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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Miyazaki - Howl's Moving Castle

"A heart's a heavy burden."
- Sophie, Howl's Moving Castle

So I've started running through my film backlogs and chose to watch Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle earlier.

In a nutshell, the film is set in a world where magic and steam technology coexist side by side. Sophie, the movie's main protagonist, due to some strange circumstances, finds herself transformed by a curse cast by a certain Witch of the Wastes into a ninety year-old lady. Her journey to break the curse leads her the the titular character's castle - which was essentially a huge mobile steampunk contraption powered by a friendly fire demon called Calcifer and guarded by his apprentice (whose name I couldn't quite recall). On their journey, they get caught in between a conflict between two kingdoms where Howl, along with other wizards and witches, are called upon to serve their countries in the war.

I don't know why, but his style often makes me draw parallels to some video games I've played in the past - in this case it reminded me so much of the anachronistic world of Chrono Trigger (whose distinctive art was drawn by someone I'm quite fond of - Akira Toriyama of Dragon Quest and Dragon Ball fame).

The film's art style is reminiscent of those old NES era role-playing games. It's funny that I muttered Magitek during the first time the castle appeared, since it reminded me so much of the emperor's troops in Final Fantasy 6 - to the point of me expecting some sort of Kefka-esque character to show up.

Nonetheless, it was a very entertaining film. I'm looking forward to watching Miyazaki's other films in the coming days.

2 comments:

  1. ALL Miyazaki films are worth watching! By the 3rd film, you'll feel like you know the characters and where they're coming from. And by then, I think... that you'll just want to have a conversation with Miyazaki. HAHAHAHAAHA

    Watch!
    1. spirited away
    2. princess mononoke - don't not watch it just bec of the term princess, HAHAHA
    3. ponyo
    4. laputa
    5. porco rosso
    6. whisper of the h... I'm rambling, aren't I? HAHAHAHA



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    1. Hahaha, I've actually had copies of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke a long time ago - I got them after reading about them from Time magazine (of all places).

      But I never got around to watch them until they got lost. So there. Just catching up now.

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