpert that he would "never work in this...industry again". Weinstei hired Neil Gaiman to write the English script, and he chose to simplify some of the Japanese terminology for this dub, with words like Jibar-

mi becoming "Forest Spirit". According to him at one of the American screenings of the dub, the release was somewhat delayed because the original recordings deviated from the English script as written.[45] Despite Gaiman's independent fame as an author, his role as scriptwriter for the dub was not heavily promoted: Studio Ghibli requested that Miramax remove some executives' names from the poster

weinstein, Bob Weinstein, and Scott Martin) decided that Gaiman's name was contractually expendable.

On April 29, 2000, the English-dub version of Princess Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan along with the documentary Mononoke hime in U.S.A. The documentary was directed by Toshikazu Sato and featured Miyazaki visiting the Walt Disney Studios and various film festivals.[42][47] The film had a limited theatrical re-release in the United States during July 2018, and again during April 2022 for the 25th anniversary of its original Japanese release.

Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1997, earning ¥11.3 billion in distribution rental earnings.[50] It became the highest-grossing film in Japan, beating the record set by E.T. in 1982, but was surpassed sev-

“He is here with us now, telling us to live.”

– Prince Ashitaka

It showed more strength internationally, where it earned a total of $11 million outside Japan, bringing its worldwide total to $159,375,308 at the time. On December 6, 2016, GKIDS announced that it would screen the film in US cinemas on January 5 and January 9, 2017, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, bundled with the On Your Mark short. The film's limited US re-release in 2018 grossed $1,423,877 over five days, bringing its US total to $3,799,185 and worldwide total to $160,799,185. As of 2020, the film has grossed $194.3 million.

For its 25th anniversary, Princess Mononoke was screened in 35mm at New York City's Japan Society on July 22, 2022.

In Japan, the film was released on VHS by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on June 26, 1998. failed verification] A LaserDisc edition was also released by Tokuma Japan Communications on the same day. The film was released on DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on November 21, 2001, with bonus extras added, including the international versions of the film as well as the storyboards.

By 2007, Princess Mononoke sold 4.4 million DVD units in Japan. At an average retail price of ¥4,700, this is equivalent to approximately ¥20,680 million ($259.18 million) in Japanese sales revenue as of 2007. In July 2000, Buena Vista Home Entertainment via Miramax Home Entertainment announced plans to release the film on VHS and

August 29. Initially, the DVD version of Princess Mononoke wasn't going to include the Japanese-language track at the request of Buena Vista's Japan division. Because the film hadn't been released on DVD in Japan yet, there were concerns that "a foreign-released DVD containing the Japanese language track will allow for the importation of such a DVD to Japan, which could seriously hurt the local sales of a future release of the [film]". The fansite Nausicaa.net organized an email campaign for fans to include the Japanese language track, while DVD Talk began an online petition to retain the Japanese language track. The DVD release of Princess Mononoke was delayed as a result. Miramax Home Entertainment released the DVD on December 19, 2000 with the original Japanese audio, the English dubbed audio and extras including a trailer and a documentary with interviews from the English dub voice actors. The film was released on Blu-ray disc in Japan on December 4, 2013. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Princess Mononoke on Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2014. In its first week, it

sold 21,860 units; by November 23, 2014, it had grossed $502,332. It was later included in Disney's "The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki" Blu-ray set, released on November 17, 2015. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017. As of October 2020, the film has grossed $9,232,906 from Blu-ray sales in the United States. In total, Mononoke's video releases in Japan and the United States grossed an estimated $268 million in physical sales.

In the United Kingdom, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared several times on the annual lists of best-selling foreign language film on home video, ranking number six in 2015 (below five other Studio Ghibli anime films), number ten in 2016, number five in 2018 (below four other Japanese films), and number three in 2019 (below Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro).

The film was aired on Nippon TV (NTV) in Japan, on 22 January 1999. It became NTV's most-watched film up until then with a 35.1% audience rating, surpassing the 28.4% record previously set by Tsuribaka Nisshi 4 in 1994. In turn, Princess Mononoke was later surpassed by Spirited Away, when it aired in 2003. As of August 2022, on the review aggre-

gator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 114 critic reviews are positive for Princess Mononoke, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's consensus reads, "With its epic story and breathtaking visuals, Princess Mononoke is a landmark in the world of animation." According to Metacritic, which assigned an average score of 76 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, the film received "generally favorable reviews". The Daily Yomiuri's Aaron Gerow called the film a "powerful compilation of Miyazaki's world, a cumulative statement of his moral and filmic concerns." Leonard Klady of Variety said that Princess Mononoke "is not only more sharply drawn, it has an extremely complex and adult script" and the film "has the soul of a romantic epic, and its lush tones, elegant score by Joe Hisaishi and full-blooded characterizations give it the sweep of cin-

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called Princess Mononoke "a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year. […] You won't find many Hollywood love stories (animated or otherwise) so philosophical." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly called the film "a windswept pinnacle of its art" and that it "has the effect of making the average Disney film look like just another toy story". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said that the film "brings a very different sensibility to animation, a medium [Miyazaki] views as completely suitable for straight dramatic narrative and serious themes." In his review, Dave Smith from Gamers' Republic called it "one of the greatest animated films ever created, and easily one of the best films of 1999."

Roger Ebert placed Princess Mononoke sixth on his top ten movies of 1999. In 2001, the Japanese magazine Animage

“Ashitaka, you mean so much to me, but I can’t forgive the humans for what they’ve done.”

– San

their list of 100 Best Anime Productions of All Time. It ranked 488th on Empire's list of the 500 greatest films.[85] Time Out ranked the film 26th on 50 greatest animated films. It also ranked 26 on Total Film's list of 50 greatest animated films. James Cameron cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on his 2009 film Avatar. He acknowledged that it shares themes with Princess Mononoke, including its clash between cultures and civilizations, and cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on the ecosystem of Pandora.

Princess Mononoke is the first animated feature film to win the Japan Academy Prize for Best Picture. For the 70th Academy Awards ceremony, Princess Mononoke was the Japanese submission to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not successfully nominated. Hayao Miyazaki was also nominated for an Annie Award for his work on the film. The film score of Princess Mononoke was composed and performed by Joe Hisaishi, the soundtrack composer for nearly all of Miyazaki's productions, and Miyazaki wrote the lyrics

of the two vocal tracks, "The Tatara Women Work Song" and its title song. The music was performed by Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Hiroshi Kumagai. The soundtrack was released in Japan by Tokuma Japan Communications on July 2, 1997, and the North American version was released by Milan Records on October 12, 1999.

The titular theme song was performed by counter-tenor Yoshikazu Mera. For the English adaptation, Sasha Lazard sang the song. During the movie Hisaishi makes use of a few known classical pieces and quotes them, such as Dmitri Shostakovich's 5th symphony. As with other Studio Ghibli films, additional albums featuring soundtrack themes in alternative versions have been released. The image album features early versions of the themes, recorded at the beginning of the film production process, and used as source of inspiration for the various artists involved.

he symphonic suite features longer compositions, each encompassing several of the movie themes, performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mario Klemens.

“You cannot alter your fate, my prince. However, you can rise to meet it if you choose.”

– Hii-sama

Princess Mononoke

The story behind the movie