Spotlight Anime: Howl's Moving Castle MAL Anime Information Page: Howl's Moving Castle MAL Score – 8.65 (scored by 38338 users) Ranked - #36 Popularity - #32 For the next week I would like to have a discussion about the anime that focuses on the key elements that we here on MAL use to critically rate an anime: Animation, Sound, Characters, Story, and Enjoyment. I would like everyone to approach this thread as if you were going to write a review and structure your initial post like this: Animation - insert rating Sound - insert rating Characters - insert rating Story - insert rating Enjoyment - insert rating Animation - discuss any pros and cons of the animation styling used in the series, try to include some specifics. Sound - describe any of the things you liked or didn't care for in regards to the music and sound effects used in the series etc... If you are having trouble writing up a review or coming up with specific pros and cons, please don't worry. Just do the best you can with it and if you can only write two or three sentences about any of the 5 elements then that's OK. Not everyone here is currently at a level which will allow them to articulate their thoughts and opinions. After your initial post is made you can feel free to civilly discuss issues of contention. I am sure there will be many opinions expressed here that some of us will disagree upon and criticise and it is for that reason that this entire club exists. So I hope everyone has fun and I am really looking forward to watching this discussion unfold. RESULTS OF THE YOU DECIDE POLL Howl's Moving Castle was NOT inducted into the club Anime list: 24 Yes - 33.3% 48 No - 66.6% 19 Don't know this anime - 18.6% of the total number polled 11 Abstained - 10.7% of the total number polled |
santetjanApr 27, 2010 8:47 AM
| From the few Miyazaki I've watched, this is my least favourite. The art was oddly common and the story was too confusing for my then 5 year old sister to understand it and fully like it. I also had trouble, I was not prepared to focus. The movie is just too long. It does not serve its entertaining purpose due to this and "too many characters being given too much attention". I personally think that the secondary characters were given more attention than the main characters, who seem to have been only outlined. I'm not familiar with the original book. As much as it costs me, this is a No. |
 Waratte Oemashou Sore ha Chiisana Inori |
| I watched this movie for the first time as soon as it got its own spotlight and liked it a lot. The visual was amazing (good quality of the picture helped too): it was like watching many beautiful colorful saturated pictures for two straight hours. The story was decent, and so were the characters. |
| best miyazaki movie. for oh so many reasons. kimura takuya as howl, is amazing. the voice of sophie when she makes the quick jumps from old/young....so good. everything animation, voices, plot (though it loses a bit towards the end) is just so good. i would write more but i've put all my thoughts into my review on the info page of howls. i seriously watch this movie like 4+ times a year. |
| Like Katsup abouve, This is a favorite of mine, I've gone back to again and again. I've given up wondering why others, who value Miyazaki, don't care for this movie. I've attempted to apply thier critical view, but it just dosen't seem to fit for me. To each their own, possibly? You know it's been a couple of months.. maybe a reviewing is in good order. Hey Katsup,, popcorn? |
 |
whitew123 said: I pretty much agree with this. However, "decent" is simply not good enough for inducting into an anime a relations list which is supposed to represent the best of the best, especially in the case of story and characters.I watched this movie for the first time as soon as it got its own spotlight and liked it a lot. The visual was amazing (good quality of the picture helped too): it was like watching many beautiful colorful saturated pictures for two straight hours. The story was decent, and so were the characters. A good movie by all means, but it just doesn't offer enough to be worth a "yes" vote, needless to say that it is no Totoro beater. |
Current FAL Ranking + Previous best::  [ |
datsunvic said: You know it's been a couple of months.. maybe a reviewing is in good order. Hey Katsup,, popcorn? Oh if only i had the time! School has been eating my life. I havent seen the movie since january though. I'll probably get a craving for it soon !! |
ladyxzeus said: the story was too confusing for my then 5 year old sister to understand it and fully like it. Ghiblis habit of throwing amazing shit in :) I'd say i like this more than Spirited Away. First of all Sophie is not randomly swept away to another world because she already lives in this magic filled world. Secondly she's older making her decisions a tad more interesting and the love story more believable. It's hard to say what exactly the story is. Most of the time nothing happens, and the war story is kept in the bakground so much that it's hard to follow or ever care about it. It may be fun to see the characters interact, but the talks themselves aren't all that interesting. It's all more slice-of-life. By no means a great piece of storytelling nor character development. The deas ex machina in the end really bugs me too. Nah, i'll throw a no on this one. |
