The animation is clearly the best aspect of this film. This film was released more than 20 years ago yet the animation is spectacular, even to today's standards! Each frame, like most Japanese animation, is each hand-drawn separately and it's surprising how much effort they put into this film to make the animation look both beautiful and flow well especially during the action sequences. I also love the animated scenery, especially the forest. It's stunning and has an immersive feel to it. The animation is beautiful. Studio Ghibli knows how to animate their films. It is sad that nowadays, especially Western-animated films, animated films are now heavily computer-assisted so animated movements in those films look unnatural and take less effort than animating it by hand. It takes away the creative integrity of animation and it is why watching a film like Princess Mononoke is such a blessing and such an eye-opener.
The sound mixing and just the overall use of sound in this film are spectacular. These are masterfully done from the sound effects to the score. The score is great sets the mood of the scenes. I love the score and the individual songs that were implemented in this film. It was pleasing to listen to and worked well with the scenes in this film. There was also a scene which had no sound for several seconds which contrasted with the constant voice acting, sound effects and score being played over the animation. This silence was great as it makes you pay more attention to what was on the screen at the time and it also makes the scenes with sound greatly appreciable. You'll never know the importance and significance of something until it is removed. The sound effects help create an engaging and immersive anime film. The sound design is fantastic. The voice acting is great across the board. The voice actors really helped bring the characters alive and were able to express the characters' emotions in a convincing manner. This film uses sound to maintain and express and engaging story effectively.
There are many characters in this film and this is a minor issue I had with this film. Almost all the characters play supporting roles in this film and I thought there were far too many to keep track of. A lot of scenes with the supporting characters just felt brushed off. Despite this, I thought the character development with the two main characters was done superbly. Miyazaki really fleshed out these two characters and made you care for them. Miyazaki also made the few antagonists in this film have a genuine motive that was understandable which the audience can get behind yet still overall root for the protagonists. This effectively created conflict in the film and made for some engaging scenes.
Overall, I really enjoyed Princess Mononoke. I love Miyazaki's works and Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli has a lot of great anime under their belt and Miyazaki is one of the best, if not the best, anime director/writer to exist. We don't deserve to have these great films, but Miyazaki delivers us with fantastic anime films made with creative integrity and the end result shows the great effort it takes to make these anime films. Spirited Away is still my favourite Studio Ghibli film, but that's not to say that Princess Mononoke isn't a great film. Princess Mononoke is a great film that is beautifully animated and has a fantastic score and sound design.
