A video essay on the complex morality of Princess Mononoke and the importance of picking a side. My contribution to Mikey Neumann’s Lessons Animation Taught Us. If you like my videos, do please consider supporting me on Patreon!

Transcript below the cut.

Here’s the thing about Princess Mononoke: Lady Eboshi is wrong. She’s wrong. But we’re still expected to care about her.

Most animated films have a linear correlation between how good a character is and how much we’re supposed to care about them. A character we’ve been considering a villain for the entire movie shares a sympathetic backstory and immediately they’re one of the good people. A character we’ve spent the movie building an emotional investment in does something evil and our empathy for them is null and void.

But Miyazaki movies tend to traffic more in this kind of emotional landscape. Everybody, right or wrong, no matter what they’ve done, is deserving of empathy. The whole of Princess Mononoke is a parable against hate.

By way of our avatar, Ashitaka, we see the conflict from all sides. We get to hang out in the forest, see its beauty, commune with its spirits, be in awe of its deer god. We get to hang out with San and see the tensions between the apes, the boars, and the wolves. We see him earn the respect of Moro. We see the damage caused by the encroaching humans: ruined trees, dying gods, and a wolf girl who despises her own humanity and wants to murder every human she meets.

And we get to hang out inside Irontown as well. We see the remarkable community Lady Eboshi has built, see the women rescued from brothels, the lepers rescued from begging. We see the pride they take in their work, and are proud to join in. We see the esteem the community holds Eboshi in, their willingness to fight and die for her. We are vaguely aware of how hard and hopeless their lives would have been without her. And we see how they fear for their loved ones after an attack by the wolves, and with them we mourn their dead.

The fight between Irontown and the forest has no obvious villains. Lady Eboshi clearcuts the forest to fuel her ironworks and provide a better life for her people, and San tries to kill Lady Eboshi to keep the forest from dying. Everybody’s protecting what they love, everybody’s doing what’s right in their worldview, everybody’s lost loved ones at the hands of the other and is poisoned by hate over it. Everybody’s guilty of something.

Ashitaka understands all of this, and pledges to see with eyes unclouded… but he still picks a side.

Because Lady Eboshi is wrong.

What if there were no blood feud? If Lady Eboshi had never entered the forest, San wouldn’t hate her. The wolves wouldn’t attack, San wouldn’t infiltrate the town, no one would have died in raids. But if San had never attacked Irontown, Lady Eboshi would still be cutting down trees, depleting the land, and polluting the air, and the forest would still be dying. The destruction wouldn’t be hateful, but it would still be death.

Ashitaka wants peace, wants Irontown and the forest to live together without conflict. Which means he has to side with the forest. He has to stop Lady Eboshi from killing the forest spirit, because there will never be peace between humans and nature if nature dies. He still does everything he can to protect the ironworkers, to secure their town, to de-escalate fights, and he never stops caring about Lady Eboshi. But caring about her doesn’t mean letting her do what she’s going to do.

There is a tendency, especially in animated films, to treat empathy and approval as the same thing. If you tell someone they’re wrong, you’re telling them you don’t care about them. To judge someone is to vilify them. And if you empathize with all sides of a conflict, then you understand no one’s right and no one’s wrong, everything is subjective, and all struggle is simply miscommunication.

But this is not a difference of opinion that would get hashed out if San and Lady Eboshi would just sit and talk. One opinion is that the forest deserves to live, and one opinion is that the forest will die because it doesn’t matter. There is no middle ground on that, no golden mean. Which means not picking a side is a luxury we don’t have. And Lady Eboshi is wrong.

Not to deny the existence of the actually irredeemable, but most bad opinions are held by good people, and you have to learn to love them while you judge them. And you still have to stop them.

You could tell Lady Eboshi, “San blames this fight on you, because you attacked her home and shot her mother.”

And Lady Eboshi might reply, “I could say the same. She attacked my home and killed my men. I think she’s to blame, she thinks I’m to blame. Who’s to say what’s right?”

But, well, we are.

From comments on my other videos I gather this is the most controversial thing I will ever say on this channel, but: truth exists. Douglas Adams said, “My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me ‘Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid’ - then I can’t even be bothered to argue.” Truth is not subject to opinion. The forest either matters or it doesn’t. And, if we don’t intervene, it’s going to die.

Morality depends on believing some things are simply true. That life has value, that cold-blooded murder is wrong, that pain and suffering should be alleviated. And not just in the utilitarian sense that you agree not to kill other people so they’ll agree not to kill you, but that anyone killing anyone is objectively bad. We can acknowledge our fallibility, that we are products of our environment, that our needs and loyalties will affect what we think is right - obviously Lady Eboshi is going to believe the forest is expendable, her livelihood and the wellbeing of her entire community depend on it; she believes what she needs to believe - but morality means, if we could somehow cut through all that, there would still be a difference between right and wrong. If you don’t believe that, maybe what you believe in isn’t morals, maybe it’s self-interest and tribalism.

It’s impossible to know whether this is true. Maybe Jigo’s right: Long life, short life, everybody dies and it doesn’t matter when. Maybe if we could cut through all our biases we’d see that nothing is objectively anything, morality is just a tribalism that extends to all living things, self-interest on a grander scale. We can’t know for sure, but the world seems to be a better place when we believe otherwise.

So pick a side.

Ashitaka chooses the forest. Because Lady Eboshi is wrong.

But he refuses to hate her. Hate is not the source of this conflict; of all the major players, Jigo is the least hateful, merely selfish and mercenary, but he’s also the closest we come to a proper antagonist. Quelling grudges won’t solve this, but hate does prevent people from seeing what needs to be done. Lady Eboshi doesn’t need to be killed, she needs to be saved. She would disagree that stopping her at every turn is salvation, and call it condescending, if you want, to say we know better, but it’s true.

And maybe that looks like hate to her. Maybe that’s what she’d say if things would slow down for thirty seconds: “Ashitaka, why do you hate me? You have devoted the last third of this movie to getting in my way. I let you into my home, was kind to you, fed you, let you befriend my people. Why have you sided against me?”

No explanation could possibly sound, to her, like anything but hate. But it isn’t. Ashitaka’s just doing what’s right.

Did I learn this lesson from Princess Mononoke? I don’t know. I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw it. I think it was high school, might have been earlier. I don’t know if this is where I first heard the idea, but it’s always the place that comes to mind: That you have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem, and a responsibility to make a judgment, and a responsibility to care for all involved. That picking a side doesn’t always mean casting a villain, no matter how much the other side accuses of doing just that. That empathy is not synonymous with letting people do whatever they’re going to do. And that, in considering every view, it’s your job not to be paralyzed by too much perspective.

And that’s daunting. To hold not only your own biases but those of a number of very worked up people all in mind at once, often while they are lashing out at you, and somehow cut through to decide what’s right? Is that even possible? Is it arrogant to think it is? What if you get it wrong? At the end of the day, who can really know anything?

That’s the struggle, isn’t it? Don’t know if you can. Just know you gotta try.