Streaming Buried Hayao Miyazaki’s Greatest Anime Romance
Hayao Miyazaki transforms Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 novel into a 2004 anime landmark with Howl’s Moving Castle, sending cursed milliner Sophie on a spellbinding, war-torn odyssey that cemented one of animation’s great romances.
Howl's Moving Castle keeps doing that thing where it quietly sneaks back into the spotlight and reminds everyone it is, in fact, one of the great anime romances. And then the industry shuffles it back into the corner because it did not come from their shiny new originals. Classic.
A quick refresher on the magic
Hayao Miyazaki turned Diana Wynne Jones's 1986 novel into a 2004 feature about Sophie, a young hatmaker who gets cursed by a witch and wakes up in an old woman's body. She crosses paths with the slippery wizard Howl, moves into his ramshackle walking home, and gets dragged into a war that keeps bleeding into their story. It is lush, it is tender, and it has been a critical darling for two decades.
Despite that, it lives in a weird space right now. As the big streamers pump money into their own anime slates, a lot of older masterpieces get quietly downplayed so they do not outshine the in-house stuff. The algorithm cannot love what it did not greenlight, and a romance as enduring as Howl's ends up harder to find than it should be.
The grind behind the whimsy
Animator Akihiko Yamashita, who worked on Howl's Moving Castle and Giant Robo, recently talked about what it took to pull this thing off. He remembered 14-hour workdays on Howl, driven by Miyazaki being intensely hands-on. Yamashita told Variety that Miyazaki personally tackled layouts and storyboards, and if he did not like a scene a key animator turned in, he would redraw it roughly and send it back for the team to finish to his standard. Grueling, yes. But that obsessive oversight is a big reason the movie looks the way it does.
Back in theaters, briefly
Howl's Moving Castle just got a limited theatrical encore from September 20 to 24, part of GKIDS and Fathom Entertainment's Studio Ghibli Fest honoring Studio Ghibli's 40th anniversary. If you caught it with a crowd, you know the castle still gets a gasp when it lurches over that first hill.
The surprising part: Miyazaki says he tried to make it flop in the U.S.
Years ago, Miyazaki told Rolling Stone he was so angry about the Iraq War that he tried to make one of his films less palatable to American audiences. He did not name the title in that interview, but comments he gave elsewhere point straight at Howl.
"Around the time of the Iraq War, I even made a slightly conscious effort to create a film that wouldn't be very successful in the United States."
In a separate conversation with Newsweek, he said the invasion had just started and he felt a lot of anger about it, enough that he was uneasy about awards attention. He also said he had just begun work on Howl's Moving Castle and that the film was profoundly shaped by the Iraq War.
Irony alert: Howl's did just fine. It became one of the most celebrated animated releases of its year and nabbed a Best Animated Feature nomination at the 78th Academy Awards.
- Source material: Diana Wynne Jones novel from 1986
- Film release: 2004, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
- Production stories: animator Akihiko Yamashita recalls 14-hour days and Miyazaki redrawing scenes himself
- 40th anniversary re-release: September 20–24, via GKIDS and Fathom's Studio Ghibli Fest
- Awards: nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 78th Academy Awards
- Streaming: Howl's Moving Castle is available on HBO Max
What is your go-to Miyazaki? If it is Howl's, you are in good company. If it is not, the castle door is open on HBO Max whenever you want to visit.