Originally released in 1997, Studio Ghibli’s "Princess Mononoke" remains an undisputed masterpiece of world cinema. In 2025, the film will return to IMAX screens as a 4K Digital Remaster, followed by a highly anticipated 4K UHD + Blu-ray set release on June 24, 2026.
But what goes into remastering an immortal classic? What philosophies guide the hand of those tasked with updating Hayao Miyazaki’s vision for the modern era?
Animate Times sat down with two Ghibli veterans who were in the trenches during the film's original production: Atsushi Okui, the film's Director of Cinematography and current Executive Officer/Imaging Director at Studio Ghibli, and Tamaki Kojo, the current Head of Post-Production.
From the mind-boggling manual labor of analog photography to the realization that "Princess Mononoke" was the bridge between two eras of animation, we dive deep into the "remastering philosophy"—a quest to recapture the exact image the staff saw during the very first premiere. This is the story of the sweat, tears, and technology behind a legend that refuses to fade.
The Art of "Analog Cinematography"
── To start off, could you both explain your current roles at Studio Ghibli and the parts you play in the production process?
Atsushi Okui (Okui): I serve as the Head of the Imaging Department and also act as an Executive Officer. As the name suggests, the Imaging Department handles everything related to the visual output of our films.My background is in animation cinematography (shooting). Even now, I’m involved in digital compositing and various other visual tasks across our projects.
Tamaki Kojo (Kojo): I’m currently the Head of the Post-Production Department.My team takes over once the "shooting" (compositing) is finished. We handle editing, sound, music, and casting-related production tasks. I also oversee the creation of the final masters.
── You both worked on "Princess Mononoke" together, right?
Okui: Yes, I was the Director of Cinematography on that film.
Kojo: And I was at the very bottom of the ladder back then, just tirelessly shooting frame by frame (laughs). Until "Princess Mononoke," I worked directly under Okui in the cinematography department.
── I think "cinematography" in animation is a concept that’s hard for some people to visualize. Could you explain what that job actually entails?
Okui: Certainly. In the pipeline of making an animation, cinematography is the final stage of production. It comes right before what Kojo handles now in post-production.It’s where the characters drawn by the animators and painted by the colorists meet the backgrounds painted by the art staff. We place the characters over those backgrounds, add various visual effects and camera movements, and create the final frame. Basically, our job is to create the actual image that the audience sees on screen.
── Back then, you used a physical animation stand and layered actual hand-painted cels, right?
Okui: Exactly. Everything is digital now, but up until "Princess Mononoke," film was the standard medium. We used a massive animation stand with a film camera mounted on top.We would layer the transparent cels with the characters over the background, set up the lighting, and shoot the film one frame at a time. We repeated that thousands of times to create the movie.
"Princess Mononoke": A Fusion of Analog and Digital
── "Princess Mononoke" was considered quite advanced for its time because it incorporated CG and digital tech. But in reality, it was still primarily an analog production?
Okui: It was fundamentally analog. At Ghibli, we first experimented with 3DCG on "Pom Poko" (1994).We started using digital production more seriously with "Whisper of the Heart" (1995), and for "Princess Mononoke," we finally established an internal CG department. However, back then, creating high-res images for film digitally was incredibly difficult and time-consuming.
The idea of making an entire film digitally didn't exist yet. We limited digital techniques to specific cuts that absolutely required CG expression.By the end of production, we also ran into schedule issues where the hand-painting of cels couldn't keep up. To handle that, we introduced digital painting for some parts. It was also an experiment to see how we’d transition our workflow after "Princess Mononoke." In the end, digital technology was used in about 10% of the film.
── How did you decide where the "boundary" was—when to use digital versus analog?
Kojo: Things that were meant to enhance the visual depth, like the particles inside the Nightwalker (Didarabotchi), were decided in advance to be CG or digital.The digital painting I mentioned earlier, however, was a result of the war against the schedule. The director and animators were producing a massive amount of key animation, and looking at the remaining time, it was physically impossible to paint it all on cels. So, we said, "Let's do it digitally." And usually, the most labor-intensive cuts are the ones that get finished last (laughs).
Back then, the specialized paint houses were always busy with TV series, so they couldn't just take on a massive influx of work at the last minute. Digital was a lifesaver because you don't have to wait for the paint to dry.However, I was worried that having analog and digital cuts mixed together might create a noticeable visual discrepancy. Did you and the team discuss how to align those styles, Okui-san?
Okui: Honestly, we weren't in a position to have those high-level discussions. We were just trying to survive.
Kojo: True, there was no room for that (laughs). I think the production and ink-and-paint staff made the calls on where to use digital based on necessity.
