---
title: "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya"
year: 2013
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya"
fi1m_score: 84
critics_score: 80
critics_reviews: 25
published: "2026-09-17T06:53:15.537831+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T06:53:15.720463+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)

Directed by Isao Takahata · 2h 17m · MPA PG · Animation, Drama, Fantasy

**Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 80 from 25 reviews

*In a sentence:* A princess who would rather be a frog, drawn by people who agree with her

> Isao Takahata retells one of Japan’s oldest folk tales in pencil and watercolour, and it looks like nothing else in animation. It is also 137 minutes and feels every one of them in the middle. We recommend it warmly, with that caveat.

## Synopsis

In a bamboo grove somewhere in old Japan, a bamboo cutter, Sanuki no Miyatsuko (Takeo Chii), finds a tiny girl inside a glowing shoot and carries her home to his wife, Ōna (Nobuko Miyamoto). Within days she is a crawling baby; within months she is running through the woods with Sutemaru (Kengo Kora) and the other village children, who call her Little Bamboo. Then the grove yields gold and fine silk, and the cutter decides heaven means her to be a princess. He buys a mansion in the capital, hires Lady Sagami (Atsuko Takahata) to teach her to kneel, to keep quiet and to pluck her eyebrows, and waits for the nobles to notice. She would rather be back in the mud.

## Review

Isao Takahata made [*Grave of the Fireflies*](https://film.one/film/grave-of-the-fireflies), which is about as sad as animation gets, and *My Neighbours the Yamadas*, which is drawn like a newspaper strip. *The Tale of The Princess Kaguya* is where the two meet. It takes one of Japan’s oldest folk tales and draws it as though the artists were working faster than the story: pencil lines left showing, watercolour that stops before the edge of the frame, backgrounds that are plain white paper. It is Takahata’s last film and a fine one, with a slow hour in the middle that we will not pretend away.

Most animation hides its labour. Takahata puts it on screen. When the baby crawls, the line describing her is loose and slightly wrong, the way a quick sketch of a real baby is, and she moves like one: the lurch, the topple, the look back. We laughed at her first steps and then found we could not swallow, because Takeo Chii’s bamboo cutter is watching too, and the film knows what a parent’s face does at that moment. Joe Hisaishi’s score is spare, a plucked string and a few notes of piano, and it keeps returning to a children’s round about birds, insects, beasts, grass, trees and flowers.

The scene everyone remembers ends the first act. Kaguya, newly named by Shinosuke Tatekawa’s Lord Inbe no Akita and buried in silk, overhears her father’s drunken guests laughing about her, and she runs. Everything the film has been doing quietly with its line turns violent. The kimono falls away in strokes, the pillars of the mansion smear into charcoal, her face becomes four black slashes, and the fields outside are scratched into the paper so hard you expect it to tear. Toshihiko Kojima cuts it against the stillness of the banquet and it lasts perhaps a minute. We did not move. We have not seen drawn movement carry anger like that in any other film.

Aki Asakura voices Kaguya from tearaway to lady, and does the lady with the flatness of a girl reciting lines she has been handed, which is the point. Nobuko Miyamoto’s Ōna, who also narrates, is the film’s quiet conscience: she moved to the capital because her husband said so and digs a vegetable patch in a corner of the ornamental garden anyway. Atsuko Takahata’s Lady Sagami is there to teach the girl not to run, not to laugh and to pluck her eyebrows, and loses on all three counts. Kengo Kora’s Sutemaru, the boy from the woods, has perhaps fifteen minutes, and Kaguya’s whole quarrel with the capital is that she would rather be with him.

The trouble is the middle. Once the girl is named, the tale requires suitors, five of them, among them Takaya Kamikawa’s Prince Ishitsukuri and Isao Hashizume’s Prince Kuramochi, each of whom compares her to a legendary treasure and is sent away to fetch it. Takahata and his co-writer Riko Sakaguchi give every suitor his own scene, and every scene makes the same point: a man looks at a girl and sees an object. It is a good point and it is made five times. Kojima’s editing, so fierce during the escape, slackens; scenes end after the joke has landed rather than a beat before. Keisuke Nakamura’s camera, which earlier let the drawings breathe, now lingers on rooms where nothing is happening.

