Princess Mononoke (1997) broke domestic box office records in Japan, keeping pace with the success of Hollywood films like Titanic (1997), making it the first of Studio Ghibli's films to be transnationally distributed as part of a new deal with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista International. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the release of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, Rayna Denison curates this new collection critically reflecting on the film's significance within and beyond Japanese culture, engaging critically with the production, and re-production, processes involved in the making of Princess Mononoke; re-evaluating the film's importance within Japanese animation culture; considering the relationship between the film and Japan as well as examining Princess Mononoke's significance within a range of global cultures.
In doing so, the book reveals the way Princess Mononoke's production sits at a turning point in Japanese animation history. By revisiting this undeniably important text, the collection reveals much about the tensions in anime production at that time, and about important cultural and social issues including environmental protection, representation, gender, economics and ideology.