Delicately intimate and ravishingly grand; The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is beyond words in its beauty and its deliberate majesty. Every frame of vital animation conjures up feelings that are both tangible and fully realized, delving into a story of family, regret, and respect. The story leaps off the screen, bringing multi-layered characters to life in a sweeping fashion, commenting on both the world in which we live in and the endless details that culminate into a thriving environment. The film feels alive and pure, evoking childhood and adolescence in an undiluted way that can only be described as magical.

Saying anymore than that wouldn't be doing any justice to Isao Takahata's startling vision, as the film is a…

"I was born to truly live, like the birds and the beasts."

When the Oscar nominations were announced, I was disappointed to not see The Lego Movie nominated for Best Animated Feature because I thought it not only deserved to be nominated, but that it deserved to win. After watching The Tale of Princess Kaguya, my mind has been changed. While I still think The Lego Movie deserved to be nominated, now I think The Tale of Princess Kaguya deserves to win. It's easily the best animated film of the year.

One thing must be said up front: the animation is astonishingly beautiful. It's a blend of hand-drawn charcoal lines and pastel watercolor painting somewhat reminiscent of Ernest and Celestine…

Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies is my 3rd favourite film of all time and definitely my favourite animated film ever. I delayed watching The Tale of Princess Kaguya for a long time as I know it's his last film and I wanted a special occasion to watch it. Can't speak of the occasion but finally watched the film and I wasn't disappointed.
The animation is so mesmerising with the charcoal drawing and it really feels like watching a tale. The mental state of the character is shown so beautifully especially that running sequence which literally blew my mind when I watched it. The hand drawn animation brings so much life to the story and the hardwork behind it is…

RIP Isao Takahata, 1935 - 2018.

Isao Takahata is a titan of animation and one of the finest film directors to have ever lived. His work is deeply, humbly human, giving a wide spectrum of characters values, dignity, and worth. Like few others, he emphasised real human struggles in his films, focusing on the mundane, the trivial, and the minor. His chosen medium, animation, is not usually associated with humanity over fantasy but Takahata made it so. He used animation to reduce moments in time to expressionistic, emotional versions of reality. He told stories that could be made conventionally, but by turning them into meticulous animations, he brought out their rawest potential. There is no acting, no pretence, just hand-drawn…

I think I understand more of this now. This divine baby is given to this family, and when the father finds gold, he thinks the gods are telling him to raise her as a princess. We soon learn that the deities from the moon know nothing about earth, so it makes sense that they would think this is how to make one of their own happy. But we see just how the Japanese culture of this era values women. The men idolize beauty over anything else in this world and they will attempt the impossible even as far as risking their lives to gain her favor. And when one of the suitors dies, Kaguya feels guilty, as if it's her…

There are no words with which to express the emotional resonance that I felt for this, the elemental beauty that makes this rendition of the world so heartbreakingly beautiful. There is only motion, only sound, only feeling, only the experience of letting the story wash over you and the aesthetics draw you in, until you are so totally absorbed in Kaguya's world and Kaguya's pain that you can't help but be decimated as the tragedy of her struggle becomes ever more poignant.

This is an elemental film, a film that feels fundamentally aligned with the fabric of existence in a way that few others ever have. Strangely, this was also a striking reminder of the best of Disney's golden age,…

I don't get the appeal of this film at all. The animation with it's charcoal and watercolor drawings are definitely a nice refresher from all the other cgi animated films. However, the limited color palette makes this an eye sore. Especially after the seemingly 18 hour runtime.

The tone of the film is all over the place and certain scenes left me more troubled than confused. Case in point there's one scene where a character falls head first into a pot. It's clearly played for laughs but is reveled 15 seconds later that the character died and the main character is left feeling guilty for the actions that led to it.

I watched the dubbed version because I was too…