Anime / Princess Mononoke

The Fate of the World Rests on the Courage of One Warrior.^note That "one warrior" is not the titular princess on the cover.

"In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, wherefrom ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods. Back then, man and beast lived in harmony. But as time went by, most of the great forests were destroyed. Those that remained were guarded by gigantic beasts, who owed their allegiances to the Great Forest Spirit. For those were the days of gods—and of demons."

— Lord Okkoto, the film's first opening scene

Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫 Mononoke Hime) is a 1997 animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, originally intended to be his last film until 2001's Spirited Away. It's notably one of his darkest films, with a somber ambiance and serious themes, but still features the trademark stunning visuals of a Studio Ghibli production. Appropriately enough, it was also the first Ghibli film to earn a PG-13 rating in the United States. Joe Hisaishi composed the score while author Neil Gaiman adapted the film's English dub.

The story is set during the 15th or 16th century (late Muromachi period) and begins in a small village of the Emishi, the indigenous inhabitants of Japan who by this time have mostly been conquered or driven into hiding in remote corners of the east. The village's peace is shattered by the attack of a terrible demon; their last remaining prince, Ashitaka (voiced by Yōji Matsuda), is injured during the fight against it, and even worse, the mortally wounded demon is revealed to be a powerful spirit—a giant boar that curses the Emishi with its last breath and reveals that the wound Ashitaka suffered will kill him too. The village elders decide, with much reluctance, that Ashitaka must leave the village before the curse takes full possession of him, and travel west in search of his destiny. Ashitaka leaves immediately, with only his trusted red elk Yakul. The young prince follows the demon boar's trail of destruction with the only clue he has about what transformed it into a demon: an iron ball found embedded in its body.

Ashitaka travels through the war-torn countryside, discovering that his curse has also imparted superhuman strength along the way. He eventually comes upon Tataraba (Iron Town), a mining settlement on the edge of the wilderness that's in the midst of a three-way war between the strong-willed Lady Eboshi (Yūko Tanaka) (who protects the town through the use of firearms), the spirits of the forest (who want to stop Iron Town's expansion to protect their homes from destruction), and an influential samurai warlord (who wants to seize the town for the wealth it generates). Ashitaka must endeavour to create peace between the various sides, understand the reason behind his curse, and connect with San (Yuriko Ishida), a human girl who was Raised by Wolves and fights alongside the spirits as events seem to be heading towards an inevitable disaster.

The film also stars Kaoru Kobayashi as Jigo, Masahiko Nishimura as Kohroku, Tsunehiko Kamijō as Gonza, Akihiro Miwa as Moro, Mitsuko Mori as Hii-sama and Hisaya Morishige as Okkoto-nushi.

It was the final Ghibli film to feature key animator Yoshifumi Kondo, who died one year after the film's release.

Has nothing to do with the anime Mononoke.

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Princess Mononoke contains examples of the following tropes:

