- Director: Isao Takahata
- Year: 2013
Overview
A bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl inside a glowing stalk of bamboo and raises her with his wife in the countryside. The girl grows rapidly, and the cutter, believing she is a divine presence, uses gold found in the bamboo to buy a mansion in the capital to raise her as a noble princess. Kaguya hates the rigid rules of high society and the suitors who try to win her. She eventually reveals she is from the Moon and must return, leaving her human parents behind.
Takeaways
The bamboo cutter thinks he's doing Kaguya a favor by moving her to the capital and buying her a noble life, but he's actually taking her away from the simple country life she loves. The rigid expectations of high society treat her like a prize to be won rather than a real person with her own feelings. Kaguya tries her best to resist the suffocating rules and the greedy suitors, but the pressure eventually becomes too much to bear. When she's forced to return to the Moon and forget her time on Earth, it shows how forcing someone to conform to strict social roles can end up driving them away completely.