It’s my first look at the work of Hayao Miyazaki hands one of the greatest directors of all time. When deciding which one of his movies to review first I wanted to look at the one that everyone considers to be his worst movie. I like to think that for every great director out there’s one movie that can be considered their dud and for Miyazaki that dud is Howl’s Moving Castle.
The movie follows the story of a girl named Sophie who gets turned to into an old lady by a jealous witch. Hoping to undo the curse she sets out to find another powerful witch or wizard to help her. In her short travel she comes across the moving castle of Howl a powerful wizard who is a womanizer. She soon becomes the housekeeper of the castle hoping to find a way to undo the curse placed on her and starts to befriend the residents of the castle such as Howl, his apprentice Markl, the fire demon Calcifer, and Turnip-Head a living scarecrow. The downside of this anime is the little interaction between the characters and little development among them. Instead of some good character interactions it gets replace with shots of a war going on between these two nations with Howl being caught in the middle of it. Rather than this being a chance for insight into Howl’s character the movie rarely gives us a chance to explore the war such as what they’re fighting about or what any of the sides are like. It’s just like Doug said the movie is all over the place and lacks focus. The movie isn’t sure if it should focus on the characters or focus on the war going on and because of that we get a movie that’s unfocused most of the time. However, besides this the animation in the movie is still amazing and impressive, the voice acting in the sub and dub are good, and the music is nice as well but the movie just lacked that Miyazaki we come to sense and feel in his other work. Again, I don’t hate it nor do I think it’s a bad movie it’s just not Miyazaki’s best work in my opinion. I originally gave this movie a 6/10 but now I think I would give it a 4.5/10. Not Miyazaki’s best work but still a watchable movie that you can pick up and get some entertainment out of it.