Animation

One of my overall favorite pieces of animation is the movie Howl's Moving Castle. The film was made by Studio Ghibli and based on a book by Diana Jones also called Howl's Moving Castle. The film contains both hand drawn and computer generated animation to create a world of rich colors and images. The appearance of the film is like many other films made by Studio Ghibli; it is an anime that includes both standard elements of anime as well as sweeping landscapes and beautifully detailed interiors. The amount of detial in Howl's castle and the hat shop is absolutely astonishing, as is the smoothness and grace of the scene transitions and the story framing. There are also many interesting points of views and perspectives in the film, as characters are always moving to new and interesting places, including flying, traveling through a fantasy world, and exploring an enchanted garden.
The story follows much the same format discussed in class, despite the fact that it contains many complex emotions and strong character development, a characteristic that some of the in class examples did not have. The plot follows a generally upward trend as the characters interact and face increasing opposition, which peaks as Sophie (the main female character) must save Howl (the main male character) from outside enimies as well as himself. As is characteristic of a traditional narritive story line, the plot wraps up with the two main characters reuniting and living happily together. As I mentioned, even though the plot is fairly straight forward, the characters are developed in such a way to make them much deeper than most characters in simple plots. Because of this and the visual interest of the film, it can be enjoyed by people of a wide age range, not only children or only adults.




This clip contains one of the most beautiful and expansive landscapes in the film, an enchanted garden Howl makes for Sophie as a gift.