Must see in the kid's anime subgenre

Rating: 8/10 (5 December 2011)

This weekend took the kids to another Hayao Miyazaki film known as "Hauru No Ugoku Shiroâ? in Japanese or "Howl's Moving Castle (2004)â? in English. The film is advertised as being based loosely on a novel and I would hazard to say the loosely part probably has something to do with the injection of Miyazaki's frequent themes which include allusions to the Hiroshima bombing, and pacifism. However, this time out Miyazaki doesn't demonstrate the environmental concern normally prevalent in his work. Our eighteen year old animated heroine is Sophie who hides from society after being cursed into old age by the Witch of the Waste. Miyazaki borrows some elements of "The Wizard of Ozâ? in the witch's name and in the form of a talking scarecrow. Sophie takes refuge in the moving castle of the title and consistent with the dream-like quality of Miyazaki's films, this keep is a monstrous contraption composed of thousands of moving, steaming and grinding parts on 4 spindly legs powered by a fire demon called Calcifer. Howl is a self-centered wizard who is struggling to avoid being drafted into destructive war along with the rest of the kingdom's magic denizens. The war is over the disappearance of the prince of the land â" a plot point that does not become important until the very end of the picture. Markl, Howl's apprentice and Suliman, his former tutor, round out the cast of good and evil respectively. Sophie's first task is to bring order to Howl's castle and by extension to Howl himself who is extremely powerful but largely adrift in self-indulgence. Her second task is to get the Witch of the Waste to lift the curse which she ultimately fails at because Suliman tricks and disarms the Witch first. Sophie makes peace with this former enemy and winds up caring for her. It is left to the newly focused Howl to defeat his former tutor lifting the curse from Sophie and from the scarecrow who turns out to be the missing prince thus stopping the war. The story drifts quite a bit and there are definitely points in the film where things grind to halt. However, the animation, particularly the actual castle, are amazing and this helps to carry the audience through the 2 hour runtime.