THE ART

These are two paintings I did purely from imagination (NO REFERENCE) and they are some of my favourite works given the creativity and time I put into it. One of an Asian girl (San) and one of a White girl (Zelda). But I didn’t just want to make an Asian girl and a White girl, I wanted to make it look like the actual characters and took their facial features into consideration. San is the Princess of the Forest and its setting is loosely based off of Japan during the Sengoku period. She is a Yamato Japanese girl who was abandoned and raised by the wolf goddess Moro in the ancient forest of the gods. Zelda isn’t based in reality as it takes place in the fictional kingdom of Hy-Rule, but the setting is strongly based off of Northern Europe, specifically the British Isles, given the amount of Celto-Germanic names in the story alongside their strong English accents, so I assume she looks Northern European. To be honest I know almost nothing about Zelda and I only made her cause she is a cute blonde and the art looks like Ghibli. In fact I discovered the series only a month ago, but from what I know it has a lot of direct inspiration from Tolkien alongside Ghibli films. Basically if the worlds of Tolkien and Miyazaki married, Zelda is born as the product of that fusion. So because of my lack of knowledge for Zelda this article is gonna be based around the film Princess Mononoke.

NATURE IN THE WEST AND THE EAST

This part is crucial if you want to truly understand Princess Mononoke. To do so, you need to step outside the Western mindset. Many viewers come away thinking, “Oh it’s just like in Avatar they’re destroying the tress, they’re polluting the climate how could they do that? Humans are so evil!” But this reaction already assumes a Western way of seeing nature, one shaped by millennia of Christian thought. In the first chapter of Genesis, humanity is created in God’s image, separate from the rest of the world, in a perfect lush paradise. But when Adam and Eve eat the apple, humanity falls from grace, and the world becomes something to be controlled. This Abrahamic framework would end up shaping how the West came to see nature. Humans were given “dominion over nature,” non-human animals were seen more like lifeless machines rather than conscious beings, and the wilderness was seen as a place to be tamed. In this view humans and nature are opposing factions. That divide is so deeply rooted in the Western imagination that even when the West celebrates nature, it often does so in ways that preserve the same split.

Ecology groups rarely see human activity, whether negative or positive, as part of the earth’s natural processes. Instead, they frame it as unnatural, something alien to nature, something the planet can NEVER recover from. People often misunderstand evolution and assume that humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process and we are it’s greatest result. New Age groups romanticize forests and mountains as being “more in tune with nature,” which only reinforces the idea that human society is out of step. You have woke academics who never farmed before go so far as to condemn the invention of agriculture, as if farming were an artificial imposition forced upon humanity. And of course, you have these foolish influencers who critique certain aspects of modern civilization, only to conclude that hunter-gatherer life was the one “true” or “authentic” way of living. At the core of all this is a deep dualism, one such key aspect of this dualism is the belief that humanity and nature exist in opposition to each other. This dualism runs through Western philosophy, theology, and science, from Genesis to modern day environmentalism. It creates a worldview where nature is always something outside us, either to be subdued or to be returned to, but never something we already belong to.

While in the West nature means all the green stuff outside, in the East nature has a completely different meaning. The best way I can describe it as is something like “order within the universe.” In Chinese, the word for nature, ziran (自然), means “so of its own,” the spontaneous way things exist without being forced. Daoist philosophy ties this directly to the idea of wu wei (無為), often translated as “non-action”, not passivity, but living in harmony with the rhythms of the world, acting without struggle or domination. Japanese thought also carries a lot of Chinese ideas, but is also shaped by its native Shinto traditions, with nature not just scenery or wilderness but the living processes that bind the world together. This perspective reflects a broader philosophy of monism, the belief that all things, human and non-human, are part of a single interconnected reality. In this worldview, a mountain, a river, a village watermill, or even the organization of a household or community are all part of the same order. Nothing exists entirely apart from the larger whole and what Westerners might call “artificial” like technology, cities, or social systems are still expressions of the natural flow. Humanity is not set apart from nature but already within it, inseparable from the processes of growth, decay, and renewal. Princess Mononoke embodies this perspective. The conflicts of the film do not pit one realm against another but unfold within a single interconnected world. Which is why Ashitaka’s curse, born from a land far away, still reaches across distances to draw him into the forest’s struggle.

