Prince Ashitaka received a wound that will kill him by defending his village of Emishi from a boar that turned evil. Now he must venture on to the west to try and find a cure for his disease. He rides right into a battle and begins fighting. His arms starts to change shape and he shoots the arms off of warriors. The warriors call him a demon after he rides off. A wandering monk tells him he fights like a demon, which is evil, but the prince is obviously a good character. He even feels bad about killing that bad samurai. The battle between good and evil is inside each and every one of us and its important. It makes us do things that no one wants to do, but need to be done. Soldiers are defenders of our country and are very good, but they kill other people which is bad. Without them, we wouldn’t be as safe as we are now.
Lady Eboshi believes the wolves stole Princess Mononoke’s soul and now she is out to kill the lady. Toke, the man the prince saved wife, was really nice to Ashitaka, but she yelled at her husband. All the men in iron town are yelling at their wives, but they risk their lives for the food they eat. The women are yelling at the men, but they make the iron in the town. Lady Eboshi is the reason the boar is a demon, because she shot it. Naturally, you would think that this would make Ashitaka hate her, but he actually saves her that night. San, Princess Mononoke, tries to kill her and he uses his curse to stop the fighting between them. Since Eboshi runs Iron Town and goes on the missions with the men, but she turned the boar into a demon. She seems really nice to everyone, but she keeps making weapons to create more destruction. She also took in the lepers, washed them, bandaged them, and let them live in the town when everyone else looked down on them. These reoccurring examples of how people have good and evil inside of them keep turning up.
Iron town, a town for outcasts, is run by Lady Eboshi. In Iron Town, they are at war with the forest for clearing it out to mine the iron in the town. All of the women have the same headdress on, and the same outfits in different colors. They mine the iron in the town and work long hours and do hard work. The men go on dangerous journeys to obtain the rice that everyone eats. Lady Eboshi is trying to create rifles for the women so they can kill the forest monsters. The women are doing hard work and fighting. When Mononoke invades the town, both the women and men fight.
Princess Mononoke teaches us so much in just two hours of running time. It displays aspects of Shinto belief in spirits of nature, not just animals if you consider the Kodama (tree spirits). It gives us insight about the good and evil in everyone, and talks about the cycle of life. You do make quite a valid point; even really good people have unintentional evil in them. I’m pretty sure some soldiers feel bad for killing another human being to protect our country, but it was their duty to protect it, which meant duty came before personal preferences. But with others we may find it difficult to indentify evil within ourselves because our mind may be clouded with all the good things we usually do, or we just chose to not think about evil. It’s realistic and we all know the Japanese try to be a real as possible in their anime when it comes to topic about our lives. I will say the two characters you chose are great examples of the good and evil topic. They both display what I just mentioned about the good at heart aspect yet they both do evil things. Lady Eboshi seems to be more evil than Ashitaka though in my opinion.
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