Ashitaka�s Story

"On a journey to cleanse from his body a scar..."

One of the last young men of the dying Emishi clan, the youth Ashitaka is destined to be his people's leader; their last hope for the future. To save his village from certain destruction, Ashitaka kills a rampaging Tatarigami which is revealed to be a boar god driven mad with the pain of a bullet in it's chest. The brave young man is left with a winding scar where the boar touched him; the curse of the Tatarigami. It is decided that Ashitaka must leave his village forever and journey west in search of a cure for the curse that will eventually consume his body.
With his faithful red elk Yakkuru as his only companion, Ashitaka makes the long, lonely journey west where he finds himself in the middle of a violent, bloody battle between the humans of the Iron Town, Tatara Ba, and the great gods of the forest, desperate to save the last bit of their old forest that remains. He learns that Tatara Ba's leader, the Lady Eboshi, is responsible for the bullet that led to his curse; she has invented a new kind of handheld rifle; a rifle meant to kill the Great God of the Forest.
Ashitaka also meets San, the Princess Mononoke, a girl abandoned by humans and raised by the wolf god, Moro. She loathes all humans and is deadly determined to save her family and forest from Eboshi's clan, any way she can.
With his curse both forfeiting his strength and slowly, painfully consumming him, Ashitaka tries desperately to find a way for both sides to co-exist in peace; for he deeply respects the Lady Eboshi and falls in love with the wild San and her beautiful forest. However, the harder he tries to save both sides, the more bloody the battle becomes until finally Eboshi kills the Great God of the Forest, the Shishigami, stealing his head. As the headless god of life and death searches for his head, destroying the forest in doing so, San opens her heart to Ashitaka and combines her strength with his in one last desperate attempt to save the forest she loves. The two work together to overpower the monk, Jiko, and return the Shishigami's head with their own hands, seemingly being consummed alive by the great god.
With his head returned, the Shishigami melts in the land, never to return to this mortal world, but reviving it before he does so. Ashitaka awakens in the middle of a beautiful field beside San, and finds the terrible curse gone from his body; all that remains is the smallest fading scar. Even though San loves Ashitaka, she cannot bring herself to forgive humans. Completly accepting her decision, Ashitaka says that he will live with his friends in Tatara Ba and makes the sweet and sincere promise to come and visit San in her beloved forest.