Draft:Princess Mononoke (book)

For the 1983 picture book, see Princess Mononoke: The First Story.

Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess

Editor	Rayna Denison
Genre	Reference edited collection
Publisher	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date	2018
Media type	E-book hardback
Pages	223
ISBN	978-1-5013-2976-0
OCLC	985072439

Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess is a 2018 edited collection by the British animation scholar Rayna Denison.

Princess Mononoke was published by Bloomsbury Academic

Background

Princess Mononoke

It is often considered to be the most significant work in Miyazaki's filmography.

{{|The film was released in 1997, book twenty years later

Contents

(Left to right) Rayna Denison, Shiro Yoshioka, and Helen McCarthy

The collection has three sections, each with three chapters.

The animation scholar Shiro Yoshioka contributes a chapter focusing on the film's place within Miyazaki's filmography and how its success may have restricted his later works.

The film scholar Eija Niskanen writes a chapter comparing Miyazaki's historical influences to the areas in the film that he filled in fantastical details, subverting conventions of Japanese period films.

The literature scholar Julia Alekseyeva's chapter presents an argument that the film is a tribute to The Snow Queen (1957), a Soviet animation that influenced Miyazaki early in his career.

Two chapters interpret the film as a feminist narrative, written by Helen McCarthy and Alice Vernon.

The cultural scholar Emma Pett analyses over 800 articles in a study of the film's critical reception; according to the animation scholar Jonathan Clements, this aspect was previously underrepresented in academic literature.

Publication and reception

Clements called the list of contributors "some of the sharpest minds working in anime today."

However, he criticised the price – £80 for a hardback copy and £55 for the e-book – which he found indicative of the publisher's uncertainty of its mass appeal.

"Japanese history is rewritten by Miyazaki"

References

Sources

• Clements, Jonathan (2018). "Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess". Neo. No. 173. p. 70. ISSN 1744-9596. Republished in ——— (29 March 2018). "Reading Mononoke-hime". Schoolgirl Milky Crisis. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023.
• Cook, Malcolm (June 2019). "Rayna Denison (ed.), Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess. Nichola Dobson, Norman McLaren: Between the Frames. Raz Greenberg, Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan's Greatest Animator. Susan Smith, Noel Brown and Sam Summers (eds.), Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature". Screen. 60 (2): 351–356. doi:10.1093/screen/hjz013. ISSN 0036-9543.
• Ingle, Zachary (3 July 2019). "Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 39 (3): 624–626. doi:10.1080/01439685.2018.1563391. ISSN 0143-9685.
• Montero Plata, Laura (17 December 2018). "20 years of Mononoke". Animation Studies 2.0. Archived from the original on 24 April 2025.
• Napier, Susan J. (2018). Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-3002-2685-0.
• Osmond, Andrew (30 August 2019). "Books: Princess Mononoke". All the Anime. Archived from the original on 28 April 2025.

External links

• Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli's Monster Princess at Bloomsbury Collections
• Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997) (with Rayna Denison) (podcast) at Fantasy/Animation