Transcript
Nate Day: Welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast. I'm Nate.
Chris: And I'm Chris.
Nate Day: And today we are discussing Diana Wynne Jones's book, Howl's Moving Castle, and its film adaptation by Hayao Miyazaki. But before we do that, how are you, Chris? We're post-April Fool's Day. Did you fall for any silly Lord of the Rings jokes online this year?
Chris: I did not this year. I will tell you.
Nate Day: Dang it.
Chris: Actually, i'm glad you asked that. I forgot. Sarah, Blair's mom, sent me an Instagram post claiming that the MTA was going to start adding a luxury car.
Chris: to the subway system.
Nate Day: okay yeah
Chris: And for 25 bucks, you'd sit there and there'd be like a little porter and an espresso machine. And I was looking at it and I was like, this is cool.
Nate Day: yeah right all right
Chris: That could be fun. That'd be a fun way to get to the Upper East Side. And then I i had your voice in my head going, is it April fools So I had to pull it up and Google it, look at the date of the post, and I was like, oh, crap, April 1st, because I didn't see it until the next day.
Chris: Yeah, so I did tangentially fall for another one again, but in my defense, Sarah tricked me.
Nate Day: right
Nate Day: Yeah, sure she did.
Chris: So did you, did you see any good ones?
Nate Day: No, actually, I kind of forgot it was April Fool's Day this year. It's hard to make jokes, it's you know, in the world.
Chris: Fair.
Chris: hear.
Nate Day: Anyway, though, what have you been what have you been reading lately?
Chris: was.
Chris: I am so excited. i finally finished Musashi. All 970 pages.
Nate Day: Okay. Good God.
Chris: Cannot recommend it highly enough, but I know nobody I would recommend it to would read
Nate Day: I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole. 970 pages. nine hundred and seventy pages
Chris: it.
Nate Day: no Yeah, I'm sure you can put it away and probably never pick it back up again.
Chris: Yep. Yep. Delightful Edo period, 16th century, all over Japan. Nice full plot lines. It's just Anna Karenina shifted over the border.
Chris: delightful bunch of samurai. And I'm so glad to be done with it.
Chris: Yes, that's exactly correct. What about you? What you been watching?
Nate Day: You know, still kind of slow going around here, but between Project Hail Mary kind of dominating things and and the beginning of the year just being pretty weak otherwise, there just hasn't been a ton and I've been kind of busy, so I've missed a few things.
Chris: Yeah.
Chris: <unk>hu
Nate Day: But but the one new one that I have seen is a new movie on Hulu called Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice, which I actually thought that you...
Chris: I've been getting all sorts of ads for that.
Nate Day: I think you and Blair would probably have a really good time with that movie.
Chris: Yeah?
Nate Day: It's a fun, like gangster. i don't want to give away any of the plot, but it's a fun, funny gangster movie and it's like a stylized action movie. So it's very kind of reminiscent of the seventies and it's cool.
Nate Day: It's fun.
Chris: that That sounds like everything I want in a movie.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah. The whole time I was, I was thinking about the two of you because I think everything will, I think you'll laugh, you'll cry. you probably won't cry, but you'll enjoy yourself.
Chris: You'd be surprised.
Nate Day: You might cry, Blair won't cry.
Chris: I think, yeah, I've been getting tons of ads for it and it looks fantastic.
Nate Day: Yeah, if you've got Hulu, check it out. It's a good good streaming movie. like It's not a you know masterpiece or anything, but definitely worth your time.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Who needs masterpieces in the big 26? Just give me some lighthearted laughter and slapstick comedy.
Nate Day: I mean, I do.
Chris: Okay, well... give i ne I'm Nate, I'm hoity-toity.
Nate Day: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: But speaking of, yeah, there you go Look at you taking the reins.
Chris: Well, speaking of masterpieces...
Nate Day: Speaking of, yeah, stories that are considered masterpieces, let's talk about Howl's Moving Castle. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the book?
