Princess Mononoke mouse pads for the desk

These Princess Mononoke mouse pads and desk mats carry Padrift artwork inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 film of forest gods, wolves and an iron-making town at war with the woods. Each pad is 3 mm neoprene with a fabric top, a non-slip base and stitched edges, printed edge to edge in a high-resolution print that holds its color. Sizes start at 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm), enough for a mouse, and end at 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm), enough for most of a desk, with six steps between, and each one is printed for its order.

Princess Mononoke is a very different Ghibli film from the gentle ones. It is set in a wild, half-mythical version of medieval Japan, it is fierce and sometimes violent, and it refuses to pick a side between the forest and the people cutting it down. When it opened in Japan in 1997, it briefly became the highest-grossing film ever released there. The studio's other films have their own page; this one stays in the forest.

A forest with depth

The forest in Princess Mononoke isn't a pretty backdrop. It is ancient, layered and slightly threatening: giant cedars, moss over everything, roots knotted into the ground and mist hanging between the trunks. Those layers are what make the film suit a desk mat. A forest scene reads from front to back, with dark roots near you and light filtering in behind, so the keyboard sits in the undergrowth while the trees rise up behind it.

That depth is easiest to see on the deeper sizes. XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm), gives a forest scene enough height above the keyboard for the trees and the light to show.

Palettes from the film

The film moves through several distinct places, and each has its own colors.

• The deep forest: moss green, dark cedar and black shadow, for a wooden desk and warm light.
• The Forest Spirit's pond: still teal water and pale light, calm enough for a work desk.
• The night forest: deep blue, with the glowing Nightwalker, for a dark setup with blue lighting.
• Irontown: rust, orange furnace glow and gray smoke, for a desk with warm, industrial touches.
• The Emishi village: soft blues and greens in the hills of the far east, the quietest palette in the film.

San in white and red

San, the girl raised by wolves whom the people of Irontown call Princess Mononoke, is one of the most striking figures in animation. She wears a white fur cape, red markings on her face, a short spear and, when she attacks, a mask with a fierce painted face. Her colors, white, red and dark earth tones, stand out sharply against the forest's greens.

A San portrait suits the small 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, placed toward the top so your hand rests below it. Her mask alone works too, as an almost abstract emblem in red and white. On a long mat, San crouched at one end with a wolf beside her keeps the most important part of the image clear of the keyboard.

Ashitaka's right arm

The film opens with a demon boar crashing into Ashitaka's village. He kills it to save his people, and its curse settles into his right arm as a dark, spreading mark that gives him frightening strength and will eventually kill him. The whole story is his journey west to find out why the boar god turned into a demon.

For a right-handed player, that detail has an odd resonance: the cursed arm is the mouse arm. A design that runs the dark tendrils of the curse along the right side of a mat, toward where your hand rests, is a clever nod for fans. Ashitaka himself, with his calm face and his bow, suits a design that faces inward from the far end.

Yakul, the red elk

Ashitaka travels on Yakul, a red elk with long curved horns who stays loyal through everything. Yakul is one of the gentlest creatures in the film, and the pair of them riding through open country is one of its most peaceful images. Riding scenes are wide by nature, so they suit a long mat, with Ashitaka and Yakul at one end heading toward the open landscape that fills the rest. On M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), or L, the journey stretches along the back of the desk.

The Forest Spirit by day

The Forest Spirit, the god at the heart of the forest, appears by day as a deer-like creature with branching antlers and an eerily calm, almost human face. Wherever it steps, plants spring up, flower and die in the same moment. It heals Ashitaka's gunshot wound at its pond but leaves his curse untouched, and its quiet, unknowable presence is the film's moral center.

That detail, flowers blooming and wilting under its feet, makes a lovely desk design. A trail of flowers crossing a mat in the Forest Spirit's footsteps leaves space for a keyboard while still reading as a scene, and it suits a light desk with plants nearby.

The Nightwalker

At night the Forest Spirit changes into the Nightwalker, a towering, translucent giant that walks over the treetops, glowing faintly blue against the dark. It is one of the most otherworldly images in any Ghibli film, and it is made for a dark desk. A Nightwalker design on a black or navy mat, with the figure rising above the trees behind the keyboard, pairs naturally with cool blue lighting and a black setup.