Okui: To be fair, digital painting wasn't introduced only for the schedule.For cuts that were primarily CG, we felt that digitally painting the hand-drawn elements would make them blend better. We started with those specific uses and slowly expanded the scope as we went.
Reviving the "Premiere Screening"
── For the 4K Digital Remaster, I heard you spent a lot of time adjusting the colors to bridge the gap between digital and film sections to recreate the original look. Was that the focus this time as well?
Okui: The core philosophy hasn't changed much.The foundation of the 4K version is based on the imagery we refined for the SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) version. For this HDR (High Dynamic Range) version, we simply added further adjustments to the highlights and shadows.
However, for scenes shot on film, we used a technique called "Toukako" (backlighting/transmitted light) to make certain elements glow intensely.Those film scenes retain that power even after being digitized. But "Princess Mononoke" also has digital cuts that had elements we wanted to glow just as brightly.This created a gap between the film shots and the digital shots. For this version, we added processing to "stretch" those highlights in the digital sections. In the HDR version, you'll see a subtle but important difference in how those glows look compared to the SDR version.
── The scene where the Forest Spirit first appears felt much more powerful.
Okui: That cut is 3DCG. With a traditional animation stand, there are physical limits to how far you can zoom in or out. You couldn't get that close.Plus, the camera moves in a 3D space in that scene. That’s why we used 3DCG.Even back then, Director Hayao Miyazaki’s instructions were right there in the storyboards. If you look at the published storyboard books, you can see the level of detail he demanded.
Kojo: He even wrote "Okui-san, I’m counting on you" right on the storyboard (laughs).
Okui: That was nearly 30 years ago (laughs). But I really wanted people who saw the film back then to experience it on the big screen again. That’s why we did the theatrical screenings, and I’m so glad we made it happen.
── The original theatrical release was the "final form" at the time. When moving to 4K, what was the "North Star" you followed?
Kojo: Whether it was the first Blu-ray release or the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) for theaters, there was one philosophy I shared with Okui-san, Miyazaki-san, and Suzuki-san (Producer Toshio Suzuki). Today, technology allows you to do almost anything, but we agreed: "Let’s not use it just because we can."
Our core concept was to "recreate the original premiere screening (Shogo Shisha) that the staff saw on the day it was finished."We wouldn't do anything more than that. We fix technical glitches or scratches on the film, of course, but even if we want to tweak things further, we don't.
Okui: It’s not a remake. It is, strictly, a remaster.
── Does having the original staff involved help get closer to that original vision?
Okui: Yes. But the "time limit" for the original staff to be able to do this kind of work is approaching. That’s a big reason why we are doing this now.
The Peak of Analog Production
── Looking back at the film 30 years later, are there expressions that still make you think, "Wow, we really pulled that off"?
Okui: "Princess Mononoke" was Ghibli’s final analog-heavy production. It was a culmination of everything we had learned in analog cinematography.One thing we did for the first time was the treatment of steam and smoke at the Tataraba (Iron Town). Usually, smoke is just drawn and layered, or done with an airbrush. But we decided to move it while adding texture through cinematographic processing.
It worked beautifully for the white smoke. But for the later scenes, we needed black smoke. On actual film, you can't really "film" black smoke that way. So, we processed the black smoke digitally.We took the same analog smoke effects, digitized them, inverted the colors to black, and composited them. I think that changed the entire atmosphere of the film's climax.
Kojo: The smoke expression Okui-san mentioned was actually incredibly difficult. You have these wide shots with dozens of smoke plumes, and they’re all moving in different directions. We had to shoot each one individually.
In those scenes, the camera is often "trucking back" (pulling away). We’d shoot the main background, but because animation cameras are stop-motion, once you finish one pass, you have to rewind the film and layer the smoke on top in a second pass. It was endless multiple exposure work.The camera movement was computer-controlled, but the smoke had to be layered one by one in a pitch-black room. "This plume is this size, at this position..." We were the ones stuck in the dark doing that (laughs).
── "Stuck in the dark" (laughs).
Kojo: Exactly. And it has to match the timing of the other smoke plumes and the 3-frame animation cycle. Doing that for every single plume of smoke... a 10-second cut could take more than a full day.If you made a mistake halfway through, half a day’s work was gone. You’d have to start from zero. But when we saw the "rushes" (unlocked footage) of that black smoke, which was something animation hadn't really done before, we all went, "Whoa."
The cinematography period for "Mononoke" lasted about 18 months to two years. For the final six months, it was almost entirely digital. Okui-san was barely in the analog darkroom anymore, so it was just about three of us left behind, grinding away (laughs).
Okui: That was the first time I started touching digital tools myself. I had zero experience. I had to learn from scratch, and there was no one to ask for help (laughs).
