An English language trailer for The Tale of the Princess Kaguya has been released, and it’s astonishingly beautiful.
There’s often at least one foreign film among the Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature, and there’s a decent chance The Tale of the Princess Kaguya could be the film to fill that spot this year.
Co-writer and director Isao Takahata has made a number of highly acclaimed films like Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies), Omohide poro poro (Only Yesterday), Pom Poko (Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko) (The Raccoon War), and My Neighbors the Yamadas, so it’s a safe assumption that this could be a good film too. He co-wrote it with Riko Sakaguchi and Mike Jones has translated it into English.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli film and will be distributed by GKIDS in the U.S. Chloë Grace Moretz will voice the titular character in the English dub and James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, Darren Criss, Lucy Liu, Beau Bridges, James Marsden, Oliver Platt, and Dean Cain will all have supporting voice roles.
Originally it was thought that Studio Ghibli would be closing down in the near future. As it turned out, that was simply a matter of a bad translation, but it still remains that we should embrace Studio Ghibli films with everything we have.
It’s a sad sight that almost every piece of animation these days is digitally rendered 3D animation, and if this trailer has anything to say about it, 2D animation is by far the more beautiful form. It’s simply strikingly beautiful.