Chris: Yeah, that's what I'm, as i as I made that somewhat humorous transition, I did kind of think i'm I'm not sure where I land. Much like a number that we have discussed previously, i keep coming out of my discussion research more of a fan than I was throughout the reading, if that makes sense.
Nate Day: Wow. Okay. Yeah.
Chris: And this one this one is no exception to that, which kind of made me wonder, especially as I was writing my recommendation for this episode, what am I recommending based on? Because I don't expect anyone I recommend a book to to also go and do the lengthy research that I do for our discussion.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So can I rightfully merit that bump in my opinion? And expect that to be the case. So i've I've been kicking that around a little bit. So that is to say I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this one. But yes, book.
Chris: So Howl's Moving Castle published in 1986 by Diana Wynne Jones. I do love Wynne Jones. I know you have watched more recently, but are not an avid watcher of Wales rugby in particular.
Nate Day: yeah Yeah, true.
Chris: Huge figurehead in Welsh rugby, Alan Wynne-Jones, just retired a couple of years ago. And I'm curious if it's just a more common... What's what's going on with the names?
Chris: I see a lot of repeated names. I mean, I know Wales is not a large nation, but that gave me a little a little tickle, I suppose.
Nate Day: Oh, yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah, sure.
Chris: She is not Welsh, though, Did end up in Wales after... World War II began. She was born in London in 1934. I think it was around five or six. Her family temporarily evacuated there, you know, to be safe from the...
Nate Day: Blitz.
Chris: Yes, the Blitz, the Blitz. There we go. Thank you.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: This feels absurd and insane, especially as I started digging more deeply into Jones's career. I had not heard of her until you suggested this book.
Chris: And I had not heard of this book until you suggested it either. Crazy, illustrious writing career. In part, I had not heard of her because the lion's share of her work is written for children.
Chris: i I guess I didn't see for sure not.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: Is this considered properly a children's tale? Is it kind of accepted for everyone at this point?
Nate Day: I don't know. this is definitely one of the ones that we talk about that where the movie is is much more famous, I think, than the book, just in, again, in 2026.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: And because it's an anime film, there is certainly some elements of family friendliness and think a lot of people attach themselves to anime at an early age all of that is to say that I don't I don't know because it's hard to answer that when the the movie comes from an industry that is it's like if Pixar made a movie you're like well yeah it's for kids but you know Pixar also makes movies based on like horrible legends that they turn into fun sparkly dancey musicals you know
Chris: Right. Right. the I think that's where the waters get murky here. Because exactly what you alluded to, you know, Pinocchio, the lovely, happy-go-lucky animated movie.
Nate Day: Yeah, that's a great example.
Chris: we've This has come up on the podcast before, if anyone has...
Nate Day: her
Chris: gone down that little rabbit hole to read it, not the happy-go-lucky cartoon that we grew up with.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: But then we have the reverse, I think, also, if I'm not mistaken, this is Studio Ghibli, correct?
Nate Day: Yes, correct.
Chris: So also famously blurring the lines and making these visual spectacles that everybody loves, not just children.
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: So we're kind of weaving our way back and forth. Okay, I just didn't know if it was hands down one or the other. Initially, when I first started reading, my immediate thought was, am I reading a children's book? So that's interesting, but we'll get into it a little bit later.
Chris: I wanted to give a little summation through my patented list of lists style, but her lists are just crazy.
Nate Day: Okay.
Nate Day: Great.
Chris: The bibliography from this woman, spectacular. Truly, truly an illustrious career.
Nate Day: Wow.
Chris: I saw a few plays, like three to five plays that could be wrong. Again, I never feel super certain about these, so I'm giving approximations. I believe exactly three books explicitly, specifically written for adults.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: Her first one published in 1970 about the this process of the British Empire, the Commonwealth, giving back little nations, giving back, you know, post-imperialism.
Chris: Whatever. That book sounded incredible. I want to read that. But much, much, much more of the body of her work. Dozens of short stories, YA children's books, poetry, anthologies, just a crazy list.
Nate Day: Wow. Dang.