| I don't think all ghibli movies are made for kids. I mean, look at princess mononoke, and naushika. I watched those when i was really really young and i really didnt understand them. The story is really just simple. It's about sophie being and old woman, and what she goes through as an old woman and how she lives with howl. The war stuff does seem alittle weird and thrown in, but that is the only downfall of the movie. All in all it's just a love story with some magic and thrown in there. I think what makes this movie a really strong one is the characters. They all are great and I love watching them, if anything I think sophie is the least interesting character out of all. Howl, Calcifer, Markl, the witch of the waste... they all are really well done characters, from the voicings to the animation and everything. So where the story lacks, I think the characters, sound, and animation of this movie pick up. Really, Is there any ghibli movie with a better seiyuu list and soundtrack? I have a lot of them, and in my opinion, Howls has the best soundtrack of them all, and the voices really do amaze me every single time. |
| While I enjoy Ghibli movies, when compared to the early films there's a distinct lack of creativity in titles like HMC, Gedo Senki, and even Ponyo. The problem is that they're adaptations or interpretations of an existing tale, and this means there's far less scope for new input. A good movie, well animated and with the typical Ghibli design, but when compared to movies like Laputa, Totoro, The Cat Returns, Whisper of the Heart, Pom Poko, Nausicaa, etc, the cracks in the plot really begin to show. A no from me. |
| What a day! What a lovely Day! |
| Even Princess Mononoke is for kids. At least I showed it to 8 years old (together with Spirited Away) in a class. They loved it. They were scared. :3 |
Waratte Oemashou Sore ha Chiisana Inori |
| good animation and sound.. yeah, Ghibli production is really amazing.. but too many holes in the story and i could not see it having a coherent and organized plot structure (a.k.a. i'm a bit confused at how the story unfolded and even how they executed it).. i don't think it is enough to deserve to be inducted for this club.. so a no from me.. |
| though i m not really a fan of anime movies (i prefer watching series ) this one is my favourite so a yes for me |
| Get over the ghibili backlash. It never was cool. Howl's Moving Castle is still to date my favorite Miyazaki work along with Spirited Away. They exemplify the mastering of his craft. Specifically his well thought out and paced story executions and hand drawn animation artistic style that have become his trademark. If you want to continue to be one of the elite few who still refuse to accept his hard work and excellence go right ahead. |
Orion1May 9, 2012 3:32 AM
Orion1 said: Get over the ghibili backlash. It never was cool. Howl's Moving Castle is still to date my favorite Miyazaki work along with Spirited Away. They exemplify the mastering of his craft. Specifically his well thought out and paced story executions and hand drawn animation artistic style that have become his trademark. If you want to continue to be one of the elite few who still refuse to accept his hard work and excellence go right ahead. Howl's Moving Castle was genuinely not very good though. It was boring to watch and it didn't really make much sense. While the animation was very good, that's pretty much a given with Studio Ghibli. It certainly wasn't anything radical in comparison to their previous works (eg: Only Yesterday, My Neighbours the Yamadas) and was merely well executed. The Castle itself reminded me of Monty Python which was about the only aspect of the art I found to be at all interesting. In fact, I wouldn't even call Howl's Moving Castle a decent film in the general sense; but for a Ghibli though it is remarkably bad. I do not think having solid animation is enough to come anywhere close to redeeming its other faults, and almost every film in the Ghibli catalogue deserves far more praise, and indeed far more attention, than Howl's Moving Castle does. |
| Losing an Argument online? Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them! WORKS EVERY TIME! "I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact." "THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!" |
