YMMV / Princess Mononoke

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Lady Eboshi motivated more by an altruistic desire to help the downtrodden people of Iron Town who are shunned by normal society, or by a selfish ambition to make Iron Town prosperous and wealthy at the cost of completely destroying the environment surrounding it?
  • As much as San professes to hate all humans, she falls for Ashitaka very quickly, so are her declarations a Suspiciously Specific Denial wherein she still wishes they did accept her to some degree? And does she latch on to Ashitaka because as a nomad now, he's not like regular humans, and is possibly the only other human who might understand her?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Yes, there were quite a lot of firearms in pre-Edo Japan (first appearing in the form of Chinese cannons in the 13th century). Even after unification, the shogunate maintained gunpowder-weapon arsenals in case of rebellion.
  • Fire lances are shown to be used a few times in their full destructive power by Eboshi's soldiers.
• Animation Age Ghetto:
  • Claire Danes (the voice of San in the English version) comments in the DVD's special features that she came into the film expecting it to be a children's movie.
  • Quite a few of the actors go on about how it felt like a real movie and not an animated one.
• Anvilicious: It's a film by Miyazaki, so obviously the sympathies fall more heavily with nature, and Ashitaka outright states numerous times how ridiculous the humans are by destroying the forest and then killing the animals for seeking revenge. However, he does extend consideration to the human characters as well, as they need to find ways to survive and achieve independence from oppressors in authority, which often means getting in the way of nature.
• Awesome Music:
  • Most iterations of the Ashitaka Motif and Main Theme share the proverbial cake. That Chinese glissando effect is delicious.
  • "The Demon God" is absolutely diabolical and heart-pounding. "Disgusting little creatures...".
  • "Adagio of Life and Death" and "The World of the Dead" are both incredibly sinister and unsettling themes.
  • Also "Battle Drums" though you have to listen to it entirely.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Fans are split over Claire Danes as San in the English dub. Half feels she is too whiny - the Unshaved Mouse saying she felt more like a Valley Girl throwing a tantrum. The other half felt she brought a refreshing degree of anger and aggression that was absent in the Japanese dub.
  • The antagonists, Jigo and Lady Eboshi, are quite divisive. Some enjoy them due to their likable traits (Jigo being genuinely friendly towards Ashitaka and Eboshi taking care of the lepers), others are frustrated by them being Karma Houdinis who get away scot-free despite their atrocious actions. Eboshi does get her arm bitten off by Moro but it's up in the air whether that's enough.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Forest Spirit and the kodama, thanks to their very distinctive and memorable designs.
• Fandom Rivalry: There tends to be a mild one between this and Spirited Away over which holds the title for Miyazaki's Magnum Opus, although of course there are plenty of fans of both.
• Friendly Fandoms: People who have seen this film and Wolfwalkers are often fans of both. The two movies both use a feral girl associated with wolves (San/Mebh) befriending an outsider (Ashitaka/Robyn) to tell a story about the unbalanced relationship between nature and humanity's advancement. It helps that Wolfwalkers' director Tomm Moore has often cited Studio Ghibli's works as inspiration for his own movies.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the English dub, Toki is voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith, and it's a Running Gag that she finds her husband useless and she at one point jokes about replacing him, also flirting with Ashitaka when she sees how handsome he is. The joke loses a lot of its humour in light of her increasingly scandalous personal life, including separating from her husband and having an affair during that period.
• Love to Hate: Jigo is a rat, but his Affably Evil demeanor makes him very fun to watch.
• Magnificent Bastard: Lady Eboshi, the ruler of Irontown is a woman with a backbone made of steel. Forging a mining community with nothing but her own will and strength, Eboshi made it a refuge for lepers, outcasts and the downtrodden, even buying the freedom of many women from brothels and giving them a new home, training them to work and fight. Coming into conflict with the gods of the forest and local warlords, Eboshi leads her people to fend them off and fight back, even luring out the Great Forest Spirit to destroy it, in hopes of reducing the forest animals to just normal beasts, claiming her trick to killing a god is to not fear it. Even after losing an arm to the bite of the decapitated wolf goddess Moro, Eboshi merely grins and reminds herself that a wolf's head still has a bite, being one of the most morally complex and strong-willed antagonists in a Hayao Miyazaki film.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "We are here to kill the humans and save the forest."^ExplanationThis line from the boars has become half-jokingly used as a slogan among more radical environmentalists on the internet
  • The scene where San threatens to cut Ashitaka's throat and Ashitaka replying with "you're beautiful" has become a popular image to redraw with pairings from different franchises.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Jigo's warriors cross it when they use the normal soldiers of Iron Town as bait to lure the boars up, before raining bombs down on them once they get in range, killing human and boar alike.
  • San's biological parents throwing her to Moro just so they could escape themselves. Parental Abandonment taken to the extreme.
• Narm: Ashitaka rips off the arms of a samurai and beheads two more over the course of the film, with fired arrows. It is intended to make his curse more sinister, but it's also nearly bloodless and almost funny. Maybe done intentionally.
• Nightmare Retardant: The apes look legitimately creepy when they first appear, due to being shadowy black beings with glowing red eyes. Then they talk in Hulk Speak, which ruins the creep factor for some.
