Studio Ghibli classic has never looked better or bigger.

You could make a pretty solid argument that Princess Mononoke is Hayao Miyazaki’s “biggest” anime film. Sure, the legendary Studio Ghibli director has other tales of grand adventure on his resume, but Princess Mononoke, which was originally meant to be Miyazaki’s final film before retiring, is nonstop gravitas, a start-to-finish series of significant scenes connecting to the film’s pondering of how humanity can feel downright puny compared to the full scope of nature, and yet how fragile nature can be when mankind’s needs and desires encroach upon it.

That sense of scale, establishing the massive stature of the animal gods and the seemingly endless trees of the forests, is central to Princess Mononoke’s dramatic and thematic weight, and now Miyazaki’s biggest film is going to be shown on the movie industry’s biggest screens, with the first-ever IMAX screening of Princess Mononoke set to take place this month in North America.

If you’re worried that taking a beautifully hand-drawn film from 1997 and putting it on something as huge as an IMAX screen is going to turn it into a blurry mess, you can put your mind at ease. The IMAX screenings will be using distributor GKIDS’ new 4K restoration of Princess Mononoke.

▼ It looks gorgeous, especially if the first time you saw Princess Mononoke was on an Nth-generation fansub.

The remaster was produced in cooperation with Studio Ghibli itself, with GKIDS saying:

“The IMAX version of the film was created from a new 4K restoration directly overseen by Studio Ghibli’s own Atsushi Okui, who has been involved in nearly every major Studio Ghibli project since he first started at the studio in 1993. Okui’s most recent credit with the studio was as Director of Digital Imaging on Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning The Boy and the Heron, which was also the first Studio Ghibli film to screen in IMAX format.”

Screening starts in North American theaters on March 26, and tickets can already be reserved through the IMAX website here.

Source: GKIDS, IMAX
Top image: Studio Ghibli
Insert image: IMAX
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