Mar 17
In this bizarre beauty and the beast animation, Howl’s Moving Castle is a story of Sophie Hatter, the oldest daughter with a seemingly boring and mild life as a hat maker. That is until the Witch of the Waste places a spell on her and turns her into a very old woman. Without any hope of a future and to avoid humiliation, not to mention not having an explanation for her current appearance, Sophie turns to the only place she knows no one would look for her: the Wizard Howl. Howl, living in his moving castle, is rumored to be a vicious creature known to eat the hearts of young girls. Since Sophie is now an elderly woman, she does not fear he will attack her. She decides to leave the imaginary kingdom of Ingary and take the trip to Howl’s moving castle in hopes he can help her with the spell.
Predictable as it may sound, Sophie soon learns that she is unable to tell anyone of the curse. It doesn’t help that Howl isn’t a vicious creature but actually a good person who is also under a curse and who has spread the rumors about himself to keep people away! Frustrated and lonely, Sophie puts all of her focus in the cleanliness of Howl’s moving castle. During her efforts to keep her mind off her painful life, Sophie meets the fire demon, Calcifer, one of the residents of Howl’s moving castle. Now this may sound more than a little repetitive, but he too is in a binding contract that he is trying to get out of! He strikes a deal with Sophie that if she can break his spell, he will in turn break hers. How Calcifer learned Sophie was cursed even though she could not talk about it is beyond anyone’s knowledge. Of course there are certain stipulations of the contract as with any good fairy story, or any story for that matter.
Howl’s Moving Castle then becomes weirder than ever, adding more people with more curses to break and contracts to sign. Not that the whole picture wasn’t disoriented before. Howl’s moving castle is an overly complicated story to follow. There are many plot holes that Howl’s Moving Castle does not answer such as, what happened to Sophie’s sisters or why the Witch of the Waste decided to single Sophie out and turn her into an old woman or why Howl had a moving castle. The fact that Howl’s Moving Castle was an animation made it even more difficult to follow. But it could turn out to be a very interesting story if you can follow it!
Do not worry about the bizarre storyline; it ends with the same happy ending as any good love story. Howl knew about Sophie’s curse for awhile and never held it against her. Their love for one another freed all curses, broke all contracts. Howl’s Moving Castle was destroyed and replaced with a newly built castle that became the home of Howl’s family which included the one girl he had been waited for – Sophie, of course!
