A breath-taking, riveting, & complex story! (minor spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2001)

I'm not going to add fuel to the Disney vs. Anime war. It's like the U.S.-made vs. Foreign-made cars; everyone has their own likes and dislikes. Like the characters in this movie neither is pure good nor pure evil. h, I just used 'nor' in a sentence. Talking about good&evil does that to me ;)]
I bought this DVD and just watched it for the first time. I was captivated from the first scene with the boar...I wanted to learn who this boar was; why was he so filled with hate; would his threat succeed; etc.
For anyone out there that didn't 'get' this movie, I hope you were just distracted or weren't really paying attention. This movie was complex, but the plotlines were not insurmountable. Just take it in and you'll see all the parties involved and what they want to accomplish.
Ever been to the movie theatre 10 minutes into the show and have the person sitting next to you whisper aloud: "Why is the villain is killing the hero's family?" "Why is the hero so angry?" "Well, now what's he gonna do?" "Someone explain it to me now!" If you look and listen, it will all come together. This isn't Jerry Springer. This isn't TRL on MTV. There is no one to spoon-feed the plot. (not even me, hehe) You can actually make up your own mind about who is right and who is wrong. You can't pigeon-hole these characters into the forest=good & mankind=bad, then it wouldn't be as real or interesting (go rent Ferngully instead. I'm truly sorry I got preachy there, we seem to live in the give-it-to-me-this-instant era and I tend to get as impatient with people-that-want-everything-now as they get with me. (ha,ha)
One of the many elements of this movie is that, like real wars, each side believes their side is the "right" side. My favorite line is the one they all ask about the hero: "Just who's side is he on anyway?" After reading a few of the other comments, I was interested in the Eastern philosophic idea of the young hero who is the force of balance and harmony because that is totally him, yet he is still shown as human with human weaknesses!
If you got through my entire review, thank for reading it all! All in all, I thought the ending was very fitting. (not tragic, not triumph) It made me think of the Robert Jordan books:
"The end was not the ending. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was *an* ending."