Princess Mononoke
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Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫 - Mononoke Hime) is a Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki and first released in Japan on 12 July, 1997).
It is set in Muromachi period Japan, and centres on the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans who need its resources, as seen by the outsider Ashitaka. "Mononoke" is not a name, but a description that might be rendered in this context as "avenging spirit", making the title of the film Princess of the Avenging Spirits.
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Plot
Ashitaka, an Emishi prince [1] (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/faq.html#emishi), saves his village from a cursed boar-god, Nago, but is cursed in the process himself. As the curse spreads, he has a short amount of time to find a cure for the curse before it kills him. He discovers the curse originated from a iron bullet shot from a hand cannon made in Irontown. There, Lady Eboshi is fighting a war against the spirits of the forest so she can extract its resources for her people. Tribes of intelligent boars, apes, and wolves, along with San (the mononoke princess of the title), who was raised by the wolves, defend the forest. Ashitaka tries to mediate and falls in love with San in the process.
The film was massively successful in Japan and with both anime fans and "arthouse" moviegoers in English-speaking countries. In those countries, it was widely interpreted as a film about the environment, told in the form of Japanese mythology. The Walt Disney Company's Miramax subsidiary chose to put a lot of money into creating the English dub of the movie with famous actors and actresses, yet when they released it in theatres there was little or no advertising and it was given a very limited run, showing in only a few theatres and only for a very short time. Disney later complained about the fact that the movie didn't do so well at the box office. The DVD sales have, however, done far better in the US and elsewhere, there being no limited availability.
The United States and United Kingdom DVD releases have both the English and Japanese soundtracks, and the US release additionally includes two different sets of English subtitles (the dialogue used in the dub and a "literal translation").
The English title Princess Mononoke is somewhat misleading, being a translation of only half the Japanese title. It leaves the impression that mononoke is a proper name, yet the original title Mononoke Hime actually means something like "Princess of the Ghosts" or "Princess of the Avenging Spirits" (the concept embodied by the word "mononoke" is a complex one with no exact equivalent in English: hence the decision to leave it untranslated).
Credits
- Direction, Original Story & Screenplay: Hayao Miyazaki
- Music: Joe Hisaishi
- Production: Studio Ghibli
- Executive Producers: Seiichiro Ujiie & Yutaka Narita
- Producer: Toshio Suzuki
- English language script for the US version: Neil Gaiman
Voice actors
- Yōji Matsuda - Ashitaka
- Yuriko Ishida - San
- Akihiro Miwa - Moro
- Yūko Tanaka - Lady Eboshi
- Kaoru Kobayashi - Jiko Bou
Miramax English dub voice actors
- Billy Crudup - Ashitaka
- Claire Danes - San
- Gillian Anderson - Moro
- Minnie Driver - Lady Eboshi
- Billy Bob Thornton - Jigo
- Jada Pinkett Smith - Toki
- Keith David - Okkoto
- John DiMaggio - Gonza
- John DeMita - Kohroku
- Tara Strong - Kaya
External links
- Princess Mononoke (http://www.princess-mononoke.com) official Miramax site (archived)
- Template:Imdb title
- Princess Mononoke (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/princess_mononoke/) at RottenTomatoes
- Mononoke Hime page at Nausicaa.net (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/)de:Prinzessin Mononoke
es:La princesa Mononoke fr:Princesse Mononoké ja:ã‚‚ã®ã®ã‘姫 zh:魔法公主