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Most artists, following a natural process of maturation, arrive at a definitive style that accompanies them throughout their lives; this trajectory often translates into an alternation between the interesting and the tedious. With the great masters, we are fortunate enough to encounter the unpredictable: the chance to rediscover each individual work as a distinct, self-contained organism. Hayao Miyazaki's career offers precisely this, and Princess Mononoke stands as an unmistakable testament to it. Released in Japanese theaters in 1997, the film marked Studio Ghibli's first monumental international breakthrough.

At the same time, it marked a definitive break from the director's earlier works, casting aside easy answers in favor of a raw, visceral portrait of the world. On paper, the elements of continuity are all present: the backdrop of warfare previously explored in Nausicaä, the dialectic between humanity and nature found in Totoro, and the perpetual friction between human progress and the natural environment. Yet this vision underwent an exceptionally long incubation. The original concept dated back to the late 1970s, when Miyazaki sketched out a fairy tale echoing the motifs of Beauty and the Beast—a search beyond violence born of grief. That project was set aside, partially feeding into Nausicaä and Totoro, only to be revived in 1994 and thoroughly rewritten into a darker, political, and mature narrative, driven by the urge to break free from the reassuring tropes of Disney storytelling.

By the mid-1990s, an urgent and complex dilemma had fully crystallized within him: must we choose between preserving the natural world and sustaining the socioeconomic frameworks that keep humanity alive? The answer cannot be found along an easy, automated path. The story’s very development followed a singular "running start" process, moving straight from thought to action: Miyazaki began without a finished script, and production moved in tandem with the progressive creation of storyboards in an atmosphere of intense creative tension, allowing the characters to evolve almost autonomously. These tensions spilled onto the visual plane with an unprecedented rawness for Studio Ghibli, featuring demonic deformities and dismemberment achieved through an early, masterful integration of computer-generated imagery.

Across this stark canvas, the stoicism of the protagonist, Ashitaka—heightened by exile and a fatal curse brought upon him by sheer irrational circumstance—unleashes a potent metaphor for the injustice and absurdity inherent to real life. Structurally, Miyazaki weaves these tensions through a traditional East Asian narrative framework, Kishōtenketsu, which departs from the Western three-act paradigm rooted in manichaean conflict between hero and villain. The narrative thus unfolds from the curse's inception (Ki), through the societal worldbuilding of Iron Town (Shō), to the unexpected turning point of the hunt for the Forest Spirit (Ten), ultimately reaching a resolution (Ketsu) that offers no vanquished "villain," but rather a hard-won, dynamic equilibrium that rejects any comforting, idealistic harmony. As Miyazaki himself observed: “This film does not exist to determine what is good and what is evil. For this reason, both good and evil coexist within every character.”

Particularly emblematic in this regard is Lady Eboshi. While theoretically cast as the antagonist, as critic Roger Ebert pointed out, she is far from a conventional villain: the true conflict arises from the tragic collision of two competing visions of the Good. While Ashitaka strives to lift his curse and Princess Mononoke fights to protect her wolf clan and the sanctity of the wilderness, the "iron lady" of Iron Town (Tatara-ba) labors to ensure her community’s prosperity by clearing forests and mining iron ore to manufacture firearms. This places her in direct defiance of nature’s delicate balance, making her the indirect catalyst of the curse; yet her enterprise provides autonomy, livelihood, and dignity to society's most outcast: peasants, former brothel workers, and lepers.

Eboshi seeks to build a haven on her own terms, whatever the cost. In this sense, she embodies twentieth-century humanity: clear in her ideals and resolute in action, hesitating neither to sacrifice others nor herself. Set against the Muromachi period—an era of profound social upheaval and civil strife—she enacts the sweeping ideological and sociopolitical experiments of the twentieth century. Scholar Susan Napier underlines how central the demythologization of Japanese history is to the film, achieved precisely through this centering of marginalized populations and the introduction of autonomous, physical female figures spearheaded by the Iron Lady. The narrative engine—her war against the Forest Spirit for sovereignty over the land and its resources—reflects what Helen McCarthy describes as the fracture between the Shinto animism of ancient Japan and the double-edged nature of technology, which allows outcasts to defend themselves against feudal lords while permanently severing their sacred covenant with the divine.

Audiences are left with a bittersweet resolution in which the ancient magic of the wilderness is irrevocably altered, and the two leads choose not to remain together. Miyazaki encapsulated the soul of the work thus: “In a war between humans and wild gods, there can be no happy ending. Yet even in the midst of hatred and carnage, something can survive. Wonderful encounters exist; beautiful things endure. We depict hatred so that there may be something all the more precious left to save.”

Nearly three decades later, that precarious resolution echoes with acute relevance in our present moment. As we struggle to leave behind the hottest summers recorded since the dawn of the industrial age, climate breakdown is no longer an abstract hypothesis but our lived reality, confronting us with the film’s central moral dilemma: what do we choose? The imperative to maintain our cultural and technological conquests unimpeded, or the courage to reconfigure the very fabric of our societies, even drastically, to safeguard the living world that hosts us?

In the director’s memoir collection, Starting Point (published in Italy by La nave di Teseo), a 1995 text—the project proposal for Princess Mononoke—records Miyazaki imagining the final pledge exchanged between the protagonists. San says: "Ashitaka, I care for you. But I cannot forgive humans." And Ashitaka, smiling, replies: "That is fine. Let us live." In the 1997 film, that promise reaches its realized form: San and Ashitaka's resolve preserves what remains of their world, yet at an immense personal cost: parting ways. Though they love each other, they choose separate paths—she remains sentinel over the wild forest, while he settles among humanity to serve as a bridge between two worlds. It is a conclusion that refuses absolute victors, reminding us that coexistence between humankind and nature is achievable only when we are willing to surrender a part of ourselves.

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