── When you're tackling something so new, is it more anxiety or excitement?
Okui: Well, the schedule anxiety was real (laughs). But more than that, the joy of pushing for a new kind of visual expression was much greater.
── Did it feel like Ghibli, and the job of cinematography, was moving to a new stage?
Okui: No, I don't think we were thinking about the "next thing" at all. We were just focused on how to finish what was in front of us. Once everything is done, you see what worked and what didn't, and then you use those lessons to move forward.
Kojo: Miyazaki-san even announced his retirement right around this time, didn't he? (laughs)
Okui: Yeah, his first retirement announcement.
Kojo: So we weren't thinking about the future. We were just trying to finish the movie.
── Kojo-san, how did it feel for you?
Kojo: I spent about six months going to the studio every single day—weekends, holidays, didn't matter. I was constantly wondering, "Will this ever end?" I felt like Keanu Reeves in the movie Speed (laughs). Just constantly turning incoming cuts into film.I’d open the camera room in the morning, and if there were no cuts ready, I’d go hunt down the assistant directors who’d been up all night and demand work so we could stay on schedule. The number of drawings was insane, and cel-shaded animation is heavy—physically!
── Right, cels are actual physical sheets.
Kojo: Exactly. When a pile of them arrived in the morning, it felt like carrying a box full of bricks.The cut envelopes have the duration written on them. I’d see a 2-second cut, but the envelope was incredibly thick (laughs). Thickness equals pain.
And the envelopes would be covered in cryptic symbols for special effects. I’d look at it and think, "How many hours will this take? This might be my whole day." We just kept charging forward.
── You had to. There was no other way to finish.
Kojo: Do or die. Meanwhile, Okui-san was constantly battling with a PC. Were you using Toonz (animation software) back then?
Okui: Yes, for the digital painting.
Kojo: We also had to composite film footage with other film footage.
Okui: We did. We’d digitize the cels, composite them, and put them back on film.Today, a standard PC can handle that, but back then, you needed a "Graphic Workstation" that cost about 10 million yen (approx. $70,000–$100,000 today) per unit.
We used workstations from an American company called Silicon Graphics. Including the servers, we had a fleet of them. I don’t even want to think about the total cost.The tools were specialized, too. Almost no one in Japan besides Ghibli was using Toonz for painting at the time. When compositing, cels are transparent except for the character, but to scan them, we had to lay them over a background—like a blue or green screen—and then manually pull the keys and create masks. We started with zero know-how. But every bit of that experience became the foundation for everything we did afterward.
The Finer Details of the Remaster
── Regarding this 4K HDR release, are there specific points you want fans to look out for?
Okui: Fundamentally, we made it to look exactly like the film. As I said, the digital sections lacked highlight data, so we tweaked those for HDR.
However, if a normal viewer watches it, they probably won't notice the "difference" as a technical change. We tried to recreate the "Toukako" (backlit) look from the film in HDR, but if you just do a standard conversion, the light doesn't "stretch" or "glow" correctly.
So, for this version, we had a special grading method developed to properly extend those light components—using a few "secret tricks" in the process.
You don't need to look for it consciously, but the "sparkle" and "brilliance" of the screen should feel much more vivid.
Kojo: When I saw the first 4K DCP, what struck me was how seamless it felt.
As I mentioned, there are three types of cuts: 1) Cels shot on film over a background, 2) Elements scanned, digitally composited, and put back on film, and 3) Characters digitally painted over backgrounds and put back on film.
I remember exactly which cuts were digital. Back in the day, I could spot them. But seeing this 4K version, the gap has vanished.
If you look at the production notes, you’ll know, but visually, it’s entirely seamless. Even for the cuts I knew were digital, they didn't stand out at all. As a single, unified work of art, it has improved tremendously. When I told Okui-san that after the screening, he just gave me a little smirk (laughs).
Okui: As Kojo said, cuts that were composited from film sources had to be shot, scanned, composited, and recorded back onto film. That makes the edges a bit "soft."
Conversely, digitally painted characters are data-driven, so they are very "sharp."Recording them onto film softens them slightly, but there’s still a difference between something that went through the film process twice versus once.
When we did the remaster 13 years ago, we worked in 2K. At the time, we thought using the original 2K digital data directly would look better.
But this time, since we were aiming for 4K from the start, we based everything on scans of the original film. This meant the textures varied between original film shots, composited film shots, and digital shots.
So, what do we do? We set the original film shots as our "target" and adjusted every single other cut to match that texture. We can only do this now because the technology has become efficient enough to allow it.
The Philosophy of Craftsmanship Today
── Since the 90s, the environment of animation has changed completely. How do you view these changes?
