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Princess Mononoke does not belong to me.

"Mononoke Hime" ("Princess Mononoke" in English) is a story of nature and civilization, and the conflicts that each has with the other while both struggle to survive, by Hayao Miyazaki. The best part about this story is, I think, that there is no villain. No sneaky, crooked, sleazy little man with a black mustache shows up, cackling and saying, "Now I've got you just where I want you!", forcing the protagonists into open battle against him and each other. Instead, the two-hour-and-fourteen-minute movie delves into the workings of the human heart, showing both the good and bad sides of all of the movie's characters.

Our story begins with young Ashitaka, the last Prince of the Imishi people. A demon attacks his village and, in an effort to save his people, he kills it. Unfortunately, during the battle, the demon touches Ashitaka, cursing him. Only a little later it is revealed that the demon had once been a boar god, and that an iron ball inside of its body had caused it to be consumed by rage and hate, turning it into a demon. The village elder tells Ashitaka that in order to remove his curse he must travel west to find the Great Forest Spirit (Shishigami).

As Ashitaka is traveling, he comes across a monk, Jico, and later on meets two injured men - victims of a Wolf God's attack on an ox caravan carrying rice to nearby Iron Town. As Ashitaka is helping the men back to their home, he glimpses San with her "family" of wolves.

Ashitaka and the men make it to Iron Town, where Ashitaka meets Lady Eboshi - the leader of the people in the city. She hates the wolves and San, who is known to the humans as "Mononoke Hime" - Spirit Princess. Later that night, San makes an attempt on Lady Eboshi's life. Ashitaka knocks both women unconscious and carries San from the city, sustaining a gunshot wound in the process.

San wakes up and protects Ashitaka from apes that want to eat him, as well as from her "siblings", Moro-No and Moro-Ko. She takes Ashitaka into the forest and plants a small tree by his head. When he awakes, he finds that he is perfectly alive and San explains that Shishigami took the tree's life in exchange for his. Ashitaka realizes that, even though the Great Forest Spirit has saved his life, it has not removed the curse from him, and San has to feed him like a penguin. (She chews up food and spits it into his mouth.)

Later, the monk Jico reappears, bringing with him some hunters and contracting the Lady Eboshi's help to kill Shishigami - apparently the Emporer has heard rumors about it granting eternal life and wants the deity's head. She agrees. Meanwhile, the boars have allied with the wolves for one great battle against the humans.

During the battle between the humans and the Animal Gods, all of the boars are killed except for their ancient leader. Jico's hunters don the skins of the boars and surround him, and he, being blind, believes that his warriors have returned to him from beyond the Grave. San tries to tell him that he is wrong, but to no avail. The hunters move in closer and the end result is that the boar god is overcome by rage and the black worm things that come with the curse start to envelope San. Moro, angered, demands that her daughter be returned to her, and becomes locked in combat with the boar (sorry folks, I've forgotten his name.). Meanwhile, Ashitaka carries San into the water and Shishigami-sama shows up and ends the lives of both Moro and her opponent. It is then, when he begins his nightly transformation into the Nightwalker, that Lady Eboshi shoots off his head.

After that, all chaos breaks loose as Jico takes the head and tries to escape Shishigami, whose body has turned into a bunch of gooey gelatinous...stuff...and is "looking" for its lost head. To make the rest of the story short, Iron Town is destroyed, its residents forced into the nearby lake, and Ashitaka and San offer up Shishigami's head to it just as the sun is rising. Shishigami appears to die, and things start growing again. Lady Eboshi says something to the effect of, "If not for that crazy wolf-girl, we all would have died." and says that she plans on rebuilding Iron Town, but making it "better", as she has learned her lesson and is willing to live in harmony with nature. Ashitaka tells San that he is going to stay and help to rebuild Iron Town, while she says that she is going to watch over the forest. Ashitaka promises to visit often.

All in all, this was a great movie, and I loved it. I even enjoyed the English voices, which is rare for me, but the dubbing was very well done and the voices were well suited to the characters. For anyone else who has seen and enjoyed this movie, I recommend the book "Through Wolf's Eyes" by Jane Lindskold. It has nothing to do with Anime, but it is a great book that I think you will enjoy if you liked "Princess Mononoke". For a better synopsis, go here and here.

This page was created on Saturday, March 2, 2002. There is only going to be ONE page on this movie. I do NOT feel like making a page for each character. Maybe later I will make seperate character pages, but I don't exactly forsee it.

StoneD