Ashitaka is infected with an incurable disease by a possessed boar/god. He is to die unless he can find a cure to rid the curse from his body. It seems that his only hope is to travel to the far east. When he arrives to get help from the deer god, he finds himself in the middle of a battle between the animal inhabitants of the forest and an iron mining town that is exploiting and killing the forest. Leading the forest animals in the battle is a human raised by wolves, Princess Mononoke.—Doug Short