Review – Princess Mononoke

After My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, I was a little disappointed in this production. It isn’t a bad movie. Far from it. It’s just less like the Miyazaki movies I really loved and more like standard anime, full of flying blades of kung fu death (and perhaps just a touch of Kurosawa on top). It’s also full of lots and lots of animal death. It’s integral to the plot, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to take. There’s only so much that even excellent quality animation can do to make up for such an unrelenting bummer of a story. Overall this is a good movie, but not on par with some of the director’s other work. Mildly amusing