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The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

AnimeDramaFamily

Kaguya is a beautiful young woman coveted by five nobles. To try to avoid marrying a stranger she doesn't love, she sends her suitors on seemingly impossible tasks. But she will have to face her fate and punishment for her choices.

Year

2013

Duration

2h 17m

IMDb

8.0

Hero Poster

Cast

Isao Takahata

Director

Chloë Grace Moretz

The Princess Kaguya

James Caan

The Bamboo Cutter

Cast

Isao Takahata

Director

Chloë Grace Moretz

The Princess Kaguya

James Caan

The Bamboo Cutter

Mary Steenburgen

The Bamboo Cutter's Wife

Mary Steenburgen

Narrator

Aki Asakura

Kaguya hime

Aki Asakura

Jokan

Kengo Kôra

Sutemaru

Takeo Chii

Okina

Nobuko Miyamoto

Ôna

Nobuko Miyamoto

Narration

AT

Atsuko Takahata

Sagami

Tomoko Tabata

Menowarawa

ST

Shinosuke Tatekawa

Inbe no akita

TK

Takaya Kamikawa

Ishitsukuri no miko

HI

Hikaru Ijûin

Abe no udaijin

Ryûdô Uzaki

Ôtomo no dainagon

Shichinosuke Nakamura

Mikado

Isao Hashizume

Kuramochi no miko

MU

Mirai Uchida

Kaguya hime (child)

FT

Fubomichi Takazawa

Voice Appearance

RM

Reigo Mizoguchi

Shônen

Isao Takahata

Writer

RS

Riko Sakaguchi

Writer

Trailer

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Comments

10 Comments

Aesthetic VibeSep 21, 2026

I love the art style of this story. It gives off a completely different vibe.

No UsernameAug 16, 2026

I can't stop crying 😭. This is a masterpiece. My heart aches so badly when she goes back.

swara gawandeFeb 17, 2026

this is the best Ghibli movie after spirited away I have ever watched

💔🥵🇧🇷🍫ولد مينة🍫🇧🇷🥵Aug 13, 2025

YooooSep 11, 2024

♡

RishikapoorpatelAug 28, 2024

I'm yet to find an anime that I love, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya isn't it. I just don't connect to ancient Japanese culture and all of its downsides are in the story. The character work is solid, but it's archetypal stuff and still nothing that digs deep in a relatable way. This is just a type of whimsy that I don't enjoy, and at 2 hours, it's more of a chore. But at least it's a pretty chore. No doubt you marvel at the animation, especially during the dramatic running sequences. The fluttering music tends to match the lightness of the visuals. I respect Takahata, as I do for Miyasaki, but his Graves of the Fireflies did nothing for me as well. Outside the man hours put into it, Kaguya is nothing special. 6/10

user1017981037704Aug 28, 2024

Like many others, I've been following Studio Ghibli for decades. I always found its stories to be mature, as well as fitting for younger audiences. Stories for adults with a child's heart. I also liked the way they -almost- always offered some hope, regardless how dramatic or even gloomy they could get. Unfortunately, this tale is for mature audiences only, I'd say, and it's rather depressing, overall. There's nothing wrong with the film per se; the animation takes a very traditional approach and it becomes even simplistic, separating itself vastly from most Ghibli productions. The storytelling can get dull for people who are not into drama, with its 2 hours and 17 minutes in length. Besides, this movie lacks also a certain sense of movement which other Ghibli films had, mostly in the form of unapologetic action. The pace is quite tranquil, with one or two rushy moments, without reaching the peaks achieved in previous Ghibli films (and no real action). I liked other Takahata movies, like Pom Poko, Only Yesterday, My Neighbors the Yamadas and Grave of the Fireflies (being the latest pretty grim, as well). Alas, it's a movie for the taste of critics for sure. Pity that their tastes do not have anything to do with the youth, and the message Ghibli delivers to them in other films is lost here to a more mature and disenchanted audience.

