It’s a story Asian audiences know well — about a princess from the moon who wishes to experience life on earth, where she challenges her suitors to a series of impossible tasks — and this gives Takahata room to express his own interpretation, as he lovingly does in early scenes.
Whether it’s Isao Takahata or Hayao Miyazaki (or even Miyazaki’s son Goro) at the helm, Studio Ghibli has an unmistakable “house style,” which is to say that the hand-drawn characters and worlds are all rendered in a distinctly similar way. Over the years, Takahata twice broke from that mold, experimenting with a more illustrative style in 1999’s “My Neighbors the Yamadas” (whose watercolor textures were achieved digitally) and again, for his final film, a big-budget adaptation of Japanese classic “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” whose brushwork and textures suggest calligraphy and parchment scrolls. It’s a story Asian audiences know well — about a princess from the moon who wishes to experience life on earth, where she challenges her suitors to a series of impossible tasks — and this gives Takahata room to express his own interpretation, as he lovingly does in early scenes. He takes his time to show tiny Kaguya, rescued from within a bamboo shoot, stumble around in infant form, and shares a stunning moment when she dances beneath the flowering limbs of a cherry tree in full bloom. While visually distinct, the movie boasts one key connection with Studio Ghibli aesthetic: the contribution of composer Joe Hisaishi, on whose wings these films take flight.