The anime feature The Deer King, now streaming on Netflix, has a bunch of significant things in common with Studio Ghibli’s movie Princess Mononoke: Both movies’ plots concern a spreading corruption overtaking a country. Both protagonists are veteran warriors and exiled wanderers. Both movies focuses on lush natural settings and the people who inhabit them. Also, both movies features people who ride deer. But the main thing Deer King and Princess Mononoke have in common is co-director Masashi Andô, Princess Mononoke’s chief animation director and character designer. Which explains why Deer King doesn’t just look like a Ghibli film, it feels like one.
Up to a point.
Deer King’s story adapts a series of fantasy novels by Japanese author Nahoko Uehashi, collapsing a great deal of world-building and complex character interaction into a broad story that often feels like it doesn’t have enough space to fully pay off all its arcs. It’s an ambitious, fascinating project, with a more fully realized setting and a more complicated setup than most films can manage, but the characters sometimes feel a little lost within that world. Some key story questions are never answered: The movie feels more like a starting point for a trilogy than like a standalone film.
But if you accept those limitations, it’s a marvelous project. Andô’s co-director, Masayuki Miyaji, is also a Ghibli vet, an assistant director on Spirited Away who went on to direct or art-direct episodes of Attack on Titan, Mars Daybreak, and Eureka Seven, among many other series. Together, the duo builds a story that feels rich and unique, aimed at the kind of adult audience that made Game of Thrones a hit.
The story centers on two warring kingdoms: The more powerful Zol is invading its neighbor country Aquafa, until a mysterious spiritual plague that only affects Zol natives begins tearing through the country. One Aquafan warrior in exile, Van, escapes a mine where he’s been imprisoned when the plague tears through it, spread by monstrous spirit-dogs. He takes with him the only other survivor, a young girl named Yuna. A fierce tracker, Sea, comes after Van, while a brilliant doctor, Hohsalle, tries to connect with him: Both think he might hold a key to understanding the disease, which could change the balance of power between the kingdoms.
The Deer King has a strong central thread in Van’s connection with Yuna and his determination to protect her. But unlike in other fantasy stories of this type, the two only travel together for a short time: His heroic efforts go into defending her world so she can live a comfortable life without him. His adventures go far beyond just protecting a child or building a found family. As with Princess Mononoke, politics matter as much in this story as any individual effort, and the slow grind of kingdoms competing for dominance matters as much as any one individual conflict or effort.
The visual design is equally rich and stately. Intense set pieces like the mine escape alternate with more leisurely, beautifully detail-driven sequences of mundane life for people distant from the war, and able to live outside it. It’s a fascinating movie: In its best moments, more impressive, visionary, and adult than most anime fantasies of the past decades, and more visually beautiful. Even where it struggles, it’s always from too much ambition rather than not enough.
The Deer King is now streaming on Netflix.
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