Vibe
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is Takahata’s final feature and one of the clearest arguments that animation style can embody a character’s relation to the world rather than simply illustrate a story. The source is the ancient Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, but Takahata shifts attention toward Kaguya’s interior life: the speed of her childhood, her sensory attachment to the countryside, the social performance demanded by courtly status, and the cost of being transformed from a lively child into an object of aristocratic desire. The drawing style is central to that interpretation. Lines can be delicate and almost unfinished in scenes of play, then break into violent charcoal-like motion when Kaguya flees the constraints imposed on her. BFI’s criticism connects the film to older Japanese graphic traditions and emphasizes the extraordinary sequence in which Kaguya’s emotional crisis changes the texture of the animation itself. The apparent looseness is therefore not lack of finish; it is a highly controlled refusal of the polished volumetric look that dominates commercial feature animation. The film is also unusually severe about gender and social form. Kaguya’s beauty increases her status but reduces her freedom. Suitors convert her into an impossible prize; her father’s desire to secure her place in elite society becomes an engine of estrangement. The tragedy is not that Kaguya fails to appreciate privilege, but that the structures calling themselves success make ordinary pleasures inaccessible.
Watch for
- How the watercolor linework and unfinished-looking motion make the film feel alive in a fragile, impermanent way, as though emotion itself is shaping the image from moment to moment.
- Kaguya’s changes in mood and movement, especially the contrast between her freedom in the countryside and the stiffness imposed on her once she is absorbed into courtly life.
- The film’s use of beauty as both gift and burden, showing how admiration, status, and idealization gradually become forms of confinement rather than celebration.
- The famous running sequence and the final celestial scenes, where Takahata allows style, feeling, and spiritual meaning to merge into some of the most overwhelming imagery in the Ghibli catalog.
Production notes
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was Isao Takahata's final feature — he died in April 2018 at age 82 — and the most stylistically experimental Studio Ghibli film ever produced. Adapted from the 10th-century 'The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter' (one of the oldest extant Japanese narratives), the film employs a deliberately rough, gestural watercolor-and-charcoal style that mimics traditional Japanese ink painting. The technical challenge of producing this look in computer-assisted animation made the film famously expensive — production took approximately eight years and cost approximately ¥5 billion, making it one of Ghibli's most expensive features ever despite its modest commercial ambitions. Aki Asakura voiced Kaguya, with Kengo Kora as Sutemaru and Takeo Chii (in his final voice role before his 2012 death) as the bamboo cutter. Composer Joe Hisaishi scored the film. The GKIDS English-language dub featured Chloë Grace Moretz as Kaguya, with James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Lucy Liu, James Marsden, and Daniel Dae Kim. The film was produced separately from Miyazaki's The Wind Rises, which was being made simultaneously.
Trivia
- The Tale of the Princess Kaguya took approximately eight years to develop and animate, making it the longest production cycle of any Studio Ghibli feature; the deliberately rough watercolor-and-charcoal animation style required developing new techniques throughout the production.
- The film cost approximately ¥5 billion to produce — making it one of Studio Ghibli's most expensive features despite its modest narrative ambitions, primarily due to the lengthy development process required to perfect its unique visual style.
- The film adapts 'The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,' a 10th-century Japanese narrative that is among the oldest surviving Japanese prose works; Takahata's adaptation preserves the source's plot while substantially expanding its emotional and political dimensions.
- Princess Kaguya was Studio Ghibli's third Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature in three consecutive years (after The Secret World of Arrietty and From Up on Poppy Hill); it lost to Big Hero 6.
- Isao Takahata died in April 2018 at age 82, less than five years after Princess Kaguya's release; the film stands as his definitive late-career statement and as the final feature of one of the founding directors of Studio Ghibli.
Legacy
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is widely regarded as Isao Takahata's masterpiece — the synthesis of his lifetime's exploration of animation's potential as a serious artistic medium. The film grossed only approximately ¥2.45 billion at the Japanese box office, a modest commercial result for a production of its scale, but its critical reception was extraordinary; the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature and appeared on numerous best-of-decade lists. The film's deliberately rough, gestural watercolor-and-charcoal style has been continuously studied as one of the most ambitious visual experiments in mainstream animation. Takahata's death in April 2018 made the film function as his definitive late-career statement, and his loss left Studio Ghibli with only one of its three founding figures (Miyazaki) still actively directing — a fact that contributed to the studio's eventual 2023 acquisition by Nippon TV. Among Ghibli's catalog, Princess Kaguya is most often cited by critics interested in animation as visual art rather than as narrative medium.