| @Annokano: Basically everything you've said is unsupported and unfairly depreciates the work that Miyazaki put into this film. Everyone has the right to an opinion, but it's getting annoying to read commentary that lacks any kind of thoughtful insight into where and how that opinion was formulated. Good examples of a well supported arguments in defense of this movie are: In regards to Sophie A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes: Mr. Miyazaki's heroines tend to be plucky young women who combine guileless decency with tough-mindedness. During their journeys, they often encounter wise older women who sometimes serve as foils, sometimes as mother figures. Ms. Wynne Jones's novel, which Mr. Miyazaki encountered in Japanese translation a few years ago, allows him to combine these two types into a single character. Mr. Scott continues his analysis of Sophie by pointing out: Her feelings for Howl combine maternal solicitude, sisterly affection and adolescent infatuation, all of them making "Howl's Moving Castle," among other things, a curious and touching love story. In terms of character development, Howl's Moving Castle is as I've argued before, yet another intricate improvement upon his past archetypes. Where story might be lacking, character integration and development help the continuity of narrative. Kenneth Turan L.A. Times points out: The film follows a through line that is emotional, not logical, becoming a story beyond words we understand with our hearts more than our minds. The reason that we are able to understand much of Miyasaki's work lies not in the dialog but in the images themselves. While I agree that it is a valid criticism that HMC struggles in the second half with it's "narrative coherency", I also think that it more than makes up for it with attention to detail and a "disarming simplicity to the images". Since I tend to be a person who hangs on emotional evoking content vs. coherency of story and or plot, stories like Howl's Moving Castle remain favorites of mine. Non discriminant posts and the general backlash to Mr. Miyazaki's success are to be expected, but never the less tend to be more band-wagoning than actual criticism in my opinion. As for the references to Only Yesterday and My Neighbors the Yamadas. It's pretty obvious that Isao Takahata's works are amazing. It's only fitting for him to be Miyasaki's mentor, and business partner. I'm one of the people who fought for Grave of the Fireflies induction, and still there are haters and backlashers who continue to criticize it's place in our inductions list, while there arguments lie more in interpretation of personality, than in the actual execution and results of the work. While HMC might not gleam as spectacularly as Spirited Away or Princes Mononoke did in comparison to Nausicaa, it was still a significant contribution to Miyazaki's creative artistry and as such should easily be recommendable to most audiences, children/adult/male/female alike. Why is that? Because Howl's Moving Castle is certainly more than just a cut above the rest of the swill that anime has now become. In fact it's a full fledged gem comparatively to 99.9% of what's getting made today. So yes I take offense when I see lackadaisical analysis of Mr.Miyazaki-san's work. The best thing I got out of this discussion was that I was finally motivated to finally finish Only Yesterday last night and am about to move on to Pom Poko then the Yamadas to finish what's available of Isao Takahata's work. I've been hoping to find Alps no Shoujo Heid for years now. I believe I can find Akage no Anne and Akage no Anne: Green Gables e no Michi, so I will start those soon too. I try not to make my word usage too combative, but diplomacy is something I'm still working on, especially when it comes to CnC forums, which I like to think are more than regular forums and deserve a certain sense of purpose and willingness to at least attempt to post something with some substance vs. the common unsupported banter found elsewhere on MAL. ;) |
Orion1May 10, 2012 5:48 AM
| My message was meant to point out your trolling. I think it successfully did that, and it gave another person a chance to actually try to support why they didn't like Howl's Moving Castle. There is an intellectual argument out there for that, but I guess you won't even attempt to do any research on the topic and make a better argument for your views. P.S. If you do attempt it, I'll erase this message and message #17. |
Orion1May 10, 2012 6:55 AM
Orion1 said: @Annokano: Basically everything you've said is unsupported and unfairly depreciates the work that Miyazaki put into this film. Everyone has the right to an opinion, but it's getting annoying to read commentary that lacks any kind of thoughtful insight into where and how that opinion was formulated. Good examples of a well supported arguments in defense of this movie are: In regards to Sophie A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes: Mr. Miyazaki's heroines tend to be plucky young women who combine guileless decency with tough-mindedness. During their journeys, they often encounter wise older women who sometimes serve as foils, sometimes as mother figures. Ms. Wynne Jones's novel, which Mr. Miyazaki encountered in Japanese translation a few years ago, allows him to combine these two types into a single character. Mr. Scott continues his analysis of Sophie by pointing out: Her feelings for Howl combine maternal solicitude, sisterly affection and adolescent infatuation, all of them making "Howl's Moving Castle," among other things, a curious and touching love story. In terms of character development, Howl's Moving Castle is as I've argued before, yet another intricate improvement upon his past archetypes. Where story might be lacking, character