Most critics have forgiven this, and the two or three who have not have called the film dull. We would call it long, which is a different complaint. The last movement, which we will not describe, is where the folk tale has always been heading, and Takahata plays it straight, without a line of consolation. It moved us more than we thought a film this unhurried could manage, and the reason is simple: two hours earlier we watched this child take her first steps in six loose lines, and the film has never let us forget her.

Within Studio Ghibli’s output it sits closer to *Grave of the Fireflies* than to anything with a flying castle in it, and parents should know that the U certificate tells you about content and nothing about mood. Watch it in one sitting, in the dark, and do not look up the runtime first. The middle hour is the price. The first twenty minutes and the last fifteen are the reason.

*Fi1m score 84, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics admire this film, and the praise gathers around its look. Reviewers describe hand-drawn animation in watercolour and charcoal, in the manner of Japanese brush painting, with soft colours and loose, sketchy lines that leave the world looking fragile. Takahata’s direction is credited with giving an old folk tale real feeling: a foundling girl pressed into a life she does not want, read by several critics as a story about what is done to young women in the name of expectation. Many note that the sadness arrives slowly and lands hard.

The reservations are about length and pace, chiefly the middle section, in which the princess waits on her suitors. Even warm reviews call it too long. The Guardian and Sight and Sound find it drags badly there, and the Radio Times thinks it a little dull and too melancholy for young children. Otherwise the spread is narrow, with most reviews sitting close together near the top.