Chris: But her awards list... equally insane starting in 85 nominated for world fantasy award nominated for mythopoetic awards many times many times and that was primarily fantasy for children's literature locust award nominations again many times uh a carl edward wagner award that one i hadn't heard of we have shocker found ourselves another british author which is crazy the percentage of what we've covered
Nate Day: Wow.
Chris: how many of them are British authors.
Nate Day: I know it really is. Yeah.
Chris: But then the huge one here in 2007, the world fantasy award for life achievement.
Nate Day: Wow.
Chris: Very illustrious author, the lists of who she both was inspired by and who her writing went on to inspire. Again, growing up in the London area, child of two teachers attended lectures by both Tolkien and Lewis, and then has gone on and been cited as a figure that inspired Terry Pratchett, J.K.
Nate Day: Wow.
Chris: Rowling, Neil Gaiman. We're going to temporarily ignore that he's been canceled since, but she was actually friends with, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, it's been,
Nate Day: Both of those people have been canceled since.
Chris: We're going to talk about the art and art the not the artist.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: How's that?
Nate Day: Yes.
Chris: shes She's actually, she was friends with Neil Gaiman. Both have books that they dedicated to each other.
Nate Day: well
Chris: And you can definitely see the through lines here.
Chris: How do I want to put it? this adherence to, but also bending and breaking of the rules. And I think along the lines of their writing and this lineage that we see in a literary sense that she came from, in order to effectively, we see this in music, we see this in visual arts, in order to effectively bend or break these rules without your stuff just being...
Chris: uh amateur drivel you need to have a level of mastery and soundness to to effectively and confidently commit those acts right does that make sense and and we very much see that in her writing like you cannot set up the tropes of a fairy tale and then ignore them effectively without also establishing this base that you
Nate Day: Yeah. Oh, yeah, 100%.
Chris: it's it's sort of implied that it could have been a simple and fantastic fairy tale.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I guess is what I'm getting at.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: which Which I would argue this very much is. And I found many references to the the amount of writing online about her writing of Howl's Moving Castle was incredible.
Chris: I'm finding people's theses, research papers, peer-reviewed article publications of What the heck is going on in Howl's Moving Castle and why is it so brilliant?
Nate Day: Wow. Cool.
Chris: Yeah, I was not prepared for that. I even found one. I was not able to find a copy. Very frustrating.
Chris: it it's It's effectively what we do. It's an essay that Jones herself wrote titled Howl's Moving Castle, Book to Film, or Book Becoming Film, along those lines.
Nate Day: Oh, cool.
Chris: Could not track down a copy of that essay because obviously every time you use any search engine and put in Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle, you just get information about the book itself.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: But if I can find that essay, I'll send it to you and whatever production magic Nate does, we'll find a way to disseminate that if people are interested.
Chris: All of this writing, you do not you do not see this research on, you know, the hero's quest, the a classic fairy tale structure. I mean, obviously we do have that research, but it's so ingrained in Western understanding of literature and writing of storytelling.
Chris: And there's a safety, indeed it's nearly a prerequisite, I think, for truly grasping and enjoying Howl's Moving Castle.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: she She doesn't explain all of this stuff right off the top. There's sort of this assumed cultural knowledge, right?
Nate Day: Oh Yeah, totally.
Chris: But at the same time, that is what makes it so fun when she deviates.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: So right off the top here, my first thought was literally, am I reading a children's book? And again, I'm not convinced I wasn't.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Especially when you consider these very early, the Brothers Grimm, some of these maybe more culturally specific folktales, they are not the Disney and Pixar animated films that you and I grew up with.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: there's There's somebody eating children. There is somebody, Pinocchio, being encouraged to do the right thing through drastic, what we would now call child abuse, measures.
Nate Day: Yeah. yeah
Chris: she sets us up with that.
Chris: And again, as readers, viewers, consumers of... the Western version of these fairy tales, we can kind of immediately step in and have a good grasp of what's going on. We've got this, the fairy utopian society, this family that's all loving and happy. These ideas of fate versus free will are coming up a lot right at the beginning.