integration and development help the continuity of narrative. Kenneth Turan L.A. Times points out: The film follows a through line that is emotional, not logical, becoming a story beyond words we understand with our hearts more than our minds. The reason that we are able to understand much of Miyasaki's work lies not in the dialog but in the images themselves. While I agree that it is a valid criticism that HMC struggles in the second half with it's "narrative coherency", I also think that it more than makes up for it with attention to detail and a "disarming simplicity to the images". Since I tend to be a person who hangs on emotional evoking content vs. coherency of story and or plot, stories like Howl's Moving Castle remain favorites of mine. Non discriminant posts and the general backlash to Mr. Miyazaki's success are to be expected, but never the less tend to be more band-wagoning than actual criticism in my opinion. As for the references to Only Yesterday and My Neighbors the Yamadas. It's pretty obvious that Isao Takahata's works are amazing. It's only fitting for him to be Miyasaki's mentor, and business partner. I'm one of the people who fought for Grave of the Fireflies induction, and still there are haters and backlashers who continue to criticize it's place in our inductions list, while there arguments lie more in interpretation of personality, than in the actual execution and results of the work. While HMC might not gleam as spectacularly as Spirited Away or Princes Mononoke did in comparison to Nausicaa, it was still a significant contribution to Miyazaki's creative artistry and as such should easily be recommendable to most audiences, children/adult/male/female alike. Why is that? Because Howl's Moving Castle is certainly more than just a cut above the rest of the swill that anime has now become. In fact it's a full fledged gem comparatively to 99.9% of what's getting made today. So yes I take offense when I see lackadaisical analysis of Mr.Miyazaki-san's work. The best thing I got out of this discussion was that I was finally motivated to finally finish Only Yesterday last night and am about to move on to Pom Poko then the Yamadas to finish what's available of Isao Takahata's work. I've been hoping to find Alps no Shoujo Heid for years now. I believe I can find Akage no Anne and Akage no Anne: Green Gables e no Michi, so I will start those soon too. I try not to make my word usage too combative, but diplomacy is something I'm still working on, especially when it comes to CnC forums, which I like to think are more than regular forums and deserve a certain sense of purpose and willingness to at least attempt to post something with some substance vs. the common unsupported banter found elsewhere on MAL. ;) The more I think about this post, the more it makes me laugh. You are criticising me for not providing enough justification for my opinions, yet rely on the work of professional critics to justify your own. Then you seem to accept that my criticism is valid anyway, because you admit that the "story is lacking" at some parts, that you don't consider "cohesion" to be terribly important; or at least that it is not as important as "content". Since there is nothing to prevent a film having both of these qualities,you are also admitting the work has significant flaws in at least one major respect. At least one which is important enough to sway a person's opinion on the work in either direction. Not quite as amusing as your absurd arguments, are your slanderous remarks that Ipf and I are part of some Ghibli Backlash. Even if we assume that our criticisms were not justified, that does not warrant a claim that our opinions are not our own genuine thoughts about the film and are a reaction against the popularity of Studio Ghibli. Given my appraisal for two other Ghibli movies, and that one of my major criticisms against Howl's Moving Castle was that it was inferior to Miyazaki's previous films, you have absolutely no basis on which to make that claim and I demand that you apologise for it immediately. The irony of your closing paragraph is that the only thing seperating you from the unsupported banter elsewhere on MAL is that you have a slightly larger vocabulary. If you would like to be more diplomatic, then might I suggest you avoid making unprovoked attacks on the character of your opponents? Descend from your pedestal now, mortal. |
AnnoKanoMay 10, 2012 8:03 AM
| Losing an Argument online? Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them! WORKS EVERY TIME! "I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact." "THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!" |
