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Clan and character notes donated by Jessi.
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Clan and character notes donated by Jessi.
Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 Studio Ghibli film. One picture, not a series. Joe Hisaishi wrote the score; the original soundtrack is the cue sheet for the movie.
This page spoils the whole film.
Ashitaka is a prince of the hidden Emishi. A boar god, already dying from an iron ball, comes east as a Tatarigami and attacks the village. Ashitaka kills it and takes the curse in his right arm.
The village wise woman reads the iron and sends him west, to see with eyes unclouded by hate. He cuts his topknot and rides out on Yakul. He will not come home.
On the road he meets Jigo, a monk working for the emperor. Jigo is hunting the Forest Spirit's head. He talks like a helper. He is not.
Ashitaka follows ox drivers toward Tataraba (Iron Town), Lady Eboshi's settlement at the edge of the forest. The town lives on iron and charcoal. That work eats the woods the animal gods still claim.
In the forest he sees kodama, then the Forest Spirit in its deer shape. He finds San with the wolf clan: she is sucking the iron poison from Moro's wound. When he speaks, she snarls at him with a bloody mouth.
That is the first meeting. He does not call her beautiful here.
Eboshi takes him through Tataraba. The forge women run the tatara. Lepers make the guns. Eboshi is building a place for people the rest of the country threw away. She also means to kill the Forest Spirit and finish the war.
San attacks the town to kill Eboshi. Ashitaka steps between them and is shot. The curse keeps him on his feet long enough to carry San out.
He collapses in the forest. That is when he tells San she is beautiful. San and the wolves take him to the Forest Spirit. The Spirit heals the gunshot. It does not lift the curse.
The boar clan comes for a final charge on Iron Town. Okkoto leads them and falls into the same hatred that took Nago. Jigo's men and Eboshi go after the Forest Spirit. Lord Asano's samurai hit the town while the men are away.
Eboshi takes the Forest Spirit's head. The night-walker body becomes a death that eats forest and town alike. Moro dies in that fight; her severed head takes Eboshi's arm. Ashitaka and San give the head back. At sunrise the Spirit is gone. Rain comes. New growth comes up where the old forest was.
Eboshi lives and says she will rebuild. Ashitaka stays to help Tataraba. San cannot live among humans; she goes back to the woods. They will see each other again.
The shoujou are the ape-like planters in those woods. They want the humans gone. The film does not give them a named chief.
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