Princess Mononoke combines animist myths, Japanese folklore, a matriarchal heroine, and a “green planet” ethos to create an epic cinematic experience. It achieves one of animation’s—and cinema’s—most wonderful effects: fabricating a world, immaculately realized, that is at once unbelievable and believable. In a long-ago Japan, a war is raging for the future of Earth, one that sets the animal kingdom against humanity, nature against pollution, and harmony against chaos. Two humans stand between the worlds, and amid the bloodshed: San, a feral child raised by wolves, who considers herself animal and humans her enemies; and Ashitaka, a man whose peacefulness hides a great power, and an even greater curse.