Studio Ghibli Quietly Axed the Prequel to Its 12-Year-Old, 100% Rotten Tomatoes Masterpiece

Here is a curveball from Studio Ghibli history: Isao Takahata almost made a prequel to The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and then it vanished into the drawer. Yes, a prequel to the film that has sat at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for more than a decade. Recently, NHK in Japan spotlighted newly uncovered drafts that show just how unusual that unmade project would have been.

The Kaguya prequel that never happened

Earlier this year, Seiji Kano, a professor at Tokyo Zokei University, found a stash of roughly 130 pages of handwritten notes and scripts tucked away in Takahata’s personal workspace — apparently overlooked until now. Among them: a document titled "Adaptation Proposal for an Animated Version of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," the folktale that inspired Kaguya.

Here’s the twist: it wasn’t just an early version of the movie we know. The material reads like a prequel, focused on Kaguya before she ever arrived on Earth. One scene reportedly has Kaguya in conversation with an elderly figure on the moon who warns her off our planet.

"Stay away from Earth."

According to Kano, this may be the same backstory Takahata once hinted at on the film’s official website. It never made it further than notes.

Why this tracks with Takahata’s whole deal

While Hayao Miyazaki was off building massive fantasy worlds with Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, Takahata was chasing something smaller, realer, and more piercing. Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Kaguya all make the case that animation doesn’t need dragons or spirits to wreck you — emotion is the special effect. Reading about this prequel idea only underlines that: he wanted to dig into what it means to ache for life and to feel human, even if you aren’t.

Two more lost Takahata stories turned up too

The discovery wasn’t just about Kaguya. Kano also surfaced two unpublished scripts from Takahata’s early Toei Animation days — both early evidence of the empathy-first approach he carried into Ghibli.

• "Oeyama": A reimagining of a classic demon-slayer legend where the heroes don’t hack through monsters. They use magic sake to shrink the oni and save kidnapped children — no bloodbath, just cleverness and compassion.
• "The Jewel I Received": Takahata’s twist on Kenji Miyazawa’s "The Shell Fire." A rabbit is tempted into wrongdoing by a fox; this time the rabbit actually wins. Then the fox breaks the frame and addresses the audience:

  "Hey, I’m always the villain. Don’t you think that’s unfair?"

So, what are we left with?

A tantalizing what-if. Takahata workshopped a Kaguya prequel about life before Earth, including that moon-side warning, but it never left the notes phase. If you already find Kaguya devastating, this lost version sounds like it might have made the whole thing even sadder, stranger, and — knowing Takahata — more beautiful.

Would you want Ghibli to dust off and animate that prequel today? In the meantime, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is currently streaming on HBO Max.