The film Princess Mononoke is, hands down my favorite anime film we’ve watched so far and might be my favorite anime of all time. The imagery and artwork the director used is unbelievable and I can honestly almost call it mesmerizing. I don’t understand why people compare it to Pochohantis because they are completely different. Pochohantis was extremely American in the sense that it was made my Disney, she was beautiful and everything was pretty perfect in that movie. The first time I saw Princess Mononoke, I didn’t know what was going to happen or how the ending of the film was going to pan out. Even though the film was made in 1999, I felt that the movie was way ahead of it’s time and deserved a lot more credit than the directs major hit film, Spirited Away. Don’t get me wrong, Spirited Away was also amazing and in my mind, the mastermind of all of these films, Hayao Miyazaki, can do no wrong in terms of movies. At the same time, I enjoyed Princess Mononoke so much more than I did Spirited Away and I know a lot of people who feel the same way that I do. I think a lot of the appeal of Spirited Away was that it was very commercially successful and had a lot of things that Americans could relate to. Princess Mononoke was a little bit more out there than Spirited Away and that might just be my personal taste but overall Princess Mononoke was just a better movie in general. My favorite part was when they killed the boar god and the wise woman of the village comes up and honors him and then he decays away. I liked this part especially because it recognized and stayed true to the Japanese religion of Shintoism and the quote was spoken so beautifully from the wise woman. Also that part was very climactic while still being extremely calm at the same time, which I found really astounding because to create that emotion while still keeping true to the storyline was simply remarkable. It was a great film that I can truly call one of my favorites.
Hey Neil,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great post. Im glad
you enjoyed the movie just as much as I did.
I especially liked that you made that comment about pocahontas and princess mononoke having a not so great connection with each other and I was equally confused with the comparison between them because they really do not have that much in common. In princess mononoke, she is raised by wolves and believes that she herself is a wolf. She does not believe that humans and nature can coexist. The biggest difference comes in here, because pocahontas is evidence that humans and nature can conexist because that is what she is doing already and wants to convince john smith of.