Stanley's Blog: July 2016

Howl's Moving Castle was directed by Hayao Miyazaki a Japanese artist whose work known to be symbolic, controversial, and magnificent. If I may add, in some of his movies, if his contents can be interpreted the way he wanted, they're very realistic and tells us not just the story of the movie, but a reflection of life that we can really relate to - such as love and hardship to something more broad like politics, industrialization, war, technological advances. Miyazaki's work is the kind of animation that needs to be digested slowly because he uses a lot of allegory and metaphorical effects to express his opinions. Not just in the graphics itself - I felt the quotes his characters uses, and actions they take were extremely interesting.

If I may add, I am a saturated anime fan myself, but only Miyazaki's movie was able to lead me to write a blog about it. I think it's because his movies engages the audience in a different way. This weekend I watched two of them. Both of which does not have a clear "good guy", "bad guy" theme. The movies itself sometimes ends in an abrupt way, as if after it finishes giving a specific type of message, Miyazaki ends the story.

But anyways, some of his movies includes:

Spirited Away (2005)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
My Neighbor Totoro (1998)

Unfortunately it was announced that he's going to retire from the animation industry. Right now, his animation efforts are more like a hobby, but no real commitment. Though Ghilbi - the studio that publishes his work is still around, I don't know if they would produce something as savory as Miyazaki's work. But anyways, below are couple of my thoughts about Howl's Moving Castle. Note that there is a lot of spoiler here. I recommend watching the movie first and then come here to check out if your interpretation was as great as mine. The main joy of watching Miyazaki's film perhaps is scrutinizing his work.

Settings

The story seem to be set somewhere in the British Empire which already had highly technological advances, but not completely modern. One of the

Movie Starts off with the Brits winning some kind of War. There's a lot of flags here, so the war might be WWI or WWII

Brits celebrating some kind of war.
Could be WWI or WWII.

protagonist, Sophie is a young girl who runs at a shop that sells hats. She already stands out because she dresses very plain, if not humble clothing in a fashion industry whereas her friends and mother seems more extroverted and fashionable. Sophie also has low self esteem of herself and claims she not beautiful even though she is.

Sophie

The beginning also showed she's not interested in relationships - especially when her friends mentioned Howl is this mysterious being that takes beautiful women's heart. She doesn't think like a typical young girl and her life style doesn't correlate with her current job. It looked as though she's this character being drawn by her environment. Later on, she becomes the main driving force of the story after the Witch of the Waste places a curse that turns her into an old hag.

Yup. That's plain old Sophie walking away from the crowds.

Youth

She sets out on an adventure to have her curse lifted by a wizard named Howl whom the Witch of the Waste so obsessively loves. It was very amusing to see her quickly adapted to condition. Having sarcastic attitude while interacting with other side characters she encounters as she journeys to the castle.
She was glad of not being picked on by men who are interested in her youth, and she's even offered assistance to travel somewhere after being turned into an old hag.
I felt this is a great message depicting youth today, not just women. Too many times the society expects certain things from us and it's difficult if we go against the social norm.

Sophie comments her outfit fits her better than before

The Moving Castle

Sophie was able to find Howl's Moving Castle with the assistance of a mysterious Scarecrow she pulled out of a bush. Note that this is also the title with allegory meanings. The castle itself looks like a bunch of weird iron junks patched together and is moving with four chicken legs. Apparently this is the dwelling of the infamous wizard, Howl. The literal meaning in this case is the castle and where Howl lives. The symbolic meaning is the stability of the inner world of Howl. Since the castle is patched together and doesn't look very stable, it shows Howl actually is a fragile person. If there is a third meaning, I think the castle also represents Howl's heart. Sophie's being able to enter his castle is significant. Later on in this story, she even cleans this castle and eventually destroys the whole castle when she took the fire demon Calcipher out of the castle. This exposed Howl's weakness as someone who gave his heart to the fire demon in exchange with great power.

Howl's Moving Castle

What does Calcipher Represents?

Howl's Younger Self

Since we're talking about Calcipher let's analyze his role a little bit. Calcipher runs Howl's entire moving castle his presence has been to stay in the castle the whole time. But maybe he was meant for something else. There's a scene later in the story where Sophie meets Howl's younger self using a ring. In the scene, there were multiple shooting stars flying towards Howl. Some of which doesn't reaches him eventually fades away. Howl caught one particular shooting star and immediately swallows it. That one was Calcipher. I felt those shooting stars were different ambitions or goals that developed Howl early on as a child to what he is in the present story. Similarly to ourselves, when we were young, we fantasized the goals and ideals we wished to pursue. Maybe it doesn't suit us, realistically, which create a weak inner world of ourselves as we grow up. Calcipher represents that ideal but somehow manifested for a minuscule job of moving the castle as an engine that grants Howl's mobile fragile freedom.

Sophie Transforms Young and Old

Throughout the film, Howl never mentioned about lifting Sophie's curse or fixing it directly. I mean, this was the main driving force that made Sophie leaving out of her hat store to an unknown yet exciting adventure. (Which she seemed to have no problem doing at all) I was reading another person's interpretation about this. A fellow programmer said it could be Sophie's "special power". I'm going to a different route claiming the curse that the Witch of the Waste casts on Sophie was not a spell that turns her into 90 years old. It was a spell that projects a character's visualization of themselves into their actual appearance. I think of it as a measure of energy vs negativity, love vs solitude, high self esteem vs low confidence. It somewhat explains why Sophie sometimes turns young when she talks about Howl. And when she sleeps, she turns into a younger person too, but reverts back as soon as she's awake. (Because when she is sleeping, she's not projecting anything at all) Similarly in our world, maybe it's not a real curse. Some of us may have low self esteem but we're in fact extremely capable. The world we project upon ourselves affects our daily lives.

Moral?

One of my favorite quotes of the story

I felt the ending came quickly as soon as Sophie returns Howl's heart and brings him back to life. The international war just ended by all parties at the same time with no obvious reason. Everyone was like, "Okay lets end this foolish war now..." As cheesy as this may sound, I think Miyazaki might be trying to say "We often create worldly problems ourselves. With a bit of love and not taking short cuts, we can come to an happy ending". Though I'm not to sure if the story was supposed to talk about WWI or WWII, both of the wars in which the United Kingdom was bombed by zeppelins. Note that there is also another version of this story written by Diana Wynne Jones whose setting is completely different. Well, I hope my commentators can enlighten this part for me. Please do bring any other thoughts or insights.