thenanaabaAug 28, 2024

"The Tale of Princess Kaguya" is a very, very familiar story in Japan. It's from a story that is a thousand years old, "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". And, since it's a classic, there have been many movie versions of the story. Because of this, I was quite familiar with this, as I'd already seen "Princess From the Moon"--a 1987 live-action version. Unlike the other six versions of the story that I was able to find, this one is animated and it comes from Studio Ghibli--the same people who make the Miyazaki films, though this one is from Isao Takahata. For the most part, the story you see in the film is the old tale. One day, a poor woodcutter slices into a stalk of bamboo and finds a beautiful thumb-size child. Since he and his wife are childless and have always wanted one, they are overjoyed with the discovery and raise the child. However, the same fortune that brought them the baby also rewarded them with gold when the woodcutter chopped additional bamboo. And, oddly, the child grows to normal size and becomes a lady in practically no time at all. Soon they are rich and able to give their girl the life of a princess and she's taught all manners and customs that a proper lady would need. However, it's obvious that young Princess Kaguya isn't happy in this life, as courtier after courtier come for her hand and she simply isn't interested. So, she gives them impossible tasks to complete before she'd agree to marry any of them. When they all fail, the Emperor himself comes to court her but she rebuffs him--mostly because she knows her time on Earth is drawing to a close. Where all this goes next, you'll find out if you watch the movie. The animation for this movie is quite lovely--with a nice look that appears as if the film was made with colored pencils and watercolors. While it's more minimalistic than you'd usually find in a Ghibli film, it looks very appropriate to the Medieval Japanese period. In fact, the look of the film is the best thing about the movie. The story, as you probably noticed above, is odd--especially to non-Japanese audiences. The ending, is even odder, by the way. But the film still could have worked despite the unusual story. However, I found the pacing to be too slow and I noticed my attention waning from time to time. Not surprisingly, it's the longest film released by Ghibli to date. Had they trimmed about 15 to 20 minutes and removed the plot involving the poor boyfriend (which was not in the original story), I think the film would have worked better for me. Worth seeing for a very patient audience who is looking for something very different--otherwise a strange sort of picture that probably would offer little appeal to kids and folks wanting something light and Disney-like. By the way, although I was not bowled over by this film, it has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. My vote is for "The Box Trolls"...a film which managed to combine both artistry and an excellent original story.

Neeha RiazAug 28, 2024

I liked this to a good extent, and my rating goes up because of the last 15 minutes, which are so magnificent. Those last several minutes and the first act are truly brilliant, but for some reason, the film sort of lost me in its middle and a little more than that. Not completely lost me, but it did get a little too much and it got to less interesting overall. I can't say I completely agree with the critical acclaim it's gotten, but I think it's a good, sometimes very good, film, definitely made stronger because of certain scenes. The sound mixing here is incredible, and the voice acting (in its original language) is pretty fantastic as well. Overall, still recommended but with reservations, yeah.

Khawla ElhamiAug 28, 2024

The animation masterpiece of the decade. Takahata is going out on top. The fabled north American distribution deal between Disney and Studio Ghibli (apparently) applies only to the works of Myazaki; north American distribution of this is being handled by GKIDS. So the heavyweight marketing of Pixar/Disney isn't behind it. But don't be fooled by its "art-house" distribution or its relative obscurity - this is a really big deal. It's an "epic", having taken eight years to produce and clocking in at well over two hours. I haven't seen the words "production committee" in credits since 'Akira' - that means it was too big for any one normal producer, so several companies had to form a "consortium": Studio Ghibli itself, a TV network, a foreign corporation, a movie studio, and three others. And the animation work itself was so large that parts of it were farmed out to _nine_ other studios. There are two versions: an English dub of the soundtrack with most things written in English characters (although in general dubs suck, animation is often an exception); and a Japanese soundtrack with written English subtitles and most things (including virtually all the credits) written in Japanese characters. If the names of the voice actors you hear sound vaguely familiar, that's the English dub version. In fact, if you're viewing this in a theater, unless the theater is pretty sophisticated, you won't even have a choice - you'll see only the English dub version. And that's okay. You get what you're used to from Studio Ghibli: powerful and independent women characters, a strong bond with the natural world, seamless switches back and forth between reality and fantasy, rootedness in tradition and folklore, and the music of Joe Hisaishi. Add to that some themes I associate specifically with Takahata: portrayals of "reality" even when it's quite sad, nostalgia, an acceptance and open portrayal of the concept of the "cycle of life", and ambivalence toward tradition and especially patriarchy (respecting and illustrating the good, while at the same time poking fun at the bad). Finally add a new twist I haven't seen in animation before: whole scenes where all the dialog, the visuals, and even the music, point to one interpretation ...only to recast the whole thing in a different light at the end to reach a totally unexpected conclusion. The animation is 2D and very intricate, but still appears hand-drawn. Outlines vary in thickness and density, and colored areas don't always reach exactly to an outline. It could be computer-drawn (as many apparently hand-drawn animations actually are these days) only if the computer made an awful lot of "mistakes". Interestingly, the figures and the backgrounds look exactly the same (not different styles of animation as is often the case). It's all colored with pastels. The end result looks somewhat as though 'My Neighbors the Yamadas' had been used as starting sketches which were then finished. I thought my evaluation of "hand drawn" was vindicated when a whole screenful of the end credits was occupied with the names of all the in-betweeners. But then just a bit later the whole screen was again filled with one category of names, this time all the digital ink and painters. Sometimes what you'd expect to be computer-generated is in fact clearly hand drawn, as when shadows move just a bit awkwardly between the beginning and the end of a scene. Other times the effect really seems computer-generated, as when a character is seen in a side closeup crashing through vegetation with lots and lots of branches flying much faster than anyone could draw them, or as when there's a cross-fade between scenes. I could never even guess though how it had been done when occasionally I could see what was behind a bit of translucent cloth.