Everyone knows Spirited Away, Totoro, and The Boy and the Heron—Studio Ghibli’s big, beloved classics. But sitting at the top of Ghibli’s Rotten Tomatoes scores, with a perfect 100%, is a film that’s somehow still flying under the radar: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
It’s not flashy. Because it doesn’t need to be. Drawn in a trembling, hand-brushed style that feels more like a memory than a movie, Kaguya looks and moves like a story being told aloud. You can almost hear the paper rustle as each frame turns. The film adapts one of Japan’s oldest folktales, the story of a bamboo cutter who finds a glowing girl in the woods, raises her as his own, and watches her grow with astonishing speed into a radiant young woman whose heart remains caught between two worlds.
Toho
But this isn’t just a beautiful retelling. It’s a quiet rebellion. Kaguya, instead of becoming the passive prize her suitors expect, turns their poetic promises back on them, demanding they prove their love with impossible acts. And when the impossible, of course, fails to arrive, what’s left is something achingly human: grief, beauty, wonder, and longing.
Chloë Grace Moretz voices Kaguya in the English dub with stunning vitality and tenderness, but the true star is the animation itself. The visuals are loose, raw, and alive in a way no other Ghibli film dares to be. It’s less like watching a movie, more like falling into a childhood dream you only half-remember.
If you love Ghibli and haven’t seen this one, I’m telling you: it’s not just worth watching, it’s hands-down their greatest film.
Don’t just take my word for it. You can see for yourself. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max.
It’s not flashy. Because it doesn’t need to be. Drawn in a trembling, hand-brushed style that feels more like a memory than a movie, Kaguya looks and moves like a story being told aloud. You can almost hear the paper rustle as each frame turns. The film adapts one of Japan’s oldest folktales, the story of a bamboo cutter who finds a glowing girl in the woods, raises her as his own, and watches her grow with astonishing speed into a radiant young woman whose heart remains caught between two worlds.
Toho
But this isn’t just a beautiful retelling. It’s a quiet rebellion. Kaguya, instead of becoming the passive prize her suitors expect, turns their poetic promises back on them, demanding they prove their love with impossible acts. And when the impossible, of course, fails to arrive, what’s left is something achingly human: grief, beauty, wonder, and longing.
Chloë Grace Moretz voices Kaguya in the English dub with stunning vitality and tenderness, but the true star is the animation itself. The visuals are loose, raw, and alive in a way no other Ghibli film dares to be. It’s less like watching a movie, more like falling into a childhood dream you only half-remember.
If you love Ghibli and haven’t seen this one, I’m telling you: it’s not just worth watching, it’s hands-down their greatest film.
Don’t just take my word for it. You can see for yourself. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max.