Tropes A-G

• Above Good and Evil: The Great Forest Spirit is a nature deity of life and death, and accordingly does not ascribe to any sort of mortal thought process. It creates life and death in equal measure, illustrated through its footsteps causing plants to spontaneously flourish and rot wherever it goes. Put simply, like nature itself, it is not benevolent or malevolent; it simply is. Also highlights the main theme of the film, that we are all a part of nature and our means to survive are a part of the process of life.
• Acrofatic: Jigo the wandering priest is a fat old man but he can move rather quickly and skillfully as demonstrated when he jumps from rock to rock while his companions have to struggle to keep up with him. Made even more impressive by his impractical footwear... which was actually worn by Real Life priests of this type, to avoid ritual impurity.
• Alternate Techline: The muskets Tataraba develop are very prominent in the film's conflict. However, it takes place long before Chinese firearms were ever used in Japan. Furthermore, the damage the muskets inflict is greatly exaggerated; in real life they were not nearly as powerful.
• Animal Motifs: San has wolves, for fairly obvious reasons.
• Annoying Arrows: Justified and averted. The Gods shake them off (justified), Ashitaka's demonic strength makes his arrows far deadlier than they would usually be: he can easily decapitate people, and how about hitting the hilt of a mook's sword causing the poor guy's arms to fly off? Ashitaka is also seen catching an arrow as it shoots by him (with his demon arm), spinning it around and notching it, then firing it back in the space of about three seconds. Normal arrows aimed at non-gods or non-demon-possessed characters are treated as as lot bigger deal than usual; one of them cripples Yakul near the climax.
• Anti-Human Alliance: San and her wolf brothers aid the boars in their last assault on the humans.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Eboshi is shown to be A Lighter Shade of Grey, but her samurai opponent, Lord Asano, is only described as "a greedy bastard." To be fair, Asano is described as such by Jigo, while he is sucking up to Lady Eboshi—that and Jigo chuckles about it immediately after, since it's a major example of pot meeting kettle.
• An Arm and a Leg: Numerous limbs are lost in battles, from sword blows to cannon fire and even a bow and arrow; as well as Lady Eboshi getting her arm bitten off.
• Anti-Human Alliance: The ape gods, boar gods, and wolf gods don't care at all for humans. The apes want a guerilla war. The boars argue for a more all-out war because they are a proud race and believe it is Better to Die than Be Killed. The wolves end up siding with the boars more out of sympathy than anger as Okkoto is dying and Nago has already been killed by the humans.
• Armies Are Evil: The armies of samurai that roam the land are portrayed as marauding, savage murderers. It's pretty accurate to how they really were at this point in history.
• Arrow Catch: Ashitaka can not only catch an arrow but use it to fire back at the attacker. He also cuts arrows in half mid-air.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Ashitaka instinctively turns and shoots his second arrow into Nago's eye, which turns out to be his weak spot.
• Audible Sharpness: Many blades make a distinct sound effect, even when swung through the air. At one point, San swings a blade towards Ashitaka's throat, and creates a particularly sharp "metal on metal" sound despite only air being in its path.
• Author Appeal: Nature, strong female characters, pacifism, precipitous heights, pigs (well, boars), it's all here. About the only thing missing is a flying scene.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Near the end of the movie, Lady Eboshi decapitates the Shishigami, the neutral force in the war between the forest and humans, which causes the destruction of the entire forest and nearby town.
• Badass Boast: Lady Eboshi. "Now watch closely, everyone. I'm going to show you how to kill a god. A god of life and death. The trick is not to fear him."
• Bad Black Barf: In both instances where a boar is turned into a demon, they start to bleed and drool dark purple/black slime. In addition, when it's decapitated, the Forest Spirit starts releasing massive gobs of toxic black gloop that instantly kill everything they touch.
• The Bait: Eboshi and the hunters station themselves on a clearly visible rise while her men clearcut the nearby forest, provoking Okkoto's tribe into an all-out attack on their position. The mines at the rise's base and the grenades at its top decimate the boars.
• Bandage Mummy: Most of the lepers are wrapped up head to foot, which is probably what would have happened to them in Real Life.
• Beast with a Human Face: Downplayed; The shishigami is described as having such, and while his face is certainly flat and human-like, the nose, eyes, and markings tone it down. Played far more straight, however, in his concept art.
• Beautiful Dreamer: Ashitaka takes some moments to watch San sleep after he wakes up in the cave.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, both Ashitaka and San find themselves covered in boils and blotches while slowly falling victim to the Great Spirit's death curse while attempting to return its head. When their actions prove successful they are cleared of their afflictions.
• BFS: Gonza's nodachi. During his Unflinching Walk, Ashitaka bends it into a circle with his demon-infected arm when Gonza tries to stop him.
• Big Brother Instinct: During the demon attack at the beginning of the film, Ashitaka the pacifist is initially very reluctant to attack and spends quite a while trying to pacify Nago. When he sees the demon boar charging towards Kaya, however, he doesn't hesitate to shoot it square in the eye.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Ashitaka and San fall in love, but they do not live together because neither could live each other's life. Ashitaka compromises by living close to the forest in the rebuilt Iron Town while San remains in the forest and they'll meet each other on a regular basis.
  • Despite Irontown being destroyed, the inhabitants decide to start anew, this time being closer to nature rather than opposing it.
  • One incarnation of the Forest Spirit dies, but Ashitaka reassures San that, being life itself, it has survived in a way. And the last scene, at the sacred pool, shows a surviving Kodama walk out.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The conflict between humanity and the forest spirits is very morally grey. The people of Iron Town are cutting down the nearby forest full of sapient animal spirits and other beings so they can harvest the iron beneath it and expand their town. However, the town is full of exiles who are simply trying to make a life for themselves. Lady Eboshi in particular is very proud and haughty, but she cares deeply for her people and takes care of lepers who would otherwise have nowhere else to go. Everyone in the town would die for her. On the other side of the conflict, the forest spirits obviously had claim on the forest first, and it's destruction would mean the end of their "divinity", they would become simply animals if enough of the forest is destroyed. But they are extremely prideful to the point of idiocy in the case of the boars (who repeatedly fall victim to the humans' traps) and extreme fatalism in the case of the wolves (Moro expresses no real concern that San is going to get killed in a hopeless war against humanity. In Moro's mind, San is of the wolves, and she will share the same fate as the wolves for better or worse. And then you have Asano, a local daiyamo who is trying to take over Iron Town and Jigo's faction who are violent mercenaries who are just out for money regardless of what happens to the forest OR Iron Town.
• Blade Lock: Ashitaka breaks up the fight between San and Lady Eboshi by blocking the latter's sword with his own.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The most violent Miyazaki film to date, only rivaled by Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. ^note It is not his most violent work, though. That honor goes to the manga version of Nausicaä. Princess Mononoke also has the distinction of being the first Ghibli film to receive a PG-13 rating in the U.S., followed by Tales from Earthsea and The Wind Rises.
• Blood from the Mouth: Nago and Okkoto when they die.
• Blow Gun: Jigo's men use blow gun pipes which they keep disguised as parasols when not in use.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Gonza and sometimes two other women to Lady Eboshi.
• Bodyguard Crush: Heavily implied in the movie and revealed in an additional pamphlet that Gonza has this for Eboshi.
• Body Horror: Rather mild examples, as body horror goes, but the fates of both Nago and Okkoto are not for the faint of heart particularly when San is trapped inside Okkoto's demon-flesh.
  • Ashitaka's right arm, which is slowly going rotten from the curse and often moves against his will, contorting itself into weird and extremely painful-looking positions.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Ashitaka uses both a long bow and a short sword. The pommel of his sword is fashioned with a ring that allows him to keep the sword in his hand while shooting.
• Bows and Errors: Ashitaka's curse gifts him with superhuman strength, and in battle this is frequently shown through his arrows hitting their targets with extreme force, one time going so far as rip the arms off his target. This ignores the fact that in archery the strength of the archer is only a factor in his or her ability to draw their bow and the power behind the arrow is imparted by the bow, not the archer. Regardless of how strong Ashitaka is, his arrow shouldn't hit with any more force than any other arrow shot from a comparable bow. (It would be theoretically possible for a bow to take advantage of Super-Strength, but it would need to be specially made for the purpose, with an abnormally large draw weight.)
• Brain Food: In one of the weirder scenes in the film, the apes ask San to give Ashitaka's (unconscious) body to them so that they can eat his brain. They believe that, in eating a human's brain, they will become as strong and as smart as the humans are. San rightly calls them out for this.
• Broken Angel: The Forest God appears as spritely and otherworldy stag with a vaguely humanoid face that spreads life and death in its wake, basically a combination of a unicorn-like creature, a youkai and a primordial god. That is, until its head is shot off, at which point the body becomes a Eldritch Abomination, killing everything in its path until it is reunited with its head.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
  • While killing the boar-demon, Ashitaka receives a curse on his right arm, which grants him superhuman strength but will eventually kill him.
  • Also, Lady Eboshi succeeds in cutting off the Forest Spirit's head, and shortly after loses her arm. And then it gets worse.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Ashitaka spots a footprint that attracts butterflies. It belongs to the Great Forest Spirit, who has power over life and death.
• Cannibalism Superpower: The apes believe that if they eat Ashitaka's corpse they will steal his strength.
• Canis Major: The wolf deities are huge. While her brothers are big enough for San to ride on their backs, Moro is about twice that size.
  Eboshi: They're just pups. Wait 'til you see their mother.
• Captured Super-Entity: Jigo and his mercenaries want the head of the deer god, as they are contracted by the Emperor who believes he can gain immortality with it. The head doesn't stay captured for long as the deer god, now a Walking Wasteland, destroys everything and everyone around it in order to get it back.
• Catch and Return: With an arrow!
• Central Theme: Nature vs Humanity, the tragedy of war, the power of impact, the blurred line of good and evil.
• Chekhov's aesop:
  Jigo: [early on, to Ashitaka] So you say you're under a curse? Well so what? So's the whole damn world.
  
