When a village is tormented by a wild boar, it falls to the young "Ashitaka" to sort it out. Turns out though, that it isn't an ordinary beast - and in the fight the man is afflicted with a curse that requires his journey to the great tree god to put right. His travels lead him to the unscrupulous "Lady Eboshi" who has developed a smelting process that enables her to make guns - giving her not only advantage against the other local clans, but also helping her on her quest to kill the gods and the wolves lead by the Princess Mononoke whom they have raised from infancy. The story is great, the colourful and detailed animation moves the fable along well and excitingly with plenty of solid characterisation and action a-plenty. As ever with Miyazaki, there is a moral to the story - and the last twenty minutes exemplify that beautifully. The English language dubbed version has a good cast injecting personality and an extra degree of emotion to the characters too. I did find the forest sprites just a bit too twee, but otherwise this is a great marriage of creativity and legend - and I really enjoyed it.

75/100 A young man's search for a cure to a curse, received when he killed a boar demon god, leads him into the middle of a war between humans, beasts, gods and demons. This full length Japanese anime was far better than I expected it would be. The characters were very complex, the motives of all the parties involved made perfect sense, making the whole concept of doing the right thing a very fuzzy area, the animation was fantastic, and the story was varied and full. Quite nice. -- DrNostromo.com