 How does Princess Mononoke differ from Disney animation?
Machines in the Garden In the animated ecological epic Princess Mononoke , the camera travels over landscapes with a clear, steady gaze, like a Zen hang glider. The Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, who spent three years on Princess Mononoke and is reported to have done 70 percent of its paintings himself, seems to work from the outside in: to begin with the curve of the earth, then the mossy hills, the watercolor foliage, the nubby stones, the whorls on the wood, the meticulous carvings on a teacup. But then, "soft" is not a word you can apply to Princess Mononoke , however pantheistic its worldview. According to the New York Times , Toy Story animators screened reels of his work when their imaginations flagged, and writers for Star Trek named an alien species after one of his features. Watching Princess Mononoke --which has been dubbed to Disney/Miramax specifications by American and English stars but retains its two-hour-plus length, its gory beheadings, and its grim, near-apocalyptic finale--you can understand their worship. P rincess Mononoke builds to a full-scale war between humans and the animal kingdom--which does not, by the way, consist of your father's cartoon critters. The wolf god, Moro, is slightly more sympathetic, but that's because her adopted "daughter," San (a k a Princess Mononoke), is human. It's a shame that the wolf princess warms up to Ashitaka and spends the rest of the film either saving him or being saved by him.
 There is no pop surrealism like American cartoons.
 It is homiletic and solipsistic.  It is full of splattery carnage.  There is no pop surrealism like American cartoons.  It has a pantheistic worldview.