Princess Mononoke (1997)

Released in Japan in July 1997, Princess Mononoke arrived as something of a watershed moment for Studio Ghibli and for Japanese animation more broadly. The film had been in the works for years, with director Hayao Miyazaki drawing on earlier concept sketches dating back to the 1980s, and the finished product became the highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history at the time of its release, a record it held until Titanic arrived later that year. Set in the Muromachi period of feudal Japan (roughly the 14th to 16th centuries), the story centres on a young Emishi prince named Ashitaka, who is cursed after defending his village and must travel west to seek a cure. What he finds there is a conflict between the industrialising humans of Irontown and the ancient gods of the forest, with a fierce young woman called San caught somewhere in between. The film runs to 134 minutes, which is long by animation standards, and it earns most of that runtime.

Miyazaki had by this point established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in world cinema, animated or otherwise. His earlier films for Ghibli, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and Kiki's Delivery Service, had shown a consistent preoccupation with environmental themes, strong female characters, and a refusal to offer easy moral resolutions. Princess Mononoke pushes all of those tendencies further than he had gone before, presenting a conflict with no clean villain and no comfortable answer. The studio, co-financed here by dentsu and Tokuma Shoten alongside Ghibli itself, gave Miyazaki the resources to produce something on a considerably larger scale than his previous work, and the ambition is visible in practically every sequence.

The voice cast in the original Japanese production features Yoji Matsuda as Ashitaka, Yuriko Ishida as San (the Princess Mononoke of the title), and Yuko Tanaka as Lady Eboshi, the steely and polished but morally ambiguous leader of Irontown. Kaoru Kobayashi and Masahiko Nishimura round out the principal ensemble. The performances are restrained by the standards of Western animation, which suits the film's tone well. San and Lady Eboshi in particular are written with the kind of considered contradictions that are usually reserved for live-action drama, which makes the voice work a genuine acting job rather than simply a technical one. Joe Hisaishi, Miyazaki's long-time composer, provides a score that sits somewhere between orchestral grandeur and folk intimacy, and it remains one of his most recognised pieces of work.

It's great, but it's nowhere near Ghibli's best imo. Studio Ghibli’s art style is so flawless it makes most other animation look like a rough sketch on a napkin, especially for 1997! The attention to detail? Unreal. Every frame of Princess Mononoke could be framed and put in a museum. The world is rich, immersive, and alive, and the characters? Some of the most engaging I’ve ever seen in animation. Ashitaka is a great protagonist, but it's San and Lady Eboshi that steal the show. Both complex, both compelling, both completely right and wrong in their own ways. The cloudy morals, the stunning action sequences, the sheer scale of it all… it’s just a special film. Not my absolute favourite Ghibli, but damn if it isn’t one of their most ambitious.

All of that is what keeps me coming back to this one, honestly. The fact that it sits just below the very top of the Ghibli rankings for me says more about the extraordinary standard of that studio's output than it does about any weakness in the film itself. The moral murkiness that Miyazaki builds here is exactly the kind of thing that rewards a second or third watch, when you notice just how carefully the arguments on every side are constructed. It's a film that respects its audience enough not to tell them how to feel. And in an era when most big animated releases were still very much in the business of clean resolutions and uncomplicated heroes, that takes some nerve. Not every film earns its ambition. This one does.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1997  | Watched: 2011-03-04

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Princess Mononoke (1997) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Hayao Miyazaki: Castle in the Sky (1986) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) · My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)