Princess Mononoke: Sub or Dub?
Neil Gaiman wrote the English script, and on some discs it is the subtitle track too. The Miramax cast, what ANN's critics heard, and why the subtitles matter as much as the audio.
Princess Mononoke's English dub is the one with Neil Gaiman's name on the script, and the critics who reviewed it mostly liked it. The bigger catch is the subtitles: on Disney's Blu-ray the English subtitles are largely Gaiman's dub script, so switching to Japanese audio does not guarantee a separate translation. Choose the subtitle track as carefully as the audio.
The short answer
Watch in Japanese if your copy has a translation separate from the dub script; the ANN reviewer of the original DVD preferred that track. Watch the English dub if you want spoken English: it holds up, and Zac Bertschy once wrote of it: "Probably the best dub I've ever seen." If your edition offers only the dub script as subtitles, the dub is the more honest way to hear Gaiman's version.
Who made the English version
Miramax, Disney's subsidiary at the time, released the film in North America. ANN reported Disney's casting in July 1998: Claire Danes as San, Gillian Anderson as Moro, Minnie Driver as Eboshi and Billy Crudup as Ashitaka. ANN's encyclopedia credits Gaiman with the screenplay adaptation and with adapting the theme song, Jack Fletcher with voice direction, and Haruyo Moriyoshi, Ian MacDougall and Steve Alpert with the translation. It also lists Billy Bob Thornton as Jigo, Keith David as Okkoto and as the opening narrator, and GKIDS as a licensor since 2017.
| Character | Japanese | English |
|---|---|---|
| Ashitaka | Yōji Matsuda | Billy Crudup |
| San | Yuriko Ishida | Claire Danes |
| Lady Eboshi | Yūko Tanaka | Minnie Driver |
| Toki | Sumi Shimamoto | Jada Pinkett-Smith |
Gaiman's missing name
Gaiman's credit is in the film's end credits but was never on the advertising. In 2019 he explained on Twitter, as ANN reported, that Studio Ghibli had asked for some Miramax executives' names to be removed from the poster; the executives kept theirs and found his "contractually expendable." He also confirmed that he got the job on Quentin Tarantino's recommendation. When he visited Ghibli in 2007, ANN quoted his blog saying he had wanted to pay his respects since they first invited him while he was working on the English adaptation.
What the critics heard
Patrick Caldwell's review of the Buena Vista DVD called the English track "very well done," with excellent performances from everyone except Thornton's Jigo, but still chose the Japanese version because it "has none of the embarrassing or awkward moments of the dub and none of the translation errors." He also noted that the Japanese track on that disc was significantly louder and fuller.
Bertschy's praise came in his 2002 analysis of the Spirited Away dub, where he said he had felt Miramax's Mononoke dub was well done: "Probably the best dub I've ever seen." Twelve years later his review of Disney's Blu-ray found that the dub "still holds up pretty well," though the cast speaks in the hushed monotone of most Ghibli dubs. He called Anderson's casting as Moro "the most baffling choice," and judged Gaiman's script "adequate at getting the story across and bringing the characters to life, but it's missing the strange, old-time language the film uses to evoke the period and mood."
Check the subtitles before you start
The original Miramax DVD carried two English texts. ANN's December 2000 report, citing Anime on DVD, described "the Gaiman subtitles done as close captions and the Miyazaki script done as true subtitles." Bertschy wrote that the more literal track was there because fans petitioned for it, and that Disney's Blu-ray dropped it: its subtitles shift a little with the Japanese audio, losing lines added for the dub, but in his words "largely it's just the dub script." ANN's reviews here do not cover a GKIDS disc, so this page does not say what that edition carries. Look for a subtitle option labeled as a literal or Japanese-track translation.
The theme song is another difference. Bertschy noted that Disney kept Spirited Away's Japanese closing song rather than recording a new one "as they did for Mononoke Hime"; ANN credits Sasha Lazard with performing the English theme and Gaiman with adapting it.
A note on quoting
The lines on our Princess Mononoke quotes page are checked English transcriptions, and this page does not claim any of them for the dub or a particular subtitle track; with this film, the two can be the same text. The ending explainer covers the final act, with spoilers.