Studio Ghibli’s upcoming book on Princess Mononoke will reveal how different Hayao Miyazaki’s original concept was from the 1997 film. The seventh volume of the filmmaker’s official Image Board collection, published by Iwanami Shoten Ltd., is scheduled for release in Japan on December 3, 2026.
Subtitled “The struggle to break new ground: the 16 years leading to the birth of that masterpiece,” the book documents the film’s development through 258 illustrations from its production. Ninety of the images have not been released publicly before.
The early story differed substantially from the finished film. In the original concept, the “Mononoke” was a supernatural being, while the princess was a separate character who formed a romantic bond with it. The published account describes the idea as resembling a Beauty and the Beast story; only traces of that relationship remain in the movie.
Miyazaki had completed an initial draft before Studio Ghibli’s 1995 music video On Your Mark. After writing and directing that project, he reconsidered the Mononoke concept, feeling that it revisited ground he had already covered. “I can’t be bound by what I’ve done before,” he said.
The book also includes an interview with veteran Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, who discusses the film’s production and its relationship to earlier works, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Suzuki said Princess Mononoke was an attempt to revisit the relationship between people and nature, which he felt was more complicated than it had seemed in Nausicaä.
The previous volume in the Image Board collection was published in June 2026 and focused on On Your Mark and Whisper of the Heart. No international release date has been announced for the new volume.
Sources: Comic Book Resources.