  Jigo: [at the climax] Look, everyone wants everything, that's the way the world works, but I might actually get it!
• Child Soldier: San is 15 and participates in guerrila warfare against Iron Town.
• Comforting Comforter: When Ashitaka goes back to the cave to sleep off his injuries San wakes up, setting up the perfect opportunity for him to tuck her in with his blanket. Ashitaka wakes up the next morning with the blanket on him. D'aww.
• Cool Horse: Yakul, despite being an elk.
• Cool Mask: San wears one during her attacks.
• Cooldown Hug: Ashitaka gives one to San after she accuses him of being on the humans' side and stabs him in the chest.
• The Corruption: The plot begins when Ashitaka is attacked and infected by a corrupted boar-god. While Walking the Earth, he discovers that his infected arm has supernatural strength and a will of its own.
• Cranium Chase: The film plays this for horror with the Forest Spirit, whose body turns into an enormous Eldritch Abomination draining life from nearly everything in sight, seeking reunion with its severed head, which can still move.
• Crapsack World: More like realistic world. The Muromachi period, when the film is set, was one of the most violent times in Japan's history. The Emperor had little power, and many villages were overrun by local warlords such as Asano, as seen early in the movie. It was also a time when the Shinto religion, which reveres nature, was losing influence, hence the theme of the gods dying out.
• Cross-Popping Veins: Gonza is prone to this when angry.
• Cue the Sun: The culmination of the movie is a race to return the head of the Forest Spirit before the sun rises, and the forest dies forever. Naturally, the heroes retrieve the head and hold it aloft to the 'Nightwalker' just as the first rays shine across the hills...
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The animals get slaughtered whenever they try and attack the humans head-on. Asano's forces also seem to be on the receiving end of this, due to Iron Town possessing gunpowder and the enemy only having conventional weapons. Despite this, they do manage to break into the city near the end.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Despite their grievous losses, the boars are shown to have broken through the human lines and killed a fair number of people.
• Cutting the Knot: Referenced by Lady Eboshi when Ashitaka shouts to her, San and the townsfolk that the curse in his arm will slowly kill him by hate. She says that she could just cut off his arm and it would solve the problem. No, it wouldn't.
• Cycle of Revenge: Hate very much begets hate. Ashitaka is the only one to see how pointlessly self-perpetuating the violence of both sides is and actively works to stop it.
• Darker and Edgier: Princess Mononoke is the darkest of Hayao Miyazaki's films and one of the darkest Studio Ghibli films in general. It is also the first Ghibli film to receive a PG-13 rating in the United States. It depicts explicit scenes of decapitation and dismemberment, which no other Studio Ghibli film does.
• Dark Is Evil: While the movie thrives on Grey-and-Gray Morality, darkness is still representative of the gods' worst side. Gods who fall to fear or hatred become demonic creatures covered in purple or black worms (who can infect humans and manifest as dark energy on them), the apes are black with red eyes, and the Shishigami becomes a creature made of darkness once his head is ripped off. There are no positive spiritual aspects of darkness seen on screen.
• Deer in the Headlights: When the demon in the beginning of the story appears, Yakul does this as the demon that curses Ashitaka rushes at him. Despite Ashitake shouting at him to run, he just stands there, staring and trembling slightly—finally running away when Ashitaka shoots an arrow in his direction.
• Delusions of Doghood: San, who adamantly believes she's a wolf and even wears a wolf pelt to look the part. Justified, since she was literally Raised by Wolves after her birth parents were caught intruding in Moro's forest and abandoned San when she was an infant to save themselves.
• Determinator: One of the reasons the land suffers so much is that Okkoto, Moro and Lady Eboshi are all implacably determined. Then a new Determinator shows up...
  • Not even getting shot through the lung slows Ashitaka down.
  • Moro spends most of the film with a bullet lodged in her chest and absolutely refuses to give up despite being paralyzed at one point. She may be a god, but she's getting on in years. She still bites after her head was cut off. It doesn't get much more determined than that.
• Did Not Get the Girl: San cannot bring herself to leave the forest and live with Ashitaka because she hates the human race. But they seem happy enough to just go see each other now and then.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Less blatant than many examples, as Gods and spirits are shown to be more vulnerable than in most stories, but still obvious at points.
  Eboshi: He's a god, you fools—it'll take more than one shot.
• Disappeared Dad: Neither of Ashitaka's parents are ever even mentioned in passing, which seems odd as his father would be the leader of the Emishi. For that matter, the father of Moro's wolf cubs is never mentioned either. The original language seems to hint that just as the women want to avenge their husbands, San has come to avenge her own tribe—sounds like there were more wolves before.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Okkoto's boars are painfully aware that their time is coming to an end, as each new generation becomes more animal than god. They choose to go to war against the humans, even knowing they will likely die, so that their end will at least have some meaning.
• Dramatic Slip: Early on, one of the girls slips when being chased down the hill by Nago. Cue a Big Damn Heroes moment for Ashitaka.
• Dramatic Wind: Played with—rather than merely being the usual dramatic convention for Miyazaki's characters, this effect seems to signal the presence of magic in action—usually the actions of the Forest Spirit or of Ashitaka's curse.
• Dying Curse: Nago—physically to Ashitaka, and verbally to the other Emishi.
  Nago: Disgusting little creatures... Soon all of you will feel my hate, and suffer as I have suffered.
• Dying Race: The Emishi are nearly extinct due to a genocide 500 years before the movie. It's implied that Ashitaka's curse and exile doom them.
  • In a sense, the Forest Spirits are at the end of an era. As humanity incroaches upon the forest, the sapient animals of the forest realize that their intelligence is starting to leave them. Soon, they will be little more than "mindless" animals like any other.
• Eldritch Abomination: Any of the tatari-gami; they don't drive people mad, but they can lay a death curse on anything they touch. The Forest Spirit becomes one after it gets decapitated.
• Elite Mooks: Eboshi's snipers wield what are essentially miniature cannons that can punch cleanly through samurai armor and play a part in mortally wounding Moro. There are also Jigo's warrior monks, who are experienced hunters and trackers that use the normal Iron Town troops as cannon fodder.
• Enchanted Forest: The forest is a wild, mystical place beyond the borders of civilization, and is home to wild beasts and strange spirits.
• End of an Age:
  • It is implied that with Ashitaka being sent into exile, the Emishi culture will vanish from history.
  • The Emishi oracle notes that Emperor and his shoguns have declined and grown weak, foreshadowing the war that will end the Muromachi period.
  • The old gods of the forest are in decline, with each new generation being smaller and dumber until eventually they will be mere beasts. By the film's end the old gods are all dead, including the Forest Spirit itself. This tips the conflict between civilization and nature firmly in humanity's favor and sets the stage for the rise of the modern world.
