Not as good as advertised

Rating: 5/10 (2 October 2000)

I suppose I am a glutton for punishment. I've had a love/hate relationship with anime for quite some time now. Despite being disappointed more often than pleasantly surprised. I keep coming back for more for some reason. I suppose it's because I hope that sometime someone will get it right and finally mix stunning visuals (of which there are plenty in the anime world) with a coherent plot, and an interesting story (of which there are woefully few).
Princess Mononoke fits into this category quite nicely. The visuals are absolutely breathtaking. I would rate it in the same category along with other fantastic anime like Macross Plus, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, and Wings of Honneamise. The framerate was better than average for most anime. The only place I think they could have improved was on the behemoth night-walker spirit, which seemed a little choppy at times.
The soundtrack is one of the best you'll hear. The musical score in particlar excels right through to the end of the movie. The sound effects were outstanding also. If a soundtrack CD is offered for this movie, I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
Where the movie really disappoints is with the storyline. This is tragic too, because there are so many good characters on which to develop and plot devices (the tree spririts were fantastic) to use. After the first 30 minutes or so, the plot becomes incoherent, with no clear direction, and the characters sink into the not necessarily good/bad roles that has become the norm for anime.
I feel that Princess Mononoke scores highly on technical merit, but really lacks when it comes to an involved, entertaining storyline. I hope that anime studios will learn from this, and in the future hire some talented writers to match their artists.