### Reviews we read (25)

- **RogerEbert.com**, Glenn Kenny (4/4): The film is a staggering masterpiece of animation based on an old Japanese folk tale. It is both very simple and head-spinningly confounding, a thing of endless visual beauty that seems to partake in a kind of pictorial minimalism but finds staggering possibilities for beautiful variation within its ineluctable modality. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-2014)
- **The AV Club**, David Ehrlich (A): A devastating and deceptively simple tale that delivers an emotional wallop on par with Grave of the Fireflies and stands as one of Studio Ghibli’s finest achievements. It matures alongside its heroine with astonishingly beautiful charcoal-and-watercolor animation and a broad humanism that empathizes with objectified women. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/studio-ghibli-delivers-a-new-masterpiece-with-the-tale-1798181617)
- **Empire**, Dan Jolin (90/100, inferred): The film is a unique, beautiful and endlessly fascinating work of art. It stands out for its soul-soaringly beautiful hand-drawn, sketchy watercolour visuals that contrast with Hollywood CG animation. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/tale-princess-kaguya-review/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (90/100, inferred): The film is a marvel of Japanese animation, a hand-drawn, painterly epic that submerges us in a world of beauty. The delicacy and grace of its sublime imagery create an impact that couldn’t be stronger; it is a parable about what matters in life and what does not. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-tale-princess-kaguya-review-20141017-column.html)
- **Slant Magazine**, Elise Nakhnikian (90/100, inferred): The soft colors, graceful movements, and clean lines embody the ineffable beauty of life on Earth. The film offers a potent feminist critique of traditional expectations for girls through the heroine’s transformation and the spiritual costs of forcing conformity on children. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya/)
- **Variety** (85/100, inferred): The film is a visionary tour de force, morphing from a childlike gambol into a sophisticated allegory on the folly of materialism and the evanescence of beauty. It takes hand-drawn animation to new heights of fluidity, inspired by Eastern brush painting. [Read](https://variety.com/2014/film/asia/film-review-japanese-b-o-hit-the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-1201140562/)
- **Vulture** (85/100, inferred): A magical and melancholy gentler work whose expansive sadness sneaks up on the viewer. Its austere, simple hand-drawn animation creates a fragile, impermanent world that laments loss while celebrating humanity, with a refined sense of metaphor. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/10/movie-review-the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-studio-ghibli.html)
- **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (80/100, inferred): Takahata has created a ravishing, technically perfect product filled with tender, humorous details in its hand-drawn watercolour scenes. The gentle daring of this offering makes it all the harder to say goodbye, despite the film being slightly too long. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-film-review-10122174.html)
- **Little White Lies**, Anton Bitel (4/4/4): The critic praises the vibrant, bittersweet feminist adaptation of the folk tale and its undeniable visual beauty while noting the excessive length and ponderous pacing as flaws. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/tale-princess-kaguya)
- **The New York Times**, Nicolas Rapold (80/100, inferred): The film finds a peculiarly moving undertow of feeling in a venerable Japanese folk tale about a foundling country girl who can’t shake a sense of being out of place. The critic notes the director’s artistry and feeling for the main character are deeply felt. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/movies/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya-from-isao-takahata.html)
- **Time Out**, Alex Dudok de Wit (4/5): The critic calls it a delicate, muted film steeped in folklore that offers an achingly nostalgic meditation on love, age and departure from the world, though it demands patience. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Leslie Felperin (75/100, inferred): A lovely piece of work adapting the Japanese folk tale of a magical child who grows into an independent-minded princess. It showcases Takahata’s flair for expressing movement in standout sequences and explores themes of family norms versus self-expression. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/tale-princess-kaguya-kaguya-hime-707037/)
- **Radio Times**, Leslie Felperin (3/5): The critic notes the exemplary draughtsmanship and some exquisite sequences but finds the film overlong, a little dull and narratively alienating, with a melancholy ending unsuitable for younger children. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-bbuo1w/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya/)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (50/100, inferred): The film is a labour of love that looks amazing in its hand-painted style but drags in the middle section as the princess waits for suitors. Lush imagery offers consolation but the narrative feels too constrained until its moving final movements. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/19/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya-review-lush-imagery)
- **Sight and Sound**, Andrew Osmond (30/100, inferred): The critic describes a delicate post-pastoral fairytale epic but finds it overly long and leisurely paced, especially in its mid-section dealing with suitors. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-tale-princess-kaguya)
- **Den of Geek**, Ryan Lambie (5/5): The critic calls it an ambitious, personal Studio Ghibli classic with a loose, expressive pencil-and-ink animation style. The film is praised as a moving allegory about the brevity and joy of life, with a heartfelt ending and sincerity that makes it almost heartbreaking. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya-review/)
- **HeyUGuys**, Gloria Daniels-Moss (5/5): Takahata delivers a touching tale of love and loss with breathtakingly beautiful, abstract animation that mixes pastel watercolors and pencil etchings. The story balances deep sadness with moments of humor and visual splendor. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-review/)
- **Consequence** (A-): The film is an exquisitely drawn fable that blends joy and melancholy while highlighting simpler pleasures and the pains of societal expectations. Its minimalist Japanese aesthetic and patient storytelling make it one of the year’s finest animated works. [Read](https://consequence.net/2014/12/film-review-the-tale-of-princess-kaguya/)
- **Paste**, Geoff Berkshire (9.0): Takahata delivers a defiantly idiosyncratic masterwork whose hand-drawn watercolor and charcoal animation achieves timeless beauty while advancing a message about a woman’s right to choose her own path. The leisurely pace and mature themes make it rewarding for adult viewers seeking something beyond typical animation fare. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/article/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya)
- **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (A-): The film is a rich and rewarding, gorgeously impressionistic hand-drawn work with a strong feminist tone and meditations on mortality. It is meditatively paced with a slightly repetitive middle section but remains charming and experimental. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-studio-ghiblis-rich-and-rewarding-the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-20141014/)
- **The Wrap** (85/100, inferred): The critic calls the film an exquisite hand-drawn animated marvel and an instant Oscar contender that puts civilization on trial in an epic pastoral tale. They single out the confident watercolor animation that vividly brings the natural world and childhood miracles to life. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-review-chloe-grace-moretz-james-caan-darren-criss/)
- **Eye for Film**, Owen Van Spall (80/100, inferred): The film offers a relatable, compassionately told story of youthful desire versus duty with exquisite, brushstroke-like animation that appeals to adults and younger viewers alike. It has real emotional heft but runs a little long at nearly two-and-a-half hours. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/tale-of-princess-kaguya-2013-film-review-by-owen-van-spall)
- **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (B): The critic finds the film an enchanting folktale that celebrates nature through its distinctive sumi-e animation style and emotional depth. A minor complaint is an abrupt, under-setup revelation late in the story that briefly disrupts the flow. [Read](https://collider.com/the-tale-of-princess-kaguya-review/)
- **NME**, Nick Levine (75/100, inferred): The review describes a warm and charming animated adventure with gorgeous hand-drawn visuals and a wistful score that keeps the folk-tale story engaging. It notes unexpected sad and strange turns but highlights the film’s nomination-worthy qualities. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-various-artists-15987-317362)
- **Digital Spy**, Simon Reynolds (70/100, inferred): Takahata’s return is seen as a memorable, visually stunning addition to the Ghibli canon with elegant watercolour animation and a moving Hisaishi score. It is rewarding for fans despite some narrative drag and not quite matching the heights of the director’s earlier masterpieces. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a635065/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya-review-rewarding-for-studio-ghibli-fans/)

