Jerman's Rating: 3 steps forward, 0 steps back. (Yes, thats a 0, and very rare). Defcon 3 (Moderate). Early adolescence and up.

This is a first for me, I didn't know they existed, but I've been siting here thinking of everything I can, and I still can't think of anything bad this film encourages or endorses. The main character, Ashitaka, is quite the moral upstanding young man. The lack of tainted messages, and the strong moral values is part of what draws me to Japanese and Chinese cinema. While I'm on that subject, let me tell you a little bit about Japanese animation, also known as Anime, and Japanamation.

I wanted to write this review, really for one reason. I had something in my mind that this movie shows better than anything else I've seen, I also see myself in the same situation. Beware, I'm not afraid of using spoilers. The story goes kind of like this. A young man, a prince, is sent off to the west from the far east. He meets several groups, but remains neutral. While being a good, moral person he helps people and meets more important people. He both understands them and what they are doing, sees the good in them and their causes, and becomes loyal to that group. The catch is that two of these groups are enemies of the worst nature, and in no way can be reconciled. For the rest of the movie Ashitaka helps both groups in his own way while not betraying either one, and tries and fails to reconcile them. Both groups were in the wrong, both were doing good. It would be pointless to assign blame after everything thats been done. In the end both groups learned their lessons and had their great losses.

I'm kind of in the same boat as Ashitaka. It is hard for me to understand why some groups are so filled with hate for each other, while I can identify with both groups. One moment I can sort of understand why they can't get along, in the next I'm yelling "Stop it! You morons!" In case you, dear reader, ever find yourself faced with two groups like this then I would suggest you watch this film. It is especially frustrating when the two groups have the same goals.

Hmm..this film still deserves for me to say a lot more about it; I'll try to keep it short. This film is unconventional by American standards. It's amazing too, because of its unconventionality, or despite it, I'm not sure. Its about Gods and Demons and men. This film also shows the law of harvest, all the characters get rewarded or punished as a result of their actions. There isn't really a bad guy in the film. Lady Eboshi could be mistaken for one, but with her building her city, giving jobs to the brothel girls from the cities and taking them in, as well as taking in the lepers and letting them contribute to the city. With her running the city so well and being moral in her own respect, there is really no way she could be the bad guy.

One way that this animation is different from American animations is that the characters are drawn much much closer to correct human proportions, also the way they move is more realistic and shows wonderful examples of what good animation looks like. The painted scenes are also amazing and beautiful.

The music is also good, I don't mean good in a technical sense as I said about the animation, because I have no clue about the technicality of music composition. But I love the music, sometimes its epic, sometimes its romantic, its a good soundtrack.

There is still a ton that I have left to say. I may possibly edit this post in the future.
Just from my own personal taste, this movie is among the best, 10 of 10, or 5 of 5, whatever your scale is, this is a great movie. As long as you are old enough to understand it (this isn't a kids movie if you haven't caught yet) I highly recommend it. You don't even have to read subtitles, its dubbed. But- you know your own tastes and you might not like it, still you should give Miyazaki a try.