Beautiful artwork; interesting concept; sometimes confused storyline

Rating: 8/10 (8 October 2000)

(AKA English) "Princess Mononoke"
I'd read good reviews of this and long wanted to see it so got it when my local video shop had it. I found it worth seeing but a little uneven.
Much of the artwork, especially of landscapes and atmosphere and weather, is stunning. Some of the artwork, to my taste, is too crude (e.g., as in the drawings of the wolf mother and sibs to Mononoke).
Perhaps those growing up in Japanese culture absorb a supporting fabric that makes the story line more natural and understandable to them than to an American audience. I'm appreciative of the idea that it does not have to be Man vs. Nature (as some industrialists view it) -- that there can be a co-existence or maybe even a symbiosis? The storyline presented realistic conflict among the forces on both sides (nature & animal vs. man) but while the motives of the conflicts on the nature/animal side were understandable, those on the human side were far less so.
*** WARNING -- SOME WILL FIND THE FOLLOWING SPOILS THE OUTCOME ***
Generally, I often find story lines with supernatural forces are interesting, especially when they deal with moral issues as this does. I can accept that folklore has gods with different levels of power. But it did bother me that the supergod of all Nature, capable walking on water and special powers of healing, of transforming shape from day to night, of spreading out an ooze over the whole land that would injure humans, of living and functioning without a head -- that a god with such powers has a head that can be chopped off by humans and can not find it if humans keep it in a box.