"He began to think," says Yoshioka, "maybe I should not make this entertaining, light-hearted stuff for children. Miyazaki, who was sickened by the materialism of the bubble period, was now living in a country traumatised and confused – both by its relationship with nature, and a creeping sense of spiritual emptiness. Only two months after that, a terrorist cult by the name of Aum Shinrikyo launched a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo Metro, killing 13 and injuring thousands. It killed 6,000 people, and destroyed the homes of tens of thousands more. Three years later, in 1995, the country was hit by the Kobe earthquake, the worst earthquake to hit Japan since 1922. The country's bubble period, an economic boom during the late 80s, burst in 1992, stranding Japan in a seemingly endless recession. Japan itself was also going through something of an existential crisis. "But for obvious reasons, his political beliefs were totally shaken in the early 1990s." "He used to be what he called leftist in sympathy, a believer in people power," explains Shiro Yoshioka, lecturer in Japanese Studies at Newcastle University. "I begin to hear of Ghibli as 'sweet' or 'healing,'" he grumbles in Princess Mononoke: How the Film Was Conceived, a six-hour documentary about the film’s production, "and I get an urge to destroy it." Yet even more significant was his growing despair at a world which he had increasingly come to believe was cursed. Firstly, he began to bristle at the popular idea that Studio Ghibli only makes gentle movies about how great nature is. During the late 80s, Miyazaki had built his reputation (along with the success of Studio Ghibli, which he founded with fellow director Isao Takahata) on films like Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro formally ambitious, thematically rich works, but generally affirming in tone and family-friendly in nature. When Princess Mononoke was first released in Japan on 12 July 1997, 25 years ago this week, it represented something of a departure for master animator and director Hayao Miyazaki. And I'm like, 'I have never seen anything like this. And now it's raining and the surface is slippery and wet. "But the moment that changed everything for me was the scene where you're looking at this large pebble. "I had zero plans to do it," Gaiman tells BBC Culture. – 11 of the best films to watch this July – The film that captures millennials' greatest fear
So, I'm calling you." Miramax, a then-subsidiary of Disney, had acquired the rights to distribute Princess Mononoke, the newest film from Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli, in the United States, and Weinstein wanted to fly Gaiman to Los Angeles to watch a cut of the movie. I called Quentin Tarantino and said, 'Quentin, will you do the English language script?' And he said, you don't want me, you want Gaiman. So I thought I've got to get the best to do it.
"This animated film, Princess Mononoke," Gaiman recalls him saying, "it's the biggest thing in Japan right now. In 1997, the British fantasy author Neil Gaiman received a call out of the blue from then-head of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein.