In all honesty, this isn’t my second – or even third – time watching Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle. I haven’t kept track, but it is very likely my fourth, or even fifth, watch. So then what’s different this time around? Why did I decide to write about the movie now? Well, this was actually my first time watching Miyazaki’s adaptation since first reading the source material last year. Howl’s Moving Castle has long been my second favorite film by the legendary Miyazaki, behind only Spirited Away, and now I’m finally able to put it into context and see first-hand what alterations were made during the adaptation process. Has this changed my view of the film? The answer turns out to be a somewhat complicated yes and no.

Published in 1986, Howl’s Moving Castle is perhaps the most popular and well-known book by British young adult fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones. The book follows a young woman named Sophie who, cursed by the malevolent Witch of the Wastes into becoming an old woman, takes up a cleaning job in the walking castle of the mysterious wizard Howl and strikes a deal with a fire demon named Calcifer in order to remove the curse. An adaptation by the famed Studio Ghibli was announced in 2001, originally to be directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Friction over the creative direction of the film led Hosoda to leave the project and be replaced by Miyazaki. Despite these production issues, the film released in 2004 to critical and commercial success.

Major spoilers for Howl’s Moving Castle – the book and the movie – ahead.

One of the biggest and most consequential changes that Miyazaki made concerns the war between the kingdom of Ingary, where the story is set, and its neighbor.  This war was barely mentioned in the book, but Miyazaki – wanting to emphasize anti-war themes, in large part due to his fierce opposition to the Iraq War – brings it to the foreground. The novel and the film actually start out very similar, to an extent that surprised me, but they begin to deviate considerably the more the movie delves into the war and its effects (particularly in the second half). While I can certainly appreciate what Miyazaki was going for, this does feel like it shortchanges Sophie’s character arc a bit and leads to some quite noticeable issues with pacing and plotting in the last section of the movie. In particular, the resolution to the horrific conflict, with all its myriad atrocities, feels much too pat and abrupt.

This is exacerbated by another change from the novel. The book makes the disappearance of Prince Justin of Ingary (which I don’t remember being connected to the war) quite clear and it plays a large role in the story’s climax. Miyazaki decides to use Justin’s apparent abduction as the basis for the war between Ingary and its neighbor. This isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. The problem is that the only time we hear about it is in a seeming throwaway line by a background character reading a newspaper near the beginning of the movie, something that’s easy to forget by the time it suddenly comes into play again at the very end. This makes the Turnip Head reveal, and the sudden end to the war in general, feel flat and like it comes out of nowhere.

Sophie herself is another interesting point of comparison between the book and the film. She is one of my favorite of Miyazaki’s protagonists. The way she not only just kind of takes the curse in stride but also makes use of the newfound freedom her advanced age gives her in order to assert herself is fun to watch and provides some good emotional depth to the film. Unfortunately after reading the book it becomes clear just how much of her plotline was cut or streamlined (in part) to make way for the war subplot, which in turn weakens some of the story’s themes surrounding age and gender. And two of Sophie’s subplots were almost entirely cut. One involved her essentially sleuthing to try to figure out the terms of Calcifer’s contract with Howl. I’m mostly fine with this change, as I think the film does a good enough job foreshadowing that Calcifer (literally) has Howl’s heart, but it would have been nice to see. The other subplot revolves around Sophie discovering and learning to use her own magical abilities to bring objects to life. This helps to give Sophie more agency in this world of magic and it plays a big part in her helping Calcifer to survive without Howl’s heart in the end. I really would have liked to have seen more of this in the film, both for Sophie’s sake and to make Calcifer’s survival feel less hand-wave-y. On the other hand, I do like that the film implies that Sophie broke the curse herself rather than requiring Calcifer’s assistance.

I’ve been somewhat down on the adaptational changes the film makes up to this point, but there are actually quite a few that I like or, at the very least, am fine with. In the book it is eventually revealed that Howl originally came from our world (Wales, specifically) and there are several points where the characters cross over. While I enjoy the novelty of this – a character who is not the main protagonist being essentially isekai’d – and it works well in the context of the book, it isn’t really necessary to the story and might have felt like a distraction when boiling the novel down to a two-hour film. The role of the Witch of the Waste is also significantly changed from the book to the movie. In the book she was the main antagonist and remains that way through until near the end. The film’s decision to focus on the war itself as an antagonist of sorts renders her unnecessary, so having her stripped of her powers and joining Sophie and Howl’s crew ends up as a bit of a fun and surprising twist. It also gives us the opportunity to see Sophie and the depowered Witch interact in a civil, even friendly, way, which serves to illustrate some of Sophie’s character growth.

But perhaps my favorite change is the castle itself. In the book it is described as, well, a castle – brick walls, a few towers, etc. The movie goes a very different route, turning it into a unique hodgepodge of rusted metal, gears, and incongruous additions on spindly legs. It gives it a very steampunk look and makes it almost feel alive. It reminds me of something out of the classic point-and-click adventure game Machinarium (see below), of which I adore the aesthetic. And the way it judders and shifts as it moves almost makes it seems like cutout stop-motion animation. I just love the design so much.

I would also like to set aside all the comparisons for a moment to say just how much I continue to adore the film’s visuals – perhaps even more than my first time watching, when they felt somewhat overwhelming at times. They are some of Miyazaki’s absolute best, a visual feast. The animation manages to make magic feel wondrous, dreamlike, and kind of terrifying at the same time. Even the backgrounds, with their mountains and fields and lakes, are gorgeous. I’m blown away every time I watch it.

So, ultimately, what can I conclude from all this? Is the book better than the film, or vice versa? Really, I’d say that they are different but, in my view, equally good. They both have things they excel at – the book with its stronger character arcs and pacing and the film with its impeccable visual storytelling and aesthetics. Has my opinion of the film changed now that I have this additional context? I certainly did have more quibbles with the pacing and clarity of the last section of the film and with the cutting down of Sophie’s arc this time around, as I alluded to earlier, which might drop Howl’s Moving Castle to third or fourth place in my Miyazaki ranking. But overall I’m pleased to find that it still largely holds up, both to my previous viewings and in comparison to its source novel.

On a final note, it would be criminal of me to discuss this film without mentioning Joe Hisaishi’s predictably fantastic score. Merry Go Round of Life is one of my favorite film themes ever.

Header image courtesy of Snowy Fictions.