absolutely gorgeous, charcoal drawings with watercolour palette, the tale of princess kaguya might be the most visual appealing ghibli movie out there so far. not to be demeaning but ghiblis biggest director, miyazakis art style is often familiar but it works well enough for the film and miyazaki attention to details (see spirited away, the busiest feature-length ghibli film) is so spectacular that he definitely earned a spot as one of the best animation director so far. but isao takahatas filmography hardly looks similar, hes willing to experiment with different animation style. 14 years since my neighbours the yamada, takahata has created his last directorial work, a definitive masterpiece among ghibli studio productions. adapted from taketori monogatari ( the tale of the bamboo cutter ), the tale of princess kaguya is a movie that explores the life of kaguya-hime. first discovered as a hinamatsuri doll, the elderly bamboo cutter brought this strange little doll back home and the doll transformed into a human infant. and the wife said, “that was what heaven want us to raise her into.” and the story of kaguya-hime begins. my neighbours the yamada had also used a very similar art style in princess kaguya, charcoal drawing painted with watercolours, though yamada is much more comic strip in style. theres also another similarity on how the corners on every frame is blank except for background colour. this makes the tale of princess kaguya looks much more simplistic and minimalistic. thus come in one scene, the one where kaguya fled into the woods, her surrounding are no more bounded by well-defined lines of charcoal but instead made up part shading and much more fuzzy lines. everything also look incredibly monotone at this point that the franticness of kaguya bleeds through the animation style, she just want to run back to her place, and her real place is ever so close to her. kaguya, like many of us strived to be happy, to have a life we want. how many of us can consistently make that choice and to have a life we truly want? more often than not we get tripped up by wrong choices, inactions but most importantly the choice we made for the sake of others. this is why i can sympathise with kaguyas plight completely. in order to live, we loss a bit of our true self, and when the time comes, you can only look back to the world. pain and suffering, joy and happiness, those will always live with us. there is no choice that reverts back to the ideal path and we can only shed a bit of ourselves to go on. and the moment will eventually arrives, theres no going back. the tale of princess kaguya is a phenomenal masterpiece and princess kaguya is a brilliantly written character despite an adaptation from a simple folklore. the inevitable moment will always be oppressive and cheers for all the choice that we have made. a poignant film indeed.