
Princess Mononoke: Top 5 Scenes
Unlike Spirited Away‘s whimsical fairy tale storytelling, Princess Mononoke is more of an action movie. The story is still great; the animation is still gorgeous. However, as an action movie, it’s bound to have a number of scenes that stick out above the rest.
Interesting fact that I always forget: San is never actually called Princess Mononoke in the movie, but that seems to be the most popular way to refer to her.
5. Giant wolves attack Lady Eboshi’s caravan
The set-up: Lady Eboshi is trying to get back to transport rice back to Irontown with a fairly big caravan of villagers through the mountains. Then they get attacked by Princess Mononoke and Giant Wolves.
Why it’s awesome: A general rule of thumb seems to be that big animals are way, way cooler than their normal-sized counterparts. Giant wolves are no exception.
4. Ashitaka’s first taste of his new superpowers
The Set-Up: After Ashitaka saves the town from the boar god, he gets banished because of a curse left by the demon. This curse left his arm with a sick looking tattoo/acid burn thing on his right forearm. And temporary spouts of super strength.
Why it’s awesome: The first time we get to see the blessing within the curse, Ashitaka is passing by a village under samurai attack. Two of the samurai take it upon themselves to try to kill him, so he shoots them with his bow and arrow. And by “shoots them” I mean he knocks one of their arms off and completely rids the other one of their head.
Related honorable mention: Towards the end of the movie, Ashitaka is attacked once again by several samurai. He cuts one of their arms off with a sword. The other samurai then shoots an arrow at him, which he catches and shoots back, killing the samurai with his own arrow. After this, two other Samurai ride towards him on horseback. He warns them to stay back, but after they keep coming he shoots an arrow that takes off one of their heads (from probably a football field away). The other one then turns around to retreat. Bad ass.
3. Ashitaka saves his village from the demon-possessed boar
The set-up: Ashitaka is out visiting the town lookout when a gigantic creature emerges from the forest, headed straight for their village.
Why it’s awesome: The gigantic creature is a demon-possessed boar that’s about the size of two elephants standing nose to tail. This thing is covered with a disgusting coating that looks like millions of leeches, and Ashitaka doesn’t even blink before he decides he should try to kill it by himself. And he succeeds.
2. San (Princess Mononoke) raids Irontown
The set-up: Princess Mononoke sneaks into Irontown with a mission to kill Lady Eboshi.
Why it’s awesome: From her giant wolf-propelled vault over the fence to the roof running to her duel with Lady Eboshi, Princess Mononoke shows how deep her animal roots go. Then, as a final kicker, the scene ends with Ashitaka getting shot through the stomach with a rocket (which he walks off) before single-handedly lifting open a door that usually takes ten men to open.
1. The Finale
The set-up: It’s like 20 minutes long, so it’s sort of cheating. The basic jist is that Jigo kills the god of the forest, whose headless body proceeds to destroy all life as it looks for its noggin.
Why it’s awesome: First, the set-up is great. Okkoto, the head boar, is blind, so Jigo’s men disguise themselves with the skins of dead boars. When Okkoto finally dies, his body gets overtaken by the demon leech thing; simultaneously trapping Princess Mononoke. Ashitaka rides one of the giant wolves to her rescue, but can’t stop demon Okkoto from summoning the forrest spirit, completely unaware that he’s surrounded by Jigo’s men. The Lady Eboshi shoots off the Forrest Spirits when it’s mid-super-giraffe/godzilla-evolution and all hell breaks loose. The most important thing here is that it looks amazing. This is the one scene in the movie that I can’t imagine could be successfully pulled off in a live action format.
Princess Mononoke is a great movie and I really do love it. For me, it will always fall just below Spirited Away on my list of favorite Miyazaki movies, but that doesn’t stop it from being 100% awesome in its own right.