TWO SIDES OF A UNITED WORLD

Princess Mononoke is a film with no clear morals, sides, or objectives. But one thing happens at the beginning which will set the stage for the rest of the film. A demon boar curses Ashitaka’s arm in order to consume his body with hatred. From that moment, Ashitaka then embarks on an adventure in order to lift the curse and in doing so, becomes caught in the web of a larger conflict between Irontown and the ancient forest, which is the root of how the boar got cursed. We follow Ashitaka’s adventure and while Irontown is initially seen as “the bad guys,” we learn much more about it. Lady Eboshi is not using guns, machines, and mines solely for personal gain, but in order to keep her community well and surviving. Indeed Irontown is actually seen mostly in a positive light. They take care of the lower classes, they look out for each other, and everyone in the community is connected and shares a common sense of identity. The main issue that is presented with Irontown is that it eventually becomes greedy as Eboshi wants to the head of the forest spirit, not out of hatred or malice, but so her town can grow and colonize the surrounding areas at a greater speed.

On the other side is San (the “Princess Mononoke”) an abandoned Japanese girl who was raised by the Wolf Goddess Moro in the forest. She loves her forest, which is full of life and wisdom and San is very eager to defend the forest at whatever cost. But we also see that the forest life is one of danger and chaos. The way San lives is quite raw and gritty. The wild animals are shown as quite frightening creatures and will rip their prey to shreds if they choose to attack. Even the way the forest is designed is much like a real forest. Both Eboshi and San harbour a deep hatred towards each other and in the best scene of the movie when they fight, Ashitaka comes up, stops the fight, and delivers a speech on how hate is consuming everyone and if not stopped will destroy everything. Through this, Miyazaki emphasizes that neither side exists in isolation. We are all bound together and survival depends not on rejection or domination, but on balance, understanding, and coexistence.

THE TRUE MAGIC OF PRINCESS MONONOKE

Western fantasy is often very superficial when it comes creating a fantastical story and relies on things like supernatural beings that directly intervene, cataclysmic world-shattering battles, overly-saturated serene forests, or beautiful royal characters (think of stories like Avatar). But what makes Studio Ghibli films like Princess Mononoke truly enchanting isn’t the supernatural entities, forests, or character designs. It’s the grounding in realism rather than escapism. Miyazaki’s worlds feel alive because they could exist in our reality, the forest in Mononoke feels like a real forest, dense, messy, dark, and mysterious. You can go to your local state park and feel that same experience. And at the end of Princess Mononoke, when the forest is restored and life teems once again, San is still sad and cannot forgive her enemies. Her sorrow isn’t about the trees and bushes as most Westerners often misunderstand about indigenous religions, these things while necessary are still replaceable. It’s about identity, belonging, and the deep connection she feels to her “people” and her land, something so sacred that nothing can ever replace it. Having your culture and ancestral traditions push to the brink of extinction is a wound that will never heal. Furthermore Irontown represents modern industrial civilization. It is not at all unnatural, humans have created incredible advancements with civilization, and Miyazaki’s films often portray advanced societies positively. But in Mononoke, Irontown’s greed and exploitation disrupt the fantastical elements of the world. It serves as a commentary on how modern civilization, when driven by greed, consumerism, and the pursuit of infinite growth, can destroy the enchanting and vital aspects of our wonderful planet. These themes remind viewers that the true magic of the world isn’t in some make-believe story, but it is all around us and is hidden in the relationships we have with the people and land of our own world.

This is why I hesitate to call Princess Mononoke “fantasy.” To me, fantasy often means something generic and life-denying, a product that thrives off the same modern culture of exploitation and consumerism Miyazaki openly criticizes. His films are what I call life-affirming, it is not meant to distract us from reality but to confront it. Mononoke is closer to modern-day mythology or folklore, a story that feels both timeless and grounded. They don’t solve their conflicts with flashy magical spells that can easily destroy cities, but with the same conventional tools and weapons that drive our own history. There are no 500 year old big titty purple-haired elves here, the characters are normal humans who look and act the part. Speaking of which unlike so much modern media (especially anime media), there’s no stupid fanservice or lewd scenes to get in the way, the women in the story are treated with respect. Any supernatural aspect in the story is always done in the way that enchants the world and is not at all reliant on it. You can take away all the supernatural aspects of the film and the focus will still stay on the story, the themes, and the people who embody them. That’s what gives the film its power. Its magic lies not in its distance from reality, but in its closeness to it. Even at the film’s climax, when Eboshi hunts down the Forest Spirit, it is not an epic 30 minute boss fight that destroys the fabric of reality. Instead, with a few shots from a simple matchlock musket, the god of life & death itself collapses. The simplicity of that act is everything. As even the most sacred things are completely fragile when faced with the power of raw human ambition and technology. Princess Mononoke reminds us that folklore is still very much alive, reshaping how we see the our place in the world. To me, that is the true magic of Ghibli and it’s why Princess Mononoke is not just a masterpiece, but one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.

I made two bonus articles as well. One on the crisis of modern anime. The other on an overview of Western Dualism & Monism.