Rating:

This movie starts off when the young warrior prince Ashitaka defends his village from a great wild boar that has been turned into a demon. Unfortunately, before killing the boar he is cursed with an ugly purplish demon mark on his right arm. The wise woman tells him that the mark will spread throughout his entire body, bone and flesh alike, and very soon it would kill him. The boar came from a land to the east, and in the body of the giant boar a ball of iron was found. The wise woman tells Ashitaka that the ball was buried deep inside of his boar, it shattered his bones and turned him into a demon. Ashitaka went to the land in the east so "see with eyes unclouded by hate" and possibly find a cure for the demon mark. Once he gets there he finds a place called iron town. The town is headed by Lady Eboshi, a woman who wears a pirate coat and has saved the town from ruin by making it like no other. She's bought the contract of every brothel girl for miles and has them pumping the bellows 4 days at a time. As explained by Toki, one of the saved brothel girls, "yeah the works hard, and our shifts are 4 days long, but we get to eat as much as we want and the men don't bother us." Lady Eboshi also has lepers that work in a building in her private garden, making a new gun that will pierce the thickest samurai armour and are light enough for the girls to hold at the same time.The town is surrounded by an enchanted forest where the beasts are still giant gods as they were in ancient times. the forest is also home to San, the girl who has been raised by wolves. Now that he has entered, Ashitaka has gotten himself mixed up in a war between the animals and the humans. The humans want to clear more land so that they can mine the ore from the sand. The animals, including San, want the humans out of their territory before they can do anymore damage. But the war goes deeper than that, it concerns the fate the great forest spirit, it concerns the fate of mankind and the forest itself.

This is my favorite anime movie of all time. A must see. It combines different legends and folk tales, such as the american legend of a girl who was raised by wolves and the japanese legend of a great god that is the forest spirit by day, and and changes into the nightwalker at night. The animation is high-quality and the voices in the english version are probably the best that I have ever heard. In this movie the voices of many rising stars, such as Claire Danes as the wolf-girl San, were used. Anyone who watches it once will want to watch it again.

Voice cast:
Ashitaka - Billy Crudup
Gonza - John DeMaggio
Jigo - Billy Bob Thorton
Lady Eboshi - Minnie Driver
Moro - Gillian Anderson
San - Claire Danes