| I think I've made a compelling argument pertaining to a much loved work. Justification or elaboration includes research of which I decided to incorporate. I never said HMC was without flaws. I also never said: IpfManiak said: It made no sense. People like it because it looks deep. or AnnoKano said: Howl's Moving Castle was genuinely not very good though. Which are both inflammatory generalizations. What I did say was: Orion1 said: In terms of character development, Howl's Moving Castle is as I've argued before, yet another intricate improvement upon his past archetypes. Where story might be lacking, character integration and development help the continuity of narrative. and orion1 said: While HMC might not gleam as spectacularly as Spirited Away or Princes Mononoke did in comparison to Nausicaa, it was still a significant contribution to Miyazaki's creative artistry and as such should easily be recommendable to most audiences, children/adult/male/female alike. Why is that? Because Howl's Moving Castle is certainly more than just a cut above the rest of the swill that anime has now become. In fact it's a full fledged gem comparatively to 99.9% of what's getting made today. So yes I take offense when I see lackadaisical analysis of Mr.Miyazaki-san's work. I have at least made an attempt to support my analysis with quotes that represented aspects of the story, most importantly pertaining to Sophie's character analysis that I thought most closely supported my own thoughts. Choosing quotes, instead of paraphrasing from others that support my opinion has never been a flaw the last time I checked. Implying that I don't have voice for using quotes? Well it seemed to me that my own opinion was not enough so I decided to include the opinions of other respected critics who share a similar opinion to mine. Drawing comparisons to my comments to that of the banter in most forums, I suppose you could make an argument for that with all criticism and commentary. Both you and Ipf have my apology for implicating that your views are somehow tied with a larger backlash of Miyazaki's success. Although it certainly is a trend, it does not particularly apply to your comments. I just took offense to "lackadaisical analysis of Mr.Miyazaki-san's work". Descending from pedestal. |
| oh dear please everyone calm down. hard to use scientifically objective language in review of media. in fact, impossible. so, people will make 'inflammatory generalizations', and the arguments of theses will be in the sentences without reference. by inference of emotions, by common empathy, we make people understand us- within the medium of the written language in this case. so orion, lighten up. this is not an arcade game, you're not winning points. often we can write pages and say exactly the same thing that we could have written in one paragraph. [and lpf no need to bite] but also you bring up some nice points, as do lpf and AnnoKanno. last time I watched HMC was a long time ago, so i myself wouldn't take my view very dearly. my favourite ghibli movies are porco rosso, whisper of the heart, and ocean waves. what would be immediately clear from these choices is i seem to be more heavily weighted towards 'slice of life' ghibli films. something that ghibli consistently does fairly well, even in films like ponyo, nausicaa, castle in the sky, and the aforementioned howls moving castle. the construction of events around the castle truly makes us believe in the possibility of its existence and validity as per diegetic construction. whether our suspension of disbelief carries onto the more fantastical points of the plot is a more subjective issue one would say. regarding the actual plot, my memory is vague. i do remember, even while being a 13 year old sprat when watching, finding inconsistencies, but my main memories are those of the actual images, and of the characterisation of howl, sophie, and lucifer. this certainly i think adds gravitas to Orion1's argument of 'The reason that we are able to understand much of Miyasaki's work lies not in the dialog but in the images themselves' - it's the aesthetic, the artwork, that has smeared itself within my head. unlike say, the various ideas of ghost in the shell stand alone complex, or the challenging plot of evangelion. the characters themselves i wholely disliked. howl was simply irritating in both sub and dub, sophie was vague and indecisive unlike other ghibli female characters, and lucifer was entirely a shouta hook- his backstory found in the book has been to an extent removed i am led to understand. originality in characterisation is simply not here- we've seen the same character perhaps excluding sophie time and time again. especially for instance with the representation of the witch of the waste, who seemed almost indistinguishable from yubaba in spirited away. so overall, i find characterisation poor, plot poor, but production quite nice. this as noted is almost a standard for ghibli, yet we cant exactly lower HMC by putting it on scale with other ghibli productions, we have to do it for all of anime. and we find that indeed HMC has excellent art and animation, good music too. character designs are competent though seen many times before. yet i personally don't think this excels the anime into nomination range. it falls short in too many places. not only would i rather induct a different ghibli movie, but i wouldn't want to induct this if it was a completely unrelated studio either. its not just for me a poor ghibli movie, its not of a good enough standard compared to all anime. That's just like, you know, your opinion, man. |
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