• Epic Movie: The film was the largest box-office draw in Japan when it came out, featuring an all-star cast of characters in a dark and serious mythological setting.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Lady Eboshi treats the women and lepers in her town with kindness and respect. Downplayed in that, while an antagonist to many, she isn't evil.
• Equivalent Exchange: When San takes Ashitaka to the Forest Spirit to heal his gunshot wound, she takes a sapling as an offering. The Forest Spirit breathes on the sapling, which withers and dies, and breathes on Ashitaka, who comes back from death overnight.
• Establishing Character Moment: Ashitaka is established as The Hero early on when saving the village from Nago. San is introduced as a Wild Child when she and Ashitaka meet by the river and he watches her Suck Out the Poison.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Anti-Villain Lady Eboshi apologizes to Ashitaka when she learns she was indirectly responsible for his curse. She does appreciate that he doesn't want to kill her in turn.
• Everyone Has Standards: When San is told by the apes they plan to eat Ashitaka in order to become as powerful as the humans, she tries to tell them that would just make them into something far worse than humans.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Averted; practically every samurai in the film is a murderous asshole, which according to some historians is a much more accurate depiction than what we normally get in pop culture.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: San and her wolf companion find hundreds of mice scurrying away from the direction where humans are using boar skins to masquerade themselves to find the Forest Spirit. Apparently they're so terrifying that they willingly scurry over a full-grown woman and a giant wolf to get away.
• Evil Hand: Ashitaka's cursed hand wriths obscenely whenever it gets angry. Although it gives him super-strength, its hate may take over him and cause a rage-filled massacre of the humans, if he's not careful.
• Eye Scream: Ashitaka shoots a demon in the eye early in the film, which happens to be its only weak spot.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: An unusual inversion for a Miyazaki film. Here, Ashitaka alters his hairstyle at the start of the movie, due to being exiled from his village after becoming infected with a curse. In Japanese culture, the cutting of hair DOES actually symbolise someone being banished from their home. Today, it also means to forget the past, leaving the past behind and starting anew.
• Face Death with Dignity: Deconstructed with Okkoto, whose desire for a glorious death in battle only leads to his entire tribe being massacred in a Curb-Stomp Battle and he himself being corrupted by his hate and pain into a mindless demon. Played straight with Moro, who calmly accepts her doom and states that she has lived long enough.
• Facial Markings: One of the most famous elements of the movie, San has three red markings on her cheeks and forehead that appear to be tattoos.
• Fantastic Aesop: Don't shoot elder nature gods if you don't want them to turn into Eldritch Abominations.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Famously averted in this case. Lady Eboshi manufactures matchlock muskets in Irontown, which are a complete game-changer in this Historical Fantasy version of Japan: iron musket balls from her weapons mortally wound both the Boar God and Moro the Wolf God, and are light enough to be used effectively against attacking samurai by her militia. This is Truth in Television: after acquiring and copying muskets from Portuguese traders in the 16th century, Japan rapidly started producing guns, with 300,000 arquebuses being produced within a few decades.
• Fertile Feet: The deer god, or Shishigami. Notably, he doesn't only give life but both life and death — and the plants that spring up from his footsteps immediately die and rot away as he walks. But when he is decapitated, his headless and still-moving body turns into a Walking Wasteland.
• Feuding Families: It has an element of this as part of the main plot. Who started the vicious cycle of disrespect? Eboshi by not asking if they could clear a way to the mountainside, or Nago for refusing to listen to a human? After all, the boars are a "proud race", according to Moro.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: The hand cannons and arquebuses created and used by Lady Eboshi and her men are central to the story, and drastically tip the balance of power between humans and the supernatural to the point that the humans dominate the nature gods and massacre those that attack them directly.
• Fisher King: After the death of the Shishigami and Lady Eboshi turning over a new leaf, Irontown's exterior becomes covered with greenness, reflecting an optimistic future where humans and nature can live together.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: How Ashitaka makes his way through the crowd surrounding San and Eboshi's duel.
• Foreshadowing: "Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite," Lady Eboshi tells her men in one early scene. Much later, she finds herself on the receiving end of this, courtesy of Moro.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Right after the strong hail caused by Forest Spirit's dead body falling on the Iron Town subdues, there is a shot of the townsfolk standing in the lake. One of the leper women gunsmiths previously shown talking with Toki checks her own body in disbelief, now healed of leprosy.
• From Bad to Worse: Pretty much the entire plot. The ending is a minor deviation from the general trend. Things still suck, they just suck a bit less.
• Full-Boar Action: This isn't any old boar, it's the boar kami (god).
• Gaia's Vengeance: The situation that Iron Town has found itself in, the gods of Cedar Forest are fighting against its destruction.
• Gambit Pileup: The human world is filled with these.
• Ghibli Hills: Well, it's by that studio... and the whole film seems to be set there.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The wolves have these at night, due to eyeshine. However, the apes seem to keep their bright red eyes at all times.
• Graceful Loser: Jigo, though he seems to have learned nothing in the end.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Emperor, who sent Jigo on his mission to retrieve the head of the Forest Spirit so he could use it to become immortal, thus causing a large part of the story's conflict. Despite this, he is never seen on-screen or even given a name.
• Greed: This is Jigo's main motivation. It also plays a role with Eboshi as well, though ambition is clearly the stronger influence in her case.
• Green Aesop: It might seem like that at first glance, but Miyazaki uses the "humanity vs. nature" theme to thinly veil the other major message: a blatant pacifist one that, in particular, shuns the "us vs. them" mentality so commonly seen in society, as clearly evidenced numerous times throughout the story. Additionally, it shows that while technology has a tendency to pollute and corrupt the natural world, nature isn't all flowers and butterflies either.
• Golden Translator: Neil Gaiman was hired to punch up the script of the English dub.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Okkoto freaks out when he becomes the only survivor after the battle between boars and humans. And the Assassins disguised as boars to kill him don't help.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Inverted with the enigmatic Lady Eboshi. She's "saving" her people from the gods, though, not vice versa...
• Gunpowder Fantasy: The setting is based on the early modern period of Japan, where firearms and industry were becoming major factors in Japanese culture and beginning to displace older cultural and technological norms, and Lady Eboshi runs an extensive foundry operation in Irontown that most notably manufactures matchlock muskets. These are a complete game-changer in the movie's Historical Fantasy version of Japan: iron musket balls from her weapons mortally wound both the Boar God and Moro the Wolf God, and are light enough to be used effectively against attacking samurai by her militia.

