"It's a remarkably gorgeous piece of work."
— Oliver Lyttelton, The Playlist
"The animation is so gorgeous that any given frame could pass for a masterwork."
— Noel Murray, The Dissolve
"An exquisite, hand-drawn marvel and an alternatingly jubilant and heartrending epic pastoral."
— Inkoo Kang, TheWrap
"This delicate, hand-drawn marvel is lyrical and heartbreaking in ways that most live-action movies never approach."
— Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor
"It's the best kind of fairy tale — tough, deep and meaningful, with a heroine who stays true to herself in spite of shallow temptations."
— Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
"The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a marvel of Japanese animation, a hand-drawn, painterly epic that submerges us in a world of beauty."
— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a visionary tour de force, morphing from a childlike gambol into a sophisticated allegory on the folly of materialism and the evanescence of beauty."
— Maggie Lee, Variety
"Magical and melancholy, The Tale of Princess Kaguya comes from the other mad genius of Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata, who co-founded the beloved Japanese animation company alongside the great Hayao Miyazaki back in 1985."
— Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine (Vulture)
"A devastating and deceptively simple tale adapted from 10th-century folklore, Isao Takahata’s The Tale Of Princess Kaguya distills a millennium of Japanese storytelling into a timeless film that feels both ancient and alive in equal measure."
— David Ehrlich, The A.V. Club
"The Tale of Princess Kaguya is both very simple and head-spinningly confounding, a thing of endless visual beauty that seems to partake in a kind of pictorial minimalism but finds staggering possibilities for beautiful variation within its ineluctable modality. It’s a true work of art."
— Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com