An anime masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (13 April 2007)

Howl's Moving Castle is an amazing fairy tale,fresh,original and wonderfully pleasing,with an astounding sense of the freshness and of the beauty.
A girl,Sophie,works in a hat shop.One day,going home from work,she is accosted by two rough soldiers,and,in succession,saved by a mysterious lad.Then,the two are hunted by a mob of creepy ghosts,so they take off together,getting rid of the persecutors.The youth leaves the taken aback Sophie on a veranda and continues his way.Soon after wards,Sophie is visited by a dissatisfied witch that transforms Sophie into a old woman.
In her town (that somehow resembles the one created by Johanna Spyri for her Heidi ,except that Sophie's town is in war with an enemy army) ,people notice the remote moving castle of the wizard Howl.
Sophie leaves surreptitiously her town,she makes for the mountains,on the road she meets first a scarecrow (this is a test for her,as in L. Frank Baum or in I. Creanga),then Howl's castle itself,and she slinks in.