## Details

- **Director:** Isao Takahata
- **Director:** Isao Takahata
- **Screenplay:** Riko Sakaguchi, Isao Takahata
- **Cinematography:** Keisuke Nakamura
- **Editor:** Toshihiko Kojima
- **Music:** Joe Hisaishi
- **Producer:** Yoshiaki Nishimura, Seiichiro Ujiie
- **Cast:** Aki Asakura as The Princess Kaguya (voice); Takeo Chii as Sanuki no Miyatsuko (voice); Nobuko Miyamoto as Ōna / Narrator (voice); Kengo Kora as Sutemaru (voice); Atsuko Takahata as Lady Sagami (voice); Tomoko Tabata as Menowarawa (voice); Shinosuke Tatekawa as Lord Inbe no Akita (voice); Takaya Kamikawa as Prince Ishitsukuri (voice)
- **Runtime:** 2h 17m
- **Certificate (MPA):** PG
- **Release (the US):** 17 October 2014
- **Genres:** Animation, Drama, Fantasy
- **Budget:** $49 million
- **Box office:** $24 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILVGna1QMkc

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $11.99, sd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2015: Best Animated Feature (nominated)
- Annie Award for Best Animated Feature 2015: Annie Award for Best Animated Feature (nominated)
- Annie Award for Directing in a Feature Production 2015: Annie Award for Directing in a Feature Production (nominated)
- Annie Award for Music in a Feature Production 2015: Annie Award for Music in a Feature Production (nominated)
- Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film 2014: Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film (won)
- Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year 2014: Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year (nominated)
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Animated Film 2014: Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Animated Film (won)
- Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Animated Film 2014: Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Animated Film (nominated)
- Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Foreign Language Film 2014: Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Foreign Language Film (nominated)
- Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation Film 2013: Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation Film (won)

## If you liked this

- *Grave of the Fireflies* (1988), Fi1m 94: Takahata’s other great film about a child the world will not keep. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/grave-of-the-fireflies.md)
- *Song of the Sea* (2014), Fi1m 82: Irish folklore drawn by hand, with the same faith in flat colour and quiet. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/song-of-the-sea.md)
- *The Red Turtle* (2016), Fi1m 84: A wordless fable about a life on an island, made with Ghibli’s blessing. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-red-turtle.md)
- *Kirikou and the Sorceress* (1998): A West African tale told in bold outlines, brisk where Kaguya is slow.
- *Ugetsu* (1953): Mizoguchi’s ghost story of old Japan, where ambition also costs a family everything.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya