Good, but not this good.

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2000)

I saw Mononoke Hime on video and dubbed into English, admittedly, but still, I find it hard to believe that it's received so much praise. Where to start? The animation is quite good, almost too good. Having watched a lot of anime, most of this movie felt preternaturally smooth - very high frame rate for large portions of the film. In an anime format, this is kind of distracting; even high-quality anime tends to use a lower frame rate most of the time and only switches to ultra-smooth for key moments, whether action- or drama-based. Lets you know when you should be paying attention. This movie didn't have that kind of rhythm to it. On a related note, I felt like a lot of the visual language of anime was missing, from the blurry backgrounds in action scenes to facial mugging, etc. Not that it's bad to be different, but these are tools that help carry the story in Japanese animation that were AWOL here and would have helped. What about that story? Well, I'd rate it with Akira's. I enjoy convoluted plots (see Ghost in the Shell) but I really had trouble understanding the motivation of many of the characters in this story, from Mononoke herself to the male lead to the woman running Iron Town. And the ending?
**SPOILER WARNING**
Humans good, nature bad, basically. I mean, they killed the forest spirit and get to rape the area for its mineral wealth; oh but wait, they feel bad so it's okay. Only a country that still hunts whales commercially could crank out a moral like that. **END SPOILER WARNING**
Now don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic to see decent (and it was decent, despite my tone here) anime making its way to US cinemas, but this is not the greatest thing since the Walkman to cross the Pacific. If you're looking for that quality, check out Ghost in the Shell or Macross Plus, or even Ninja Scroll if you don't mind serious gore. All more coherent with equally good animation and production value.