Tropes H-P

• Hanlon's Razor: Ignorance on both sides is a bigger cause of violence and suffering than outright maliciousness.
• Happily Married: Toki and Kohroku, although she does give him a bit of a hard time.
• Henpecked Husband: Kohroku puts up with all the verbal abuse Toki throws at him and almost never talks back.
• Heroic Second Wind: Ashitaka gets one in the film's climax. See The Power of Love.
• He's a Friend: Subverted. San explains to Yakul, Ashitaka's pet elk, that she is a friend.
• Historical Fantasy: The movie is set in Muromachi period Japan, which takes place around the years 1336-1573, combined with fantasy elements such as giant talking animals and creatures based from Japanese Mythology.
• Honor Before Reason: The boars are a Proud Warrior Race and would rather fight and die than to make deals with the humans about the usage of the forest. They all die in a final Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Former hookers, anyway. Toki and many (if not all) of the other women in the town used to work in brothels. They are very kind, if sarcastic, and all bravely take up arms and defend Iron Town from the invading samurai.
• Hope Sprouts Eternal: Though the forest has been ravaged and most of the old gods are dead, the film's final shot shows a single Kodama appearing on a tree. Since the Kodama are inextricably linked with the forest, living and dying as it does, its presence signifies that the old spirits are still alive to some extent and the forest will eventually rejuvenate.
• Horse of a Different Color: Ashitaka's faithful red elk, Yakul. In addition, San often rides one of her wolf brothers into battle.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • Played with. Most humans are normal people, and Eboshi has a lot of good as well as bad. Some others, however...
  • Moro tells Ashitaka that San's parents abandoned her when facing the wolf gods just so they could get away faster, which cemented her opinion of humans.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Averted. Where most other Green Aesop works make complete caricatures of both humanity and nature, Mononoke goes to great lengths in humanizing villains like Eboshi and Jigo and highlighting the shortcomings of the nature-themed characters, such as San's immaturity (her first spoken line is "Go away!") and the barbarism of (some of) the nature spirits. Eboshi herself states she fears humans more than monsters.
• Humans Are Ugly: The Wolf Goddess Moro describes humans as hideous for lacking fur, fangs, and tails. She says her adopted human daughter San looks just like the other humans, but she is her daughter, so she is beautiful to her.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Ashitaka is shot through the torso after Kiyo, who's nervously pointing a rifle at him, is caught off guard by another townsperson.
• Immortality: What the Emperor believes the head of the Forest Spirit will grant him. While this is never proven, it at least heals Ashitaka's and San's curse (and the injuries and diseases of other humans in the area). But only after making the curse a hundred times worse.
• Immortality Immorality: The Emperor wants to be immortal through the head of the Spirit of the Forest, which would result in the death of the spiritual world.
• Immortality Seeker: Jigo's attempt to take the head of Shishigami/The Forest Spirit for the Emperor, who believes that it will grant immortality.
• Important Haircut: As a symbol of Ashitaka's eternal banishment from his people, he takes a knife and slices off his topknot, leaving it behind. It's odd because the gesture is samurai in nature and Ashitaka's people quite clearly belong to the descendants of the Ainu, who lived in Japan before the arrival of the modern Japanese people. The symbolism must have been too good to pass up.
• Improbable Aiming Skills:
  • Eboshi's matchlock-men, all things considered. Especially since their "guns," as opposed to the actual muskets used by her guards-women, more accurately resemble small cannons on the end of pole-arms and are much harder to aim. The only reason San wasn't blasted ten times over was that she's supernaturally agile too, but every single shot was a close call, and even she couldn't avoid all of the shots.
  • Eboshi takes the cake. She got Nago, and Moro, and two Samuraï generals from a very long range, and the Forest Spirit, in the head, twice.
• Informed Species: Yakul is referred to as a Red Elk, when he really looks more like a wild sheep or antelope.
• Intellectual Animal: Wolf mother Moro and the elder boar Okkoto definitely count.
• Interspecies Friendship: The eponymous heroine was literally Raised by Wolves, who she is very close with. So much so, that when Ashitaka tried to tell her she was human, she vehemently denied it and said she was a wolf.
• Intimate Healing: San feeds a wounded Ashitaka, who is too weak to even chew, by chewing up the meat for him and then transferring it from her mouth to his—without using her hands.
• Irony: When Ashitaka intervenes in the fight between Lady Eboshi and San, Eboshi exclaims that she's tired of Ashitaka's cursed right arm, before shouting "let me just cut the damned thing off!" Later in the film, Eboshi loses her right arm to Moro.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: After Moro's head charges and bites off her arm, Eboshi tells Ashitaka to leave her and save himself. Ashitaka tells her that's not happening; he promised Toki that he would bring her back to Iron Town.
• Jerkass Gods: The animal gods do not exactly endear themselves to the human race. Since Nago and his underlings retaliate against Iron Town's earliest settlers encroaching on their territory with violence right from the off; at least, according to the townsfolk... Even Moro states that the Boar Tribe has and will always be guilty of putting Honor Before Reason.
  • The apes are hostile to San (being human) and the wolves (presumably for adopting her) and throw branches at them whenever they interact. They also blame anything bad that happens on San saying SHE brought in bad things (due to her being human) despite the fact that she’s been trying to help fight the humans.
• Jidaigeki: Set during the late Muromachi period though it's a very atypical example of the genre, focusing not on samurai and daimyo but the Emishi tribe of Japan in its final days.
• Karma Houdini: Like many other Miyazaki films, it shows how people who do horrible things often get away, while it is the innocent who suffer the consequences of their actions.
  • Jigo precipitates a plot that destroys an ecosystem and pretty much gets away scot-free.
  • Due to not appearing in person, Lord Asano and the Emperor presumably get away scot-free too, though it is entirely possible that Asano was consumed by the Forest Spirit.
• Kill All Humans: The general attitude of the apes and the boars. Narrowly averted with San, who definitely hates the human race, but only wants to personally kill Eboshi for her actions and doesn't attack people who aren't directly threatening her.
• Kill the Cutie: Happens to the kodama en masse as the Forest Spirit goes berserk during the final battle. Thousands of them are seen falling from the trees like dead leaves and dissolving on the ground.
• Lady of War: Lady Eboshi, quite literally. Though her favored weapon is a very unladylike gun.
• Large and in Charge:
  • The most powerful gods, such as Moro, Okkoto, and Nago, are all huge, whereas their subjects are smaller. This makes sense as they're the oldest, and it's implied that as time goes by and the gods lose power, they become smaller.
  • Eboshi is also a very tall woman, and leads the ladies of Irontown.
• Laugh of Love: A lot of the women of Iron Town giggle and blush when they're around Ashitaka.
• Last Breath Bullet: When Moro's head bites off Lady Eboshi's arm after she's killed the Forest God. It's more of a Last Breath Bite.
• Le Parkour: San pulls this during her assault on Iron Town, vaulting over walls and leaping from rooftop to rooftop while simultaneously avoiding hails of gunfire from below. The girl can move.
• Lip Lock: Not really, but the gods seem to have the ability to speak without moving their mouths. There are animal noises in the background of them speaking, which sync up with the mouths just fine. Presumably there's some sort of Translation Convention at work.
• Losing Your Head: Played for Drama; the body of the Forest Spirit goes on an omnicidal rampage to reclaim its head.
• Love at First Sight: Ashitaka for San. It's especially striking because her face was covered in blood at the time (above picture).
• Loyal Animal Companion: Yakul. (The wolves are more like relatives).
