I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading the book. Part of the reason I enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle so much initially was that it was based on a Western novel, and so had a story structure I understood and was familiar with – the character development carried through, and you saw an ending which resolved the narrative and journey of the characters.
As I’ve grown and become more exposed to world cinema, I realised that there is something particularly Japanese about the story structure, where endings are rarely easy or triumphant in the way I had come to expect from British and American media.
That things are returning to what they were, but not quite because Chihiro herself is different even as the world is the same. Had the mirroring been different, less identical, maybe I would have seen the poetic message of it. I always preferred it over Spirited Away because I found the cyclical ending of Spirited Away very frustrating – the fact that the ending shot of Chihiro clinging to her father’s arm is identical to the shot prior to her adventures seemed dissatisfying, as I felt it undid all the incredible character development she had undergone in learning to stand on her own and gain inner strength and independence. It was one of my first Ghibli films, and remains one of my favourites to this day. I saw Howl’s Moving Castle for the first time back in high school. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls… There she meets Michael, Howl’s apprentice, and Calcifer the Fire Demon, with whom she agrees a pact.īut Sophie isn’t the only one under a curse – her entanglements with Calcifer, Howl, and Michael, and her quest to break her curse is both gripping – and howlingly funny!
In the land of Ingary, where seven league boots and cloaks of invisibility do exist, Sophie Hatter catches the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a spell.ĭeciding she has nothing more to lose, she makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above Market Chipping.
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