Howl's Moving Castle

So today, I rented Howl's Moving Castle and watched it. I actually really liked it a lot. I had read reviews that said it was lesser Miyazaki.

For those of you who haven't seen the film, it takes place in an alternate World War I style Europe. Actually a time period vaguely reminiscent of Otomo's Steamboy. However, rather than fantastical steampunk-esque devices, Howl's Moving Castle has wizards and witches as well as the ubiquitous elaborate zeppelin devices of almost any futuristic Miyazaki film. The story centers around a young woman named Sophie, who doesn't seem to get much joy out of life. However this changes when she encounters the wizard Howl and is then transformed into an old woman. As an old woman, she manages Howl's household and falls in love with him.

Most of Miyazaki's movies have fairly strongly recurring themes. Respect for nature, kindness and nobility, as well as being very strongly anti-war are pretty much in all of his films. Also, his movies center around young female heroines. Also most of his heroines are more or less the same both in appearance but also in basic underlying values. Kind to strangers and protective of people who are smaller than them. It's been a theory of mine that the Miyazaki heroine type has been gradually maturing.

Also, the Miyazaki hero has undergone a real transformation. Miyazaki heroes have always been more of a foil for the heroine. They're also not particularly interesting and are generally used to propell the story along. For example, the heroes in The Castle in the Sky or Kiki's Delivery Service. Any love between the main characters is the unspoken, pure, prepubescent kind. However, recently in Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, declarations of love are made outright. Also the heroes of both films are mysterious and ambivalent characters that require saving. I'm not sure what this means exactly but the themes of these films seem more mature to me in some ways than Miyazaki's earlier films.

Another character type that is frequently encountered in Miyazaki films is the old woman. Sometimes evil and generally irrepressible. This type of character can be found in the Pirate Queen in Castle in the Sky, Granny in Totoro, and possibly the most ambivalent and scary, Yubaba/Zeniba in Spirited Away. In Sophie, the young heroine and the old woman are combined in a way that's pretty interesting. Sophie actually has to be old before she's young. It's probably the only cartoon I've seen, whose main cast consists principally of old women. Sophie, Suliman, and the Witch of the Waste are all major players in the story.

Howl's Moving Castle actually combines the young girl with the old woman and makes them one character. I'm sort of curious how his movies will progress as he continues to make them.