The artistry here is astonishing

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2017)

I guess you'd call what I'm doing a Studio Ghibli film quest, and "Princess Mononoke" was an interesting item to mark off. But it's not a favorite of mine. The movie's certainly ambitious, once again tackling an ecological story and adding a sense of ambiguity; good-and-evil isn't so simple, and the real struggle is for a balance between industry and nature.
My problem (and I speak solely for myself) is that I couldn't get "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" out of my head for most of this runtime. And I think that that film is entirely more potent with a well-defined heroine. Here, there's a split between Ashitaka, Lady Eboshi and Princess Mononoke, and even though the tone is definitely more adult (with the violence to match), the prior movie had the more effective characters. Is that fair? Maybe not, but again, it's just me.
But like I said before, this is impressive on a technical level.
6/10