Okui: The number of people who have actually handled film is dwindling.In that sense, I feel incredibly lucky to have experienced the analog era, the digital era, and the transition between them. I started as a complete "analog person" who thought digital was out of the question.When we set up the cinematography department at Ghibli, we introduced computer-controlled animation stands. I didn't write the programs myself, but I had to learn how to use them.
You can't avoid digital if you want to make films. Experiencing that shift from analog to digital in real-time, making it part of my own "blood and bone," and then pushing into 4K... it’s been a very rewarding journey.We have to finish the HDR versions of our film-based works, but we also have all our digital-native works that need HDR versions too.
── That’s true.
Okui: That’s the next challenge. For 2D animation, HDR is a very high hurdle.
Kojo: Also, in terms of what has changed in 30 years—it’s the speed. During "Princess Mononoke," you couldn't see the results of your work the same day. You’d shoot for several days, send the film to the lab, wait for it to be developed, and then check it. It could take a week. You couldn't make instant decisions. If it was a "No-Go," you had to reshoot the whole thing.
Now, you hit "preview" and see the result in minutes. In that sense, we have much more time to spend on actual creativity and experimentation. It’s a great era for that.
── Given these technological shifts, what is the most important mindset for a creator today?
Okui: It’s definitely easier to iterate through trial and error now. But fiddling around aimlessly won't get you anywhere. You need to be able to imagine the "final form" in your head, even if it's just a vague idea. Then you use trial and error to inch closer to that vision.
Can you conjure that ideal image? That depends on the size of your "internal library." And how do you expand that library?
── By watching many films and keeping your hands moving?
Okui: Watching is important, yes. But if an animation cinematographer only watches animation, they’ll just end up imitating others.To find true originality, you have to base your work on real-life experiences. You need to look at everyday events with an observant eye. That’s what matters.
── That feels like a lesson for life, not just art. Especially in an age where we feel like we know everything without ever leaving our rooms.
Okui: You can see everything on a monitor now, after all.
Kojo: I always think that animation, or any filmed work, is ultimately a "reproduction." I love musicals and theater; every performance is slightly different, and there’s a unique tension in the air. People pay $100 or $200 for that experience.On the other hand, a filmed work is basically the same every time you watch it. That’s why we have to make it a work that can stand up to the intensity of a live performance.
── It’s hard for a film to have a "different ending every time."
Kojo: Exactly. That’s why the "internal library" is so important. If people who love anime only watch anime, they hit a wall. I’ve never actually seen Miyazaki-san just sitting around watching anime (laughs). That says everything.
"We make our films to be seen on the big screen."
── Okui-san mentioned wanting people to see this in a theater. Some will be seeing "Princess Mononoke" for the first time through this 4K release, while others will be revisiting a nostalgic favorite. Do you have a final message for them?
Okui: The film was released 30 years ago. Most people under 30 haven't seen it in a theater. Probably only those in their 40s or older have had that experience. That means more than half of the audience hasn't seen it on the big screen.Of course, watching it on 4K UHD or Blu-ray at home is great, but we make our films with the assumption that they will be projected onto a massive screen.
If you have the chance to see it in a theater, please take it. It’s a completely different experience.
── The remaster of "Kiki’s Delivery Service" also hits IMAX theaters on June 19th. Is the goal the same?
Okui: I’m just happy if people watch it. But for us, the primary goal is "archiving." The people who made these films won't be around forever, so we want to leave behind the best possible versions while we still can.
Personally, I think these versions are better than the originals. The weakness of film is that it’s analog—every time you copy it, the quality drops. The prints shown in theaters in 1997 were copies of copies. This 4K remaster, made from the original negatives, recreates the impact of that first "premiere" screening better than any print ever could.
Kojo: If you buy the 4K UHD or Blu-ray, I want you to watch it in an environment that is the total opposite of what the "Warning" text at the start suggests (laughs).Make the room as dark as possible. Get the biggest screen you can. Crank the volume. That’s how you truly taste the work.There are no commercials. Get your favorite snacks and drinks within arm's reach (laughs), and just get lost in it for 2 hours and 13 minutes.Quality-wise, this disc is designed for people who want to bring the movie theater into their homes. If you have the right setup, it’s as good as a professional screening.
── So if you own this 4K UHD, "Princess Mononoke" actually gets better every time you upgrade your TV? (laughs)
Kojo: Exactly. Start by painting your walls neutral gray (laughs). Also, we’ve added accessibility features this time—Japanese subtitles and a brand-new audio description track. I hope as many people as possible get to hold this in their hands.
[Interviewer: Taira]
© Animate Times
*Some parts of this text have been translated using machine translation
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