Week 9: Princess Mononoke

Again, this is another popular Miyzaki film that I have not seen before, so I was pretty impressed, however I do have a few things that I'm curious about. Unlike the other Miyazaki films we've seen so far, Princess Mononoke is centered around several key characters rather than just one or two. At each point in the story, the direction of the plot hinges on the actions of Prince Ashitaka, Sen and the Moro Tribe, Lady Eboshi, and a few other entities in the story. I felt that even with the two hour running time, the characters were spread a little more thin than they should have been. At several key points in the story, I was begrudgingly forcing myself to accept certain plot elements that seemed to lack real motivation. For example

-Sen and Ashitaka's love story seemed to be largely superficial (though it did make sense for them to "break up" at the end.
-Ashitaka's relationship with the ironworks. Why did he want to live there at the end? Was it for Sen? For the sake of the forest?
-Lady Eboshi's unreasonable drive to get the Deer God's head. If she didnt trust the emperor why bother going to such huge lengths to get it

Dont get me wrong, I really liked the film, and I agree it is a really smart film but those things are something that might need to be watched again to fully understand? Or maybe it's just an element of the story telling style. After all, Miyazaki has a track record of telling his stories like epics, covering a broad range of truly fantastic events without questioning too much the realism of any particular moment. It seems like anything was possible within the bounds of the world Miyazaki created, however, there were just those three things mentioned above that stepped outside those bounds. I'll probably watch it again some time to try to figures these things out.