question:  How does the animal kingdom feel about Ashitaka?
context: 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. 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. The movie has a scope that makes Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called "the end of nature"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. 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. In fact, the boars and apes have little patience with Ashitaka's call for nature and mankind to live together in harmony; they'd like to eat him. The wolf god, Moro, is slightly more sympathetic, but that's because her adopted "daughter," San (a k a Princess Mononoke), is human. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred. It's Miyazaki's use of sound--and silence--that takes your breath away: the determined tap of the wolf princess's shoes as she scuttles over the fortress's rooftops; the silence of Eboshi and her army as they stare at this tiny yet formidable tomboy against the black sky. 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.
output:  They don't like him, some tolerate him.
options:  They too want to live together in harmony.  They look upon him with feral hatred.  They don't like him, some tolerate him.  They are enemies.