• The Magic Goes Away: Despite everything, the Forest Spirit is killed and the elder gods have died. Earlier on, Okkoto had bemoaned the fact that the spirits were getting smaller and stupider, and would eventually devolve into dumb beasts. It isn't completely gone though, as in the final shot, a single kodama appears.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: The ongoing war between the animals of the forest and the people of Irontown. The destruction of the forest caused by Irontown's need to manufacture iron angers the animals greatly, and it is noted that the magic of the animal gods dwindles with it. By the end of the film, the forest spirit has died and San says the forest will never return to the way it was. However, the last shot of the film shows one surviving kodama in the rejuventating forest.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • Ashitaka gets shot through the chest by Kiyo, but he doesn't collapse until he's pushed open an impossibly heavy gate, lifted San onto Yakul, gotten on himself, and ridden away. Possibly a result of his Iron Woobie or The Determinator nature, possibly the fact that the demonic curse won't let him die by mundane means.
  • Ashitaka seems more distraught by the fact that his girlfriend said she hated him than by being stabbed, although granted, that dagger's blade is tiny.
  • Eboshi gets her whole arm ripped off, and not even a scream (though she does pass out). Her only reaction is, "I told you it can still bite..."
• Maniac Monkeys: While they're not evil, the apes are nevertheless always depicted in a sinister light, expressing a desire to eat Ashitaka so that they may take his strength.
• Maybe Ever After: Ashitaka and San both admit their love for each other, but San will not live with the humans due to their actions and Ashitaka feels he cannot abandon the people of Iron Town after all they have suffered. Instead of giving up on a relationship, Ashitaka makes a compromise by living near the forest where he can visit San whenever he has the chance. The film ends there, leaving the ultimate resolution of their romance to be ambiguous.
• Memento MacGuffin: The crystal necklace. It's almost an Orphan's Plot Trinket since Ashitaka gets it from Kaya for good luck and so he won't forget her. He later gives it to the wolves, as a token for San.
• Mood Dissonance: The Love at First Sight moment between Ashitaka and San, mixing Meet Cute with Gorn.
• Mouth To Mouth Force Feeding: After Ashitaka is injured to the point of almost being unable to move, San tries to feed him some dried meat so that he can regain his strength but, even then, he's too weak. This leads an annoyed San to chew the food and feed it to him mouth-to-mouth in one of the more tender moments in a brutal story. Possibly justified in that San was literally Raised by Wolves and this might be the only way she can understand to do this kind of thing without any notion of the significance of mouth-to-mouth contact between humans.
• Mr. Fanservice: Arguably Ashitaka, the one young, attractive male in the cast who frequently performs feats of great badassery and/or takes his shirt off.
• Ms. Fanservice: On the other side, the female residents of the Ironworks do their work in skimpy kimonos because of the intense heat of the forges. Some of them have to remember to cover up when Ashitaka comes to visit their workplace. Others don't bother, since they find Ashitaka attractive.
• Multishot
• My God, What Have I Done?: After she witnesses the decapitated Forest Spirit laying destruction to the forest, with Jigo bailing out on her and knowing Iron Town will be destroyed, Eboshi looks forlorn as Ashitaka ties up her severed arm and tells him to leave her. She rallies her spirit at the end, telling the survivors they're not going to make the same mistakes again.
• Nature Is Not Nice: San starts out as brash and intractable, the boars are bloodthirsty, and the apes are psychotically superstitious. The human characters aren't much better.
• Nature Spirit: Lots of 'em, including the kodama (mentioned above) as well as several deities.
• Nature vs. Technology: Part of the conflict: Lady Eboshi and Iron Town's industrialization and pollution damages the surrounding nature, which retaliates through various nature deities attacking the village. However, the movie also shows that technology empowers humans, and that the best way to live is by advancing in harmony with nature.
• No "Arc" in "Archery":
  • Ashitaka's arrows are almost like medieval cruise missiles. Justified in that this is due to the super strength provided by his curse. Non-powered humans can't do this.
  • Also, it's implied to be averted for everyone else. A later battle shows characters holding umbrellas up to protect themselves from arrows. Numerous arrows, when observed from Ashitaka's POV, are visibly dropping while closing toward him. All arrows that hit something, especially at long range, end up angled.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: When Kiyo shoots Ashitaka in the torso, he continues walking away while everyone is wondering how he could sustain such an injury.
• No Woman's Land: Implied to be the case in the towns the women of Irontown came from. When Ashitaka comments on how hard they must work to run the furnace, they tell him that it's still far better than the brothels they used to work at, mentioning that they're given plenty of food and the men know their place. The men of Irontown don't seem overly thrilled by how much freedom the women have, but everyone respects Lady Eboshi who gives the women good treatment.
• Oblivious Adoption: San considers herself a wolf; even though she knows that she's human, she identifies with wolves.
• Off with His Head!: One of the most notorious depictions of violence in this movie are the multiple beheadings caused by Ashitaka's demon strength.
• Oh, Crap!: Lady Eboshi when the Great Forest Spirit turns into an Eldritch Abomination. Nevertheless, she is more worried about Iron Town than herself, telling Ashitaka to get away instead of trying to help her.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Ominous Japanese chanting appears in the soundtrack "The World of the Dead", which plays when the Forest Spirit's death goop is covering everything.
• Opening Monologue: The original Japanese version places a brief text narrative at the beginning of the film; the English-dubbed version replaces it with a verbal narrative explaining the setting to viewers.
• Parrying Bullets: Ashitaka parries arrows with his sword while swimming across the lake.
• Perky Female Minion: The women of Iron Town enjoy a high degree of freedom and social standing for the time, and are not afraid to speak their mind. Some of the men complain that Lady Eboshi spoils them.
• Pet the Dog: Eboshi gets a number of these moments, such as when it's shown that she gives shelter and work to lepers. The movie is unusual for Green Aesop stories in that the traditionally evil Humans Are Bastards representative gets several chances to Pet the Dog, while the environmentalist side represented by San is more often kicking it. See Hanlon's Razor; it's shown that both sides are capable of quite a bit of good, and the source of their conflict stems entirely from their refusal to coexist.
• Physical God: All the gods are physical. In fact, "god" in this film essentially means "sentient animal." The exception is the Forest Spirit, who lives up to both parts of his name quite well.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Koroku the ox driver wears a blue tunic, while his wife Toki the iron-worker wears a reddish-pink one.
• Pistol-Whipping: A sword variant. Ashitaka stuns Lady Eboshi by pushing the blunt end of his sword into her solar plexus.
• Poisoned Weapons: Poison darts are being used at one point by Jigo's warriors.
• Poor Communication Kills: One of the main themes of the story. Neither the Iron Town's nor the forest's inhabitants are evil, but as they continue to fight without any attempt at dialogue, the body count continues to rise to a climax.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Ashitaka is the POV protagonist and The Hero, while San is the wild Princess Mononoke who serves as the film's titular character and poster girl.
• The Power of Hate: The main message of the movie is the intrinsic suffering and damage hatred can do, solidified in the first 5 minutes when the Boar god-turned-demon Nago attacks Ashitaka's village and vows vengeance on humanity for his suffering. This is also the driving force of Ashitaka's curse, becoming even more deadly and vile when he gets angry.
• The Power of Love: During the climax, Ashitaka gets knocked out and is slowly drowning in the lake while San is trapped inside Okkoto's demon-flesh. At this point Moro calls to Ashitaka's love for San which then gives him a Heroic Second Wind. He comes back up to the surface and manages to pull San out of Okkoto's flesh.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Okkoto and, supposedly, Nago. The boars in general are a proud warrior race.