• Questionable Casting: Billy Bob Thornton as Jigo has been a head-scratching choice for years. He reportedly took the role thinking it was a children's film, so his own could watch it. That said, many have noted that he brings an affable, subtle cynicism to the role unique from what other actors may have tried.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • You can hear none other than Tara Strong voicing Ashitaka's little sister, as well as some additional voices in Iron Town. This was before her Star-Making Role as Bubbles.
  • John DiMaggio had already dubbed his lines in this long before his Star-Making Role.
  • You can also hear Matt McKenzie supplying some voices, years before his role as Auron in Final Fantasy X.
• Ron the Death Eater: In the movie, Lady Eboshi is a morally complex anti-villain. In the fanfics, she's usually either the devil incarnate, a slut, or the Alpha Bitch.
• Rule of Sean Connery: Gillian Anderson as Moro in the English dub seems to be the one thing nearly everyone unanimously agrees about.
• Shocking Moments: Seeing the Nightwalker for the first time is sure to shock some people. Even more so during its final rampage after being beheaded, where it dwarfs all of Iron Town.
• Signature Scene: The most iconic image in the film is undoubtedly that of San standing across the river, staring defiantly at Ashitaka with blood covering her face, with Moro standing behind her and growling. It even made it onto the poster.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Analysts regard Princess Mononoke as Miyazaki's own take on The Snow Queen, a film that he regarded as his main inspiration as an animator. In fact, the Wikipedia page for The Snow Queen has a whole section dedicated to how Princess Mononoke was influenced by it in both characters and themes.
  • It was once said that Princess Mononoke was the Japanese counterpart to Pocahontas two years earlier, both involving a war between an army wanting to cut down the forest to build a town and a more spiritual people (though literal spirits in this film's case), and a pacifist protagonist trying to stop the fighting.
  • It is often considered the best movie adaptation of The Legend of Zelda series in terms of its style and its themes, albeit based more on feudal Japan instead of a Medieval European Fantasy setting.
• Stoic Woobie: Ashitaka learns that he is cursed both to die and to go mad with hatred in the process— something he only learns in the first ten minutes of the film. Yet he remains the moral presence that charms the others with his purity.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: Other Ghibli dubs have fallen into this atmosphere, but viewers can't seem to decide if the Miramax/Disney dub is good in its own right or a watered down travesty to the original Japanese. Purists stubbornly declare it's the latter, but there are fans of the English dub.
• Tear Dryer: The forest spirit destroys both Irontown and the entire wood, leaving nothing but wreckage even as his head is returned. Cue the beautiful music "Ashitaka and San" as new grass grows over the destroyed areas, and it's clear that everyone survived, with Ashitaka and San waking up next to each other to find a new world about to be built.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Ashitaka's sister Kaya, who has a couple of memorable scenes early on, with Ashitaka getting cursed while saving her from Nago, and her breaking tradition to bid him farewell and give him a keepsake. Surely more could have been done with her, possibly breaking tradition again to accompany him.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • Moro, the Canis Major god who's voiced by Gillian Anderson in the English dub.
  • Okkoto as well, especially considering how brutally drawn out his death is.
• Ugly Cute: The Kodama. Weird, haniwa-esque facial "expressions" and occasionally shake and rattle their heads, yet oddly cute at the same time.
• Vanilla Protagonist: The Unshaved Mouse cited the fact that Ashitaka is so moral, selfless, compassionate, unprejudiced and brave still works in the story - especially up against the other wildly grey figures in the movie. And it doesn't stop him being a badass.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Easily one of Miyazaki's best-looking movies, from the background paintings which do the film's Green Aesop incredible justice to the gracefully fluid character animation, especially on multiple quadrupedal characters, which are notoriously hard to animate, and the demons which not only have multiple limbs but countless undulating appendages covering their bodies.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It may be much Bloodier and Gorier than most Ghibli films, but this was still aimed at the same family audience that most Ghibli films are aimed at, with Miyazaki specifically targeting fifth-graders as the main demographic. The film is considered a family film in Japan with a G rating, despite getting a PG-13 rating in the US. It also received a PG rating in the UK, despite showing the violence and gore completely uncut. But on the other hand...
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Sure, it's a Ghibli movie, but it's still a great deal Bloodier and Gorier than most of Miyazaki's works. A lot of kids were traumatized by this movie when their parents took them to see it because Pokémon: The Series came out in America at around the same time. So logically, they'd love another Japanime type skit, right? There were reports of more than one parent storming out with their kid at the first decapitation and older kids and teens roped into watching it with their younger siblings cheering at the very same part. That said, it is still considered an all-ages film in Japan, and the film's reputation as an adult animation is a case of Values Dissonance with Japanese audiences having a higher threshold for violence in family films.
• Woolseyism:
  • The script for the English dub, adapted by Neil Gaiman no less. He cheerfully admits to freely changing several jokes and other cultural references that would not have been understood (or at least not without lengthy explanations) outside of Japan, while adapting the lines to precisely match the characters' mouth movements. Nonetheless this was all done in a spirit of almost reverent faithfulness to the original. That said, a number of detractors insist that his script was a complete butchery of the original.
  • Billy Crudup makes numerous lines of Ashitaka into soft whispers each time he threatens someone and adds a hefty dose of Tranquil Fury to his tone. This sharply contrasts with the flat and normally voiced delivery of Yôji Matsuda for the same parts, even if they say exactly the same things.

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