Sam the Library Mouse: "Howl's Moving Castle" (2004)

That's young Howl with the blue hair, btw.

Ayep, this is Howl's Moving Castle: the anime. This is the second anime I've ever watched, after My Neighbor Totoro (which I didn't review because this is a book blog, not a movie blog, and My Neighbor Totoro isn't based on a book.)

Just warning that I will spoil a truckload of things here, and I can't redact pictures.

The iconic picture.

So yeah, the plot goes off the rails fairly quickly; this never happened in the book. Actually, a lot of the stuff in this movie never happened in the book. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, but if you're some sort of purist... don't watch this. Both the book and the movie are good in their own ways, but they aren't the same.

The Witch of the Waste, voiced by Lauren Bacall.

But the basic premise is there: Sophie Hatter (voiced by Emily Mortimer when young, Jean Simmons when old) gets turned into an old lady by THE WITCH OF THE WASTE!!!, then goes to find Howl's moving castle because, as I said in my review of the book, "I'm an old lady anyway, YOLO". And she meets a turnip-headed scarecrow. (He hops along on his pole like he's using a pogo stick; also, his glove-hands flap up and down when he does it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a gif of that.)

The fire demon, Calcifer, is still here; in the English dub, he's voiced by none other than Billy Crystal. It's hilarious.

The plot goes further off the rails from there; two nations (I'm guessing they're Ingary and High Norland, from the original book) declare war on each other. They seem to have WWI-era-ish technology, but with giant bird-shaped metal things replacing the zeppelins. Also they have flying kayak things.

Howl's Titular Moving Castle.

The king of Maybe-Ingary wants Howl (voiced in English by Christian Bale) to fight on his side in the war. The king of Maybe-High-Norland also wants Howl to fight on his side in the war. Howl thinks this is completely stupid and that the war shouldn't be going on at all.

Now I'm going to skip until we hit this bit, where:

TFW you accidentally dye your hair orange.

Howl accidentally dyes his hair orange, and freaks out about it.

Then he is completely melodramatic about it and covers everything in green slime. This is in the book, by the way. He's usually less melodramatic in the movie than the book, though.

Sophie has the most completely hilarious reaction to all of this.

THE CREEPY MANDALA FIGURINES!!!

That part when Madam Suliman depowers the Witch of the Waste via creepy mandala figurines.

I read the art book; it named the creepy mandala figurines, not me.

She was a guy in the book.

Behold, Madam Suliman, voiced by Blythe Danner. (They always pronounced her name like "Sullivan", but with an "M" and not a "V". It bothered me.) Yes, Madam Suliman is a possibly-wheelchair-bound (her chair does have wheels) woman, but she's also a very powerful witch.

More creepy mandala figurines.

Case in point. Also yeah, Howl showed up.

They nope out of there on a flying kayak. For some reason, they take the Witch of the Waste with them, as well as Madam Suliman's errand dog Heen.

More plot shenanigans ensue. This leads to Sophie accidentally destroying Howl's castle by removing Calcifer, then making her own castle by feeding Calcifer a bunch of her hair.

The day after I watched this, I was musing about the 4-H pledge, but couldn't remember it, and my mind came up with this:

"I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking, my HEART to greater loyalty, my HANDS to larger service, and my HAIR to Calcifer so he can fix the moving castle." (I couldn't remember HEALTH.)

Unfortunately, an offhand comment of Calcifer's ("Imagine what I could have done with your eyes! Or your heart!") leads to the Witch of the Waste locating and stealing Howl's disembodied heart. This promptely causes the castle to go to pieces again. It breaks in half, and Sophie's half falls off a mountain and smashes.

Sophie breaks down crying, which is understandable. The front door sorta survived, though, and for want of a better idea she walks through it.

The other iconic picture.

And ends up in Howl's childhood, when he first finds Calcifer. This leads to the other iconic picture. That's Kid!Howl, btw.

Sophie yells to Howl that she knows how to help him now, then falls through a hole in the floor.

(An interesting note from the art book: The hole in time is the only thing in the movie that's entirely computer-animated. Everything else is either pure drawing or drawings pasted over computer animation. The reason they gave was that they wanted the hole in time to look "alien" with respect to the rest of the movie, basically.)

When she finds the door and walks out of it with Heen (the door promptly implodes), Howl in the form of a giant bird is there. They have a touching reunion, and then Howl flies Sophie back to the broken remnants of the moving castle.

Yeah. That. It shortly breaks completely, and would fall off a cliff except that the turnip scarecrow saved it by sticking himself into the ground in front of it and acting as a brake.

Sophie impulsively kisses him on the cheek, which turns him back into a human because the curse on him could be broken with true love's kiss.

The human who got turned into the scarecrow.

Fortunately for him, it only had to be someone you love truly, not someone who truly loves you, as the Witch of the Waste explains (her explanation is, "It looks like your true love is in love with someone else".) Sophie and Howl are irrevocably an item by this point.

Nice picture, except Howl's shirt is kind of a dumb color. Maybe it'd be better in greyscale.

And now for a bunch of random pictures I couldn't fit anywhere else.

That looks like a still from an old movie. His shirt is better, though. (I don't hate the color of his shirt now as much as I did when I was writing this review. Huh.)