Tropes Q-Z

• Quest to the West: While defending his village, Ashitaka's arm becomes infected by an angry forest god. The Cool Old Lady who heads the village sadly expels Ashitaka, advising him to journey west to the great old forests, where he may find a cure.
• Raised by Wolves: San, literally. Her parents were "defiling the forest" Moro lived in, and threw the baby San at Moro when she went to attack them. Moro took pity on her and brought her up as a daughter.
• Rampage from a Nail: Nago, the boar Ashitaka kills at the beginning of the film to save his village, was being driven mad by a bullet inside of him, slowly poisoning him. Moro averts this; while she too is shot with a bullet, she decides that she has lived long enough and prefers to face her impending death calmly.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Lady Eboshi leads the Iron Town and is probably the toughest inhabitant of it. She fatally wounds two gods, snipes with ease a few samurai officers, and kills the Forest Spirit. When San charges to face her, she doesn't even break a sweat when fighting with the girl and apparently is fully prepared for such a duel.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A brief one that still manages to convey the utter contempt Moro holds toward Lord Okkoto for allowing himself to become a demon: "Look at you. You can't even speak."
• Reckless Gun Usage: Kiyo, one of Lady Eboshi's bodyguards holds her gun pointed at Ashitaka. Her nervousness causes her to accidentally shoot him in the stomach. In contrast, Lady Eboshi and her trained snipers use their firearms very effectively.
• Recursive Translation: In an amusing twist, the Woolseyist English dub (including a script translated by Neil Gaiman and featuring several rather big-name actors) was considered so well-made that it was re-released in Japan ...with Japanese subtitles!
• Redemption Equals Death: Downplayed, as several characters learn better without dying, although most are faced with near-death or life-changing injuries first.
• Related in the Adaptation: A curious example; in the original Japanese recording Kaya is Ashitaka's betrothed, while in the English dub she's his little sister. Neil Gaiman, who wrote the English script, has no idea when the change came in.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • San breaks into Iron Town to kill Lady Eboshi, telling her wolf brothers to wait outside. She's alone, outnumbered and outgunned since San only has a knife while the entire town has rifles. Although she and Lady Eboshi are evenly matched, San wouldn't have made it out alive if Ashitaka hadn't interfered and tried to reason with them.
  • Defied by Moro. She says she was saving her last bit of strength to take on Lady Eboshi. When the demon tendrils try to infect San, she turns her focus to saving her daughter when Eboshi is in the area. Moro uses her last bit of strength to revive a knocked-out Ashitaka and asking him to cleanse her daughter. Her severed head, however, is another story once San is safe, and Ashitaka agrees that Moro avenged the forest by biting off Eboshi's arm.
• Reverse Grip: How San holds her knife most of the time. In this case, it also makes it easier for her to block.
• Rewatch Bonus: The movie is absolutely CHOCK-FULL of these, you would need multiple rewatches to notice them all! Although, knowing its Troubled Production does put all of this detail into a harsher light...
  • When Ashitaka and Jigo are walking together, look at the background and you'll see carefully animated birds flying around the entire scene, an extreme level of detail that truly gives life to the world.
  • Jigo tells Ashitaka that his intervention in the samurai attack seen earlier helped him escape. Rewatch the scene where the people try to escape, and you can actually see him running away.
  • When Ashitaka is pushing the gate of Irontown, the scene pans to the cowherd he spoke to earlier, saying "Sir, stop! You'll die!". Look in the background behind him and you'll see the ishibiya group in the distance running down to stop Ashitaka, with a shot panning to them about 10 seconds later.
  • The short montage of the townspeople in the evening features MANY fully animated people living their lives. Some are calculating the values for the rice, others are herding oxen, and one part has a woman running away with something while two other townspeople gawk after her.
  • When the women are swooning over Ashitaka at the doorway, one woman at the back is jumping up to try and get a better look at him!
  • While the townspeople are preparing to fight San, one man to the side of the other men collecting spears is clearly very drunk.
  • Towards the end of the film, after the forest spirit has died and unleashed a World-Healing Wave, in the background we can see a female leper looking at herself in shock, revealing that the lepers were cured.
• Roof Hopping: San does this at one point to get to Lady Eboshi, with Ashitaka following her.
• Rousseau Was Right: Most of the major characters are generally good people, and from their point of view are totally justified in their actions to protect their way of life from outside forces.
• Sacred Hospitality: Lady Eboshi gives permission for Ashitaka to tour the town and shows him all that it does. Even when his cursed hand wants to kill her, she calmly waits for him to get it back in line. Although he leaves on bad terms with them — knocking out Lady Eboshi and carrying San out to safety — they help him when they return.
• Say My Name: "SAAAAAAAAAN!" "ASHITAKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
• Scenery Porn: Oh so very much of it! Ashitaka's journey west in particular is full of this. Shortly followed by Scenery Gorn as everything goes to hell.
• Schizo Tech: Iron Town's metalworks are making crude iron that is still shown to be hammered, all while using a blast furnace. Which itself is using bellows powered by feet and in the same time having rotory pump in the background, spinning by the power of... something, doing unspecified work. Eboshi's soldiers are carrying Chinese hand-cannons, while her gunsmiths are experimenting around arquebuses. All while Ashitaka is still using stone arrowheads.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The last of Lord Asano's four cavalrymen chasing Ashitaka wisely turns his horse around and books it after seeing his buddy decapitated by an arrow.
• Secondary Character Title: The titular character of San is only a supporting character in the film. Originally the title was planned to be 'The Legend of Ashitaka'.
• Shades of Conflict:
  • Grey-and-Grey Morality: Everyone has their own reasons for fighting, and Audience Surrogate Ashitaka finds it hard to blame anyone completely. Heck, San hates all humans—but she can't bring it in herself to kill anyone but Lady Eboshi, who has hurt her. Lady Eboshi meanwhile indeed sets out to kill gods and animals who get in her way, but it seems to be out of a genuine desire to help (human) people: the lepers say she's the only one who looked at them as human and she regularly buys women from brothels to give them a home and work. It is interesting to note that Eboshi initially favors the smooth method to assert the domination of humanity on nature—it is when Jigo threatens her that she turns to more drastic measures.
  • White-and-Grey Morality: Ashitaka is very much an All-Loving Hero, but both Lady Eboshi and San had valid reasons for their actions. The enemy samurais seemed to be bad, but then, you feel if they had been explained then they too would have fair motivations.
• Shirtless Scene: Ashitaka steadily loses more and more of his clothes throughout the run-time, until he is running around in just his pants and his... sleeves?^note His sleeves are separate from the rest of his shirt, with each being a separate garment held in place by strings tied behind his back and in front of his chest.
• Shown Their Work:
  • It isn't amiss to call this film an animated Shōgun. There are quite a few elements from Japanese history and culture that aren't obvious to non-Japanese audiences:
  • The movie is set in the Muromachi period of Japan, when the central government was weak, local warlords (the daimyos) were powerful and bands of samurai were not at all above sacking and massacring peasant villages in their paths.
  • The Emishi tribe was a real ethnic group until around the 9th century, when they were wiped out by the shogunates; the presence of a holdout village in the 14th century was Rule of Drama. This is lampshaded by one of the Emishi elders saying that it's been 500 years since their people were exiled, and that in that time they've become more Nihonjin than Emishi, presumably by intermarriage with other tribes over the centuries. They were also renowned as great riders and bowmen, much like Ashitaka is.
  • The presence of both Shinto kami (gods) and yōkai, including one (Daidarabotchi, the Night Walker,) well known example from Japanese folklore. Moro's two tails, much like a kitsune yōkai's multiple tails, are a sign of her age and power. The "demons" are actually tatari-gami—curse-gods; they can either be kami or yōkai completely overtaken by rage. Etc.
  • Not counting the rotory pump in the background (which serves no purpose other than spinning), the entire smelter is a very accurate model of tatara, a traditional Japanese furnace. Even the four-day shifts are an important detail, as it takes eight days to produce metal using tatara.
  • All the farm tools used by different characters have only their cutting edges made out of metal, everything else being made out of wood, including shovels and alike. This was a common practice worldwide until metallurgy advanced enough for high-grade iron and then steel to become cheap enough to make more than just edges of different tools.
  • Many samurai shown in the film fight not with the famous katana but instead with naginata. Prior to the Sengoku and Edo periods, spears like the naginata were the main weapons samurai weilded, with swords like katanas being backup weapons.
• Significant Double Casting: Yuriko Ishida not only voices San, the titular princess of the film, but also Kaya, who was Prince Ashitaka's betrothed before his exile in the Japanese version (she only calls Ashitaka brother because they lived in the same village). Surely enough, Ashitaka falls in love with San.
• Silence Is Golden: There are several times in the film where the dialogue and the score are absent, leaving only the animation and occasional sound effects.
• Sinister Swine: The Hero's Journey begins when a hideous creature attacks the Emishi farming village. Ashitaka is able to down the monster, which is revealed to be a giant boar forest god, filled with rage and hatred after getting shot with a steel musket ball. This hatred manifests as ugly worms that cover the boar, similar to armor, and one worm infects Ashitaka's arm. He becomes an outcast from the village for being cursed by a god.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Zig-zags back and forth on the scale.
• Smug Snake: Jigo. He's playing everyone, including Lady Eboshi, to his own ends, but his plans are neither grandiose nor successful as he likes to think.
• Solar Punk: A village in the throes of industrialization clashes with the forces of nature, but they ultimately learn to coexist? Sounds about right.
• Soft Water: Averted when the demon tendrils knock off Ashitaka into the nearby water. He's knocked out for a few minutes before Moro begs him to save her daughter. Then he's able to save San by using the water to wash off the tendrils.
• Space Whale Aesop: Respect nature, or it will attack you with elder nature gods!.
• Spiritual Successor: To the early Miyazaki illustrated story Shuna's Journey and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
