Journal Entry – Week 13

 Princess Mononoke is a film that best shows off man versus nature where you have the antagonist that uses modern weapons like guns and fire and arrows. Will modern to their time versus the spirits of the of the forest that might be like a large God or tentacle beasts the way how they solved it was the main characters offered. The main character is found a way to make peace between the vengeful spirit, Boers and the humans, but the spirits were mostly lost and they became a normal forest because the antagonist killed the god.

One of the conflicts between man and the natural world is pollution. This shows up in Studio Ghibli’s 2001 film, Spirited Away. Sen’s first customer is the spirit of a polluted river. They smell so bad that practically all of the staff are forcibly trying not to gag in front of the spirit. When Sen finds a bike handle sticking out of the spirit, she understands that the bike is not supposed to be there, and all of the workers work together to pull the bike , and consequently other garbage, out of the spirit.

The fight to pull the garbage out of the river spirit makes it obvious that in order to clean a river, it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. All of the workers and guests in the bathhouse had to take a part in pulling the garbage out of the river spirit, whether it was to help pull or offer encouragement. Pollution is a man-made issue, and everyone has to participate in cleaning up the pollution for an effective solution.

The garbage is pulled out of the river spirit, and they leave Sen with a vomit-inducing dumpling as a reward. They pay the bathhouse in gold pellets.

In the “Six Jewel River” by Sakai Ōho a lot of the color choices are reminiscent of anime. The colors on the characters pop out against the background but also work well with each other. They are lined with a medium size brush to separate the colors from each other but not be too distracting to completely take your focus away from them. The background is lineless and made sure to be desaturated to not be the main focus. As the scroll continues the background also fades out, adding even more emphasis to the characters instead of the background. The drawing style of the greenery also reminds me of how anime animators draw flowers and other background elements to enhance and add life to the scene without taking away from the characters.

In Six Jewel River they used woodblock prints where they had the ocean, cherry blossom and etc, as for the way they describe the technique they use to draw anime to the woodblock prints.

“Princess Mononoke” (1997), directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is one of the Studio Ghibli films that examine the topic of the struggle between man and nature. The woodland spirits symbolize the natural environment in this video, while people represent the forces of industrialization and progress. Ashitaka, the main character, becomes embroiled in this struggle after being cursed by a demon while protecting his community from a marauding boar god. He travels to the forest searching for a cure and becomes engaged in a battle between humans and forest spirits led by the ferocious and enigmatic Princess Mononoke.