It also suits the deep XXL size, where the giant has room to tower above everything else on the desk.

Kodama in the roots

The kodama are tiny white tree spirits, with round heads and blank faces, who live among the roots of the old forest. In the film their presence is a sign that the forest is alive and healthy, and the appearance of a single kodama in the closing moments carries a lot of meaning.

Rather than putting one kodama on its own, a desk mat can scatter many of them through a forest floor, peeking out from moss and roots all around the keyboard. That kind of all-over layout looks good from any angle, and it hides wear because the eye never rests on one spot.

Wolves in white

San's adoptive mother, Moro, is a huge white wolf goddess, proud and sardonic, and her two grown wolf children fight at San's side. Their white fur and pale eyes against dark forest make a high-contrast palette that works especially well on a black desk with white peripherals. A wolf design with no human figures at all is also an elegant choice for someone who loves the film's animals more than its battles.

Okkoto and the boar clan

The boar clan, led by the ancient, half-blind boar god Okkoto, marches on Irontown to defend the forest, knowing the fight may destroy them. Okkoto is a vast white figure surrounded by darker boars, and the scenes of the clan moving through the forest are heavy, solemn and full of mass. Those designs suit a desk mat that is meant to make a statement, ideally in a large size where the boars fill the width.

Irontown's furnace

On the other side stands Irontown, a fortified settlement led by Lady Eboshi, a determined and complicated leader who has given work and dignity to women freed from brothels and to people with leprosy whom everyone else shunned. The women work the great bellows in shifts and sing as they pump. The town's colors are rust, soot and the orange glow of molten iron.

An Irontown design is the warmest, most industrial Princess Mononoke art you can put on a desk. It suits a maker's desk, with a soldering iron, a mechanical keyboard or a 3D printer nearby, and a warm-white lamp brings out the furnace glow.

A desk that leaves room to breathe

Princess Mononoke suits a desk where calm matters as much as color. Its greens are easy on the eyes during a long day of work or study, and its forest scenes make the desk feel a bit less like a desk. Pair a forest mat with natural materials, a wood monitor stand, a cork coaster or a ceramic cup, and the setup takes on the film's earthy, handmade feel without becoming a shrine.

For a study desk, the 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm) size sits neatly under a laptop and a notebook.

Gaming in the forest

Every Padrift pad uses the same build, and a Princess Mononoke design is no different. The fabric top gives your mouse a smooth, controlled glide, the non-slip base keeps the mat still during quick movements, and the stitched edges stop the fabric from fraying where your wrist sits. Forest designs suit exploration and adventure games especially well, where the green on the desk matches the green on the screen. The pad also rolls up for travel and lies flat again within a few hours.

Sizes for a Princess Mononoke desk

Every design lists its own sizes on its product page. These are the ones that suit the film's forests and figures.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	San's mask or a single wolf
Laptop or study desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	The Forest Spirit's pond under a laptop
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	Ashitaka riding Yakul
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	Kodama scattered through the roots
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	The Nightwalker over the trees
The whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	The boar clan marching through the forest

On a desk with width to spare but limited depth, L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), and 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm), let a riding scene or a row of wolves run the full length.

Gifts for a Princess Mononoke fan

A Princess Mononoke pad suits someone who counts it as their favorite Ghibli film, someone with a room full of plants, or a friend who can recite Moro's lines in the English dub. Choose San or the wolves for a bold gift, the Forest Spirit or kodama for a gentle one, and Irontown for someone who builds things. If you can't check the desk, XL is a dependable size: it fits a full keyboard and a mouse with space around them.

Plan on 1–3 business days for us to make the pad and 2–5 business days for it to travel from Turkey to a US address, which means ordering about two weeks ahead of a birthday.

Keeping the greens fresh

Forest designs hide dust well, but lighter areas, mist, pale sky and white fur, show skin oil over time. A damp cloth over the surface once a week keeps them fresh. When the pad needs a deeper clean, hand wash it in lukewarm water with a mild soap, rinse it, press the water out with a towel and dry it flat away from direct heat. The washing machine, the dryer and the iron can all damage it, so skip them.

A note on names

Princess Mononoke and the names of its characters and creatures are used on this page only to describe the inspiration for our designs. Padrift has no connection with Studio Ghibli, its production partners or its distributors, and none of them sponsors or endorses these pads.