Number 109 on IMDb's Top 250
The time and place is the Muromachi era, Japan. A prince, Ashitaka, of a small village is cursed to a slow but certain death by a Boar God turned Cursing God. To find a possible cure to the curse, he travels westwards. Hearing of a Deer God that may be his salvation, he soon comes across a village of iron miners and finds himself in the middle of a battle between the animal gods of the forest, lead by Princess Mononoke (Princess of the Spirits) who was raised by the Wolf God, and the iron miners, lead by a female leader who is trying to create a sanctuary for human outcasts. Along side this battle is a mysterious group of men who are after the head of the Deer God in a quest to gain immortality. Hilarity ensues. Why did the Boar God turn into a Cursing God? Can Ashitaka persuade all those involved to make peace or is conflict inevitable between man and nature?
Trivia: Director Hayao Miyazaki personally corrected or redrew more than 80,000 of the film's 144,000 animation cels. Mononoke Hime replaced E.T. as the biggest grossing film of all time in Japan until Titanic (1997).
You don't see many animated films that deal with environmentalism like this movie does. The humans of Irontown are in direct conflict with the gods of nature. They humans have to survive by making iron to sale, but this in turn destroys the land around them, which angers nature. The hard, dirty industrial human world of Irontown is in very sharp contrast to the beauty of the Deer God's Forrest. Miyazaki's signature of having strong female characters in his films is very evident with Princess Mononoke, Moro (the Wolf God), Toki (one of the outcast women that found a new life at Irontown), and Eboshi (the leader of Irontown). Very good film.
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