• Stepping-Stone Sword: San uses her spear as one while vaulting over the wall of Iron Town.
• The Strength of Ten Men: It's stated that the gate to the ironworks in the west requires the strength of ten men to open. Ashitaka is able to open it by himself using only his cursed arm thanks to it giving him Super-Strength. What's more, he did this while heavily injured and on the verge of death.
• Suck Out the Poison: San tries this with Moro's bullet wound. It apparently didn't work, as Moro later says the bullet is still inside, slowly killing her.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A brief moment. Ashitaka takes a turn on the bellows that work Iron Town's forges (which are so large that they require whole crews of women pushing with their legs) and demonstrates that he's very strong even without using his demon arm by doing the work of a whole crew and then some. Toki admits that she's impressed, but tells him that he'll never keep up that pace for long. Ashitaka agrees, "It's hard work," and when he does so, he's already winded.
• Take Our Word for It: The movie goes to great lengths to build up a climactic battle between the representative factions for man and nature near the end of the movie. They even go as far as to throw the title character into the fray. What the audience sees is a brief storm and the sound of gunfire in the distance after the scene switches back to the hero. The aftermath is what stands out. A mound of rotting animal carcasses, lines of fallen men from Iron Town, the leader of the boars covered in blood... There may only be a few visions or flashbacks to give you an idea of what took place, but it was brutal. This was actually quite effective in staying true to the movie's theme of the horrors of war by simply giving you a few pieces and some enough grisly evidence to leave the rest to your imagination rather than actually depicting the kind of epic battle that few movies can resist.
  • It's also a very spirited attempt at proving the old adage "You can't make an anti-war movie" wrong. If you don't show the actual battle, you can't make it accidentally seem glorious, which is a fairly clever way of getting around the problem.
• Talking Animal: The animals of the forest talk to one another, and to Ashitaka and San. Yakul cannot speak but still seems to be able to communicate with San.
• Tap on the Head: Ashitaka ends the fight between San and Lady Eboshi by knocking them both out with a couple stiff shots to their respective abdomens. To be fair he is imbued with superhuman strength.
• Technicolor Eyes: At least in the restored, HD release. Despite the realistic design for human characters and the action taking place in Japan, both Ashitaka and San have blue-gray eyes (she also has greenish hair). Could be Hand Waved in case of the prince, since he's Emishi (still highly unlikely), but not even the flimsiest excuse exists for San.
• They Just Dont Get It: The people of Iron Town do not understand that the well-being of the Forest Spirit is as important to them as it is to the forest itself. The inhabitants of the forest keep thinking that by killing Eboshi and the rest of Iron Town, they will save the forest, not realizing that even if they succeed, other humans will come and do the same things that the current ones are doing now.
• This Means Warpaint: Just before the boars attack the mining town, there's a sequence of them using their snouts to warpaint each others' bodies with mud.
• The Time of Myths: When the great forest covered all the land... "For this was the time of gods... and of demons."
• Too Long; Didn't Dub:
  • "Mononoke". Unfortunately, it quickly got Lost in Translation and then went even further with following foreign translations, almost all of them based on the English one.
  • "Tatara" in the Tatara women's work song lyrics. It simply means iron smelter, but would be too long for the song to keep the melody.
• Tranquil Fury: Ashitaka when striding slowly in to break up the fight between San and Lady Eboshi.
  • When Eboshi tells him how she plans to defeat all the gods with her new guns, he is noticeably angry, but then his right arm moves to attack her by itself. He holds it back and calmly states that he would kill her with his left if he thought it would solve anything.
• Traumatic Haircut: Ashitaka is forced to cut his top knot as part of his exile from his tribe. This is made more painful since he is their last prince and must leave because he's been cursed to turn into a demon, presenting a threat to the whole village. He cuts the knot himself, and, while upset, is very stoic about the whole affair; the village elders, who have to watch, are mired in despair and several of them start sobbing as soon as the deed's done. It is never once even implied that he should commit suicide though, probably because no one expects him to survive for much longer anyway.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Iron Town as a whole nearly embodies this trope; The women in the town are all fairly cute, but the men typically fall just short of Gonk.
• Unbroken Vigil: After Ashitaka awakes the day after his gut shot, San mentions that he should thank Yakul who hasn't left his side the entire time while he was asleep.
• Unconscious Objector: The detached head of wolf goddess Moro wiggles across the ground and bites the arm off of her Arch-Enemy, Lady Eboshi.
• Understatement: "A little crisis and they panic!" Said crisis is the Deer God literally killing everyone in its path in order to retrieve its disembodied head.
• Unexplained Recovery: Averted. Eboshi tells Ashitaka earlier in the film that it is said that the blood of the Forest Spirit could potentially grant immortality, heal her lepers and cure Ashitaka's curse. It could be said that the Forest Spirit's blood has the power to heal all things, and it ties into the aforementioned 'power to give life/take life away'.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Eboshi indirectly sows the seeds for the events of the first half by corrupting Nago. Nago further unleashes the doom by cursing Ashitaka towards the end of their battle.
• Ventriloquist Animal: One of the most unique things about the talking animals is their mouths are not sinked to their words, simply opening and closing when they talk, giving them a mystic feel.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Lady Eboshi may be a monster to the animals and forest spirits, but the people of Iron Town are completely loyal to her.
• Walk, Don't Swim: Ashitaka recommends this to non-swimmer Gonza.
• Walk on Water: A habit of the Forest Spirit. After the first time he's shot, he briefly sinks into the water, then begins walking on it again as if nothing happened.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: Ashitaka gets two of these moments in the aftermath of his gut shot injury. San has moved him into safety underneath a tree by the forest lake, so the first thing he sees on waking up is the crown of the tree. He tries to get up but falls back because he is too weak. The next time he wakes up is in a bed of leaves in San's cave.
• War Is Hell: Miyazaki has nothing positive to say about war. Despite some admirable acts of bravery from certain characters, he also shows fields of corpses, soldiers being slaughtered en masse by guns and bombs, decapitations, dismemberment, and innocent civilians being massacred by marauding soldiers.
• Warrior Monk: The cynical Jigo completely inverts the traditional image of a Japanese Buddhist warrior monk. Instead of being a fighter for a righteous cause, or a contemplative mystic with Enlightenment Superpowers, he and his mercenary band lack any and all moral scruples which would otherwise prevent them from carrying out any act, no matter how repugnant, as long as they get paid for it, and he makes no attempt to hide this fact. Neither do we see him meditating, reciting mantras, nor performing any kind of Buddhist ceremony.^note This is likely due to The Law of Conservation of Detail; however, he doesn't seem to be like the person who would perform these rituals even in the most hypocritical manner The most Buddhist thing about him are probably his robes. It's implied he isn't a monk at all in fact, and is only using it as a disguise to gain trust, thereby justifying this attitude slightly.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The animals all want Iron Town gone, and united they could probably wipe it out fairly easily, but that whole "predator-prey relationship" issue creates friction.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Moro, and Eboshi as well. San, being Moro's adopted daughter, is also this. Sure she hates humans, but the only one she really wants to kill is Eboshi.
  • The boars came to the forest to fight for it, but Moro can hear how the woods are screaming under the disturbance their presence causes.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: In her last act, Moro's head (separated from her body due to the killing sludge released by the Shishigami) moves by itself and rips Eboshi's arm off.
• Why Can't I Hate You?: San on her opinion of Ashitaka. "I hate him! I hate all humans!" Then when she gets Ashitaka's necklace, "From Ashitaka? For me?... Pretty..."
• World-Healing Wave: After [[spoiler:reattaching the Forest Spirit's head, it falls backwards into a massive wave that heals the lands and even cures the lepers.
• The Worm That Walks: The demon beasts we see are completely covered in writhing black leech-like creatures, that fall off of them and rot anything around it.
• The Worsening Curse Mark: Perhaps one of the most known examples, Ashitaka's curse mark gets bigger and darker throughout the film, culminating in it enveloping his and San's bodies.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Some of the characters do not recognize gold. This is justified by the fact that peasants are extremely unlikely to have seen gold up close before and would be hard-pressed to recognize it. However, once Jigo points out it's a gold nugget, a small pack of thugs forms almost instantly and starts following Ashitaka.
• Would Hit a Girl: Ashitaka knocks out both San and Eboshi to keep them from killing each other.
• Would Hurt a Child: The whole of Irontown against San, who they have been trying to kill for a long time. She's 15.
• Wretched Hive: Completely subverted, as in the case of the Ironworks the first impression from a distance is highly misleading. Compared to the other villages we see, it is quite prosperous and friendly.
• You Are Number 6: San means 'three' in Japanese, perhaps implying she is the third of her siblings, leading to the fanon interpretation that her brothers are 'Ichi' (one), and 'Nii' (two) respectively.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Ashitaka, who is forced to leave his tribe due to the curse. For them, he is dead, even if he manages to lift the curse.
• Youkai: The forest gods, as well as the kodama.
• You Killed My Father: After San's confrontation against Lady Eboshi, some women of Iron Town come at her while bearing guns, saying they want to kill San because her brothers and she killed their husbands.
• Your Days Are Numbered:
  • Ashitaka is told his curse will eventually kill him, and that his chances of finding a cure are very slim indeed.
  • Moro to some extent. She tells Okkoto that she's dying from Eboshi's bullet.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Most, if not all, view San's attacks against Iron Town as defending the forest. Lady Eboshi and her subjects only view these as violent attacks to be defended against.
• Zerg Rush: The boars' primary method of attack. It works really well at first, until the humans get firearms. In the climactic battle, the humans have the high ground AND are armed with grenades and bombs, so it... doesn't work out very well for the boars.

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