Princess Mononoke (1997)

[Hiyo]

A true masterpiece. And yeah, the video is mislabeled as 1994, but go with it ;)

Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US.

[Spartan Girl]

Ashitaka should have stayed with San. He didn’t owe Iron Town shit, especially after Eboshi and the others nearly destroyed the whole world by killing the forest spirit just to get power, and they didn’t seem to have any remorse over it in the end.

Sorry, I’ve been wanting to say that for years.

[Hiyo]

That makes me think of a quote from the article:

Quote

"America still has a very Manichaean binary value system – good, evil, black, white – and it's baked into the Disney formula," says Napier. "They usually end with a romance, everyone lives happily ever after, and that’s a fundamental part of the American dream. Whereas Japanese culture is more based on a sense of impermanence. There’s a cycle and a feeling that you have to enjoy what you have. It’s not necessarily a bad world, but it's a complicated world."

[Spartan Girl]

Oh totally. And I get it: there were no true bad guys in the movie. I respected that. But at the same thing, I would have liked for Eboshi and Iron Town to realize that they screwed the pooch. I don’t have a lot of patience for characters that refuse to display even a smidgen of regret for their actions. Instead it was just “we’ll rebuild a better town!” 

[Hiyo]

I like to think when they alluded to a better town, they meant hopefully one that was more in tune with nature.

Here is a nice mash-up of Moro laughing in different languages.

The South Korean one just came out of nowhere and cracked me up.

The Hong Kong one sounds like the VA is coughing up a lung.

But damn, the Chinese one...I think that might be the coolest sounding one of them all. It sounds the most otherworldly and godly.