During the class talking about Japanese animation, Princess Mononoke was mentioned. I am very happy Professor Jake loves the movie as I do. When I was young, I love animals and monsters so watching the film as a kid, I fell deeply in love with it but my main focus was just the creatures : White wolves, boars, the boar king, especially the Great Forest God which looks like a Kirin.
When I grew older, I started to understand what the plot is about, I love it even more. I could re-watch it multiple times without getting bored. However, now, I still love the movie but finds it very depressing.
The meaning behind the movie can be known as Mankind against the Nature. What is greed and pride of mankind? The film shows it loud and clear. Human used to live with the Nature, we use whatever the Nature provides and keep the balance. In the movie, people that worship or respect the gods of Nature is the symbol of the action. And then there are those who built and developed stronger military to fight against other human which involved destruction of forests. The surface of the story may seems to be an anger of gods, seek revenge towards mankind but the deeper meaning is that yes, we are destroying the Nature, Nature will “take revenge” upon us, global warming & climate changes etc that would affect us, but what’s up with these anyways? Mankind still lives through and move on. The head of the Great Forest God has been returned, it still got killed in the end. Mankind still won the war. This is a little hopeless thoughts from Hayao Miyazaki.
ANIM223 - HISTORY OF ANIMATION - FALL 2019 