DKL

Yeah... this is pretty long and has spoilers all over the place, so I might as well put it in here:

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Looks like I’m talking about Howl’s Moving Castle now…

Okay… so… as I’ve said before: Miyazaki is easily one of the industry’s most competent directors… and for good reason:

-His work has the mass-appeal that’s needed to reach the biggest audience

-While having that mass-appeal, this doesn’t drain out the quality of his work. And the fact is, his work tends to be very well received even by the more hardened critics (me not being one of them, but I’m just saying).

Heck, even his image is really recognizable… all the while I don’t even know what the hell my favorite director looks like (Masayuki Kojima).

But yes, that said… Howl’s Moving Castle was a very strong offering from him and I look forward to what he’ll be doing next (just hope he doesn’t dumb his neat understated storytelling down because of all the complaints Howl’s got… I’d prefer that he stay in this direction given that, while it takes a little more work to take it in, it’s ultimately more rewarding).

Thank god he didn’t retire since he’s still got it (kinda like Oshii, but Oshii might not make anymore animated movies after Innocence, which saddens me)

Okay… with that out of the way, I have to go through my mandatory explanation of the moive again… Why?

Well, just because (though, the fine details are a little haphazard given my tendency to only do analysis by memory):

Okay, so the main conflict of the movie centers around a war between two countries. But what isn’t exactly announced during the film (which I very much liked, ‘understated’ is the keyword here) is that the reason WHY the war is started is because the other country’s prince is missing and that they’re pinning the blame on… the… uhh… country that Howl and Sophie are from over the disappearance.

During the bombing of the harbor near Howl’s place in the town (when Sophie and Markl were out shopping), the airship actually drops fliers with the prince’s picture on it, THOUGH, some soldier says that it’s “enemy propaganda.”

In fact… it was actually kinda said in the beginning of the movie that the other country’s prince was missing (take note of those dudes reading the news paper).

Okay, the main thing in the movie, actually, is Sophie’s journey towards getting rid of her curse (which she can’t talk about, unfortunately)...but it just so happens that it’s in the middle of this huge-ass war.

Anyway, if you’ve seen the whole film, the viewer finds out that the reason why Howl found Sophie in the first place was because Sophie told him, when he was still a kid, to look for her in the future since she knew how to get rid of Calcifer and Howl’s curse (more on this later).

The brilliant thing about this is that, for the most part, it should be so obvious as to why Calcifer and Howl found Sophie to begin with, but it wasn’t, because they couldn’t really talk about the details of the curse (Calcifer just tells Sophie that he’s in a “thing” with Howl, but can’t expand on it any further).

Anyway, everyone kept going on and on about how “it’s a curse that you can’t talk about,” but for some reason, when I look back on it, the fact that Howl and Calcifer suffered from a curse as such (where you can’t talk about it) completely eluded me, and this realization of mine is where Miyazaki’s competence really shines. Not only that, but he (Miyazaki) has the correct amount of skill to ensure that scenes carry the maximum amount of emotional resonance: his flying sequences and everything else just shine so very brightly during the movie.

Okay, next is how the movie was wrapped up… I was particularly fond of the fact that Howl’s contract with Calcifer could only be fixed by his true love (which was the same for the other country’s prince’s curse). In this case, it was rather symbolic given that the thing at the center of Calcifer and Howl’s contract was Howl’s heart. So, when you think about it, Howl’s heart could only be given back to him by his true love…

Yeah. That totally makes sense.

Another thing that needs to be brought up is WHY Calcifer and Howl got stuck in a contract in the first place.

So, there was this sequence where Sophie is roaming around in the past (with that cute dog thingy whose name I can’t spell… Hihn? Hin? I dunno) and she gets to that moment where Howl and Calcifer first meet. If you pay really really close attention, you can take notice of the fact that the shooting stars that come down to earth actually die when they hit the ground (specifically, look at the one that hits the water); this is why Sophie was so concerned about separating Howl from Calcifer given that she might kill him (she wished that Calcifer would live even without Howl’s heart).

Anyway, it was apparently a very very huge misconception that Howl made a deal with a “demon” for greed: Howl gave his heart to Calcifer to save Calcifer’s life, but in the process, Howl and Calcifer got stuck with a few curses (ones they can’t talk about). The main one though seems to be that Howl can’t use strong magic without turning into a monster and eventually dying (Calcifer said that Howl was running out of time towards the end).

Another neat thing I noticed with this watch is that: the ring sophie had on was actually the thing that lead her to Howl… but in the past. Anyway, it allowed her in the past long enough to tell Howl what to do (when the ring broke, she was sent back to the present).

My favorite scene was when Sophie came out of the time door thing and Howl was just sitting there... there was like this silent dialogue between them where Sophie understood the fact that she took too long to realize what was going on (complemented with Howl's stoic expression... damn, that s*** is classic). Though, who could? It's not like Howl and Calcifer could talk about it. But yeah... people should get the idea.

Okay, so, towards the end, Howl decided that he wanted to stop running (which was a huge change of pace for his character considering that he was actually a really whiny baby) and decided to fight to protect Sophie (running in this case wouldn’t work anymore given that Madame Solomon found out Howl’s weakness during their meeting at the palace… uh… that weakness being Sophie).

Okay… took me a while, but I sort of figured out how the house and the portals work. Apparently, the reason why Howl had to stay behind during the last parts of the movie was because he had to look after the hat shop and prevent it from being bombed given that it would destroy the castle too if it gets owned. Anyway, Sophie wanted to run, but she couldn’t given that (aside from the fact that Howl stopped being a coward) only howl could tinker around with the portals (meaning that he was the only one who could disconnect them, but he couldn’t given that he was too busy). So, the solution Sophie came up with was to just destroy the connection by destroying the castle, so that they’d be able to leave.

This is how it worked in the dub anyway, so I’ll just leave it up to people to decide whether or not the professionals got it down right.

Okay… about the ending… I also liked it. Crispin Freeman, I mean, “the prince” turned out to be that dude, Turnip Head. While people thought it was a little haphazard, his decision to go home and stop the war made a lot of sense given that he was at the very center of everything (and Solomon also hinted at working towards stopping the war given that the problem was, for the most part, already solved).

Naturally, it isn't hocus pocus, but it's a step in the right direction towards stopping the war... and, the politics wasn't the focus of the movie, so we obviously won't see the systematic process of how peace was eventually attained...

Anywho... the prince’s last words were pretty nifty… he was all: “You can count on people’s heart's changing,” which kinda implied that he’d like to return and give Sophie another shot *since her heart might change* (though, again, he had to stop the war first).

… uhh… what else is there?

…

Well, I’m lazy… but yeah… this is it… I think I’m done.

That said… I think that this is probably my favorite Miyazaki movie… or it’s Princess Mononoke, I’m not sure.

OH, and the animation is just awesome (incredible)… it’s great to see that, as time goes on, the animation of his movies actually get better… it’s pretty hawt.

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