Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
Entry updated 23 February 2026. Tagged: Film.
Japanese animated film (2026). Studio Colorido and Studio Chromato. Directed by Shingo Yamashita. Written by Saeri Natsuo and Shingo Yamashita. Voice cast include Saori Hayami, Anna Nagase and Yūko Natsuyoshi. 142 minutes. Colour.
"A teensy bit in the future, in a world not so different from the present" (see Near Future), intelligent, multi-talented 17 year-old Iroha Sakayori (Nagase) is walking home when she sees a shooting star and makes a wish: "Please send me money" (she is estranged from her mother, living hand-to-mouth and trying to get a scholarship). Electricity shoots along some power lines and Iroha sees a glowing utility pole: inside is a baby girl. Reluctantly she takes it home, and over the next couple of days the child turns into a teenager (Natsuyoshi), who explains she came from the Moon ("maybe") and ran away because life was so boring. This reminds Iroha of the traditional "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter", about a man who finds and raises Kaguya, the Princess of the Moon, who is pressured into getting married but ends up returning to the Moon and forgetting what happened. The girl, from this point called Kaguya, considers this unsatisfactory and insists she will achieve her own happy ending; though Iroha says if that is who she is, she will have to accept her fate.
They visit Tsukuyomi, a Virtual Reality Cyberspace accessed by wearing contact lenses (see Technology), overseen by the AI Idol Yachiyo Runami (Hayami). Kaguya enthusiastically has the pair sign up for the Yachiyo Cup, a streamer tournament involving competition and songs (songwriting is Iroha's strength), whose winners will get to perform with Yachiyo. Kaguya and Iroha reach the final where – with help from Yachiyo – they battle the streamer group Black OnyX, led by Iroha's brother; though the latter win the game, Kaguya ends up gaining the most followers, so she and Iroha end up singing with Yachiyo. At the end Kaguya flippantly tells Iroha that she loves and wants to marry her; Iroha's response is "I guess if you pay half the rent and bills and stuff I don't mind us living together". Then some of the Tsukuyomi avatars are hijacked and try to grab Kaguya, but Yachiyo sees them off.
Sometime later Kaguya provides her backstory. "On the Moon we don't have any sense of taste or temperature. Everyone just repeats their roles over and over again. It's so boring." (Iroha: "I can't imagine what that's like.") "I was always the odd one." She had watched humanity with envy: "Their lives were complex, fleeting and, best of all, free." She admits: "I kind of ditched work to come here," and that she will likely be retrieved at the next full Moon, probably from Sukoyomi, as "the virtual world is much closer to the Moon than your world". With Yachiyo's help they arrange a goodbye concert, though Iroha also makes plans to fight off the Moon's avatars with help from Black OnyX and Yachiyo. They fail; Kaguya says farewell and departs. Distraught, Iroha falls back into her old routines. There is a false ending as she accepts events, before changing her mind.
Iroha completes a song she had worked on with her father before his death, and manages to have it played to Kaguya on the Moon. After doing so, she realizes Yachiyo is Kaguya (perhaps not a total surprise to the viewer) and when confronted Yachiyo confirms it: after hearing Iroha's song she had decided to finish her work and return to Earth. Though the former took many years, "the Moon's technology can transcend time itself" (see Time Travel), but en route her Spaceship hit a giant Asteroid, causing it to reach Earth 8,000 years ago and crash into the sea. Time passed and the internet was developed, resulting in Tsukuyomi. As this was "similar to the world of the Moon she knew so well ... it was possible to connect to the world without a body of her own", enabling her to reunite with Iroha: "it's not the simplest happy ending, but we got there" (see Time Paradox). Kaguya accepts that, as she is 8,000 years older ("an old lady", though her appearance is unchanged) Iroha might not want her back; but Iroha does, changing her career plans to become a Scientist, and ten years later builds an Android body for Kaguya/Yachiyo to Upload her consciousness into.
Kaguya describes her life on the Moon as that of a "corporate slave" (see Jobs in SF). The Alien civilization seems to be uploaded consciousnesses (or perhaps AI), with similarities to Tsukuyomi; for example, though otherwise realistic, Tsukuyomi cannot simulate taste and smell; whilst on the Moon there's no sense of taste or temperature. Kaguya was able to interact with the physical world for 8,000 years through the spaceship's ability to piggyback living creatures; whilst at one point Iroha visits a room where the part of the spaceship housing Kaguya is housed, in a glass tank surrounded by support machinery. When Kaguya is retrieved by her Moon civilization their avatars appear as creatures from folklore: if not whimsy, this might suggest they are the root of many myths.
The relationship between Iroha and Kaguya is clearly sapphic; aside from Iroha's brother and father, the primary and secondary characters are all female (see Feminism; Women in SF). The plot does not quite hold together, but is a pleasant example of reworking a folktale (see Mythology) into sf. Despite this being a musical (see Music), the songs – enjoyment of which is a matter of taste – are not so frequent as to hinder the plot. Though 142 minutes is too long, despite the android-building ending being rushed, Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is an enjoyable Anime: lively, with likeable protagonists and very good animation. [SP]
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