Chris: An evil witch, a wizard that everybody's scared of, a girl cursed and turned into this old hag, and then, of course, the titular castle with the ability to rove about the countryside, which is perhaps our first and most blatant departure.
Nate Day: Right
Chris: Castles can't move. So, cool.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Where are we going with this, lady? This is the only writing of hers that I have consumed personally, so I don't want to draw any sweeping generalizations on her style as a whole.
Chris: But within the book, we have a few parts that I think are worth highlighting. I say this because at first blush, it was not apparent to me why this particular tale would be chosen to be turned into a movie, if that makes sense.
Nate Day: Okay, sure.
Chris: we have we have thousands folk oral tradition tales characters what have you why suddenly is this one being selected especially as you said i would completely agree i think the movie is far more widely known than the book
Nate Day: Yep. At least these days.
Chris: yeah yeah now now i'm i am speaking of course in our context but it
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: Perhaps just because of it is a conversation that you and I have often, and obviously I knew we'd be recording this, so I have a different lens that I'm looking at it. But this this is to say it's very stock and standard at the start.
Chris: okay
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: We've often discussed when things are brought to the screen, what gets cut out, what characters or plot lines can be in some fashion removed without losing the storyline, what would just make for bad screen time if it was adapted to the film.
Chris: And in this case, we have the stereotypical setup, the magical realm, and then all of this is immediately turned sideways. And I don't know what that looks like in the film, I have not seen the movie, but for a reader, this is very exciting.
Nate Day: Great.
Chris: We don't need just another fairy tale where we know what's happening. Bad witch. Find the mirror. Kiss the prince. Everyone happy. Right?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: Jones does not stick to many of the tropes we come to expect, but still builds a world with the familiarity needed where you can track along. There's a lot of assumed content, which I love from a writer.
Chris: The show Don't Tell...
Nate Day: Yep.
Chris: you know This book would be four times as long if she had to spell out everything. So really leaning on that, the knowledge of the reader.
Nate Day: Right.
Chris: But because of that, because it truly can be assumed, and there are many things that we can just, cool, bad witch, go do this. You don't need a Genesis story. You don't need a full outline.
Chris: We have the presumptions that we can make. And she twists those presumptions later. We get both. we We have our cake and we can eat it too. And the end result is she can build what would otherwise be a fairly mind-boggling, twisting, winding plot, which is both fantastic to read, a departure from the fairy tales that are already overdone.
Chris: And that's what makes me see if that's this opening for the artistic freedom
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: for what people could turn into a movie. So really, I mean, I have no idea if that was her intention, you know, published in 86, if that was even a thought in her mind. But clearly, as we can see from now times, worked out quite well for both of them.
Nate Day: Yeah. Right.
Chris: The plot itself, I don't want to dive in too deep because honestly, a lot of details that I could share with you would bring up more questions than it would give answers.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I think you texted me the other day. What did you say? It's it's known to be a fairly dense text. Is that what you said?
Nate Day: Yeah, that's what I've heard.
Chris: Yeah. And... It's dense in a both confusing and compelling way.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: Because that's 100% correct. It is not just a fairy tale. You can flip the pages. You can move along. There's a lot happening. But everything that is, again, a departure from the plot lines that you expect is a unique addition rather than complexity for the sake of complexity.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: Yeah, that's the best way. I don't feel great about that description, but it's the best way I can come up with to describe it. Virtually every fork in these roads that we have, based on the initial fairy tale setup, what what Jones plays off of is the expectation of what should, quote unquote, should happen.
Chris: in in a fairy tale realm in this world that she's set up. And it feels like she basically flipped a coin and chose to follow sometimes the expected path, because if if we strayed at every turn, this would no longer be recognizable.
Nate Day: mm-hmm
Chris: And then the ones where she does stray, is... stray it is
Chris: so far outside of what but you would expect in a fairy tale that you could not see it coming. So we have these, I mean, not thrills.
Nate Day: right.
Chris: It's not approaching a thriller, but the, okay, magic door. Turn it one way. This opens to the king's palace. Turn it one way. It opens out to the field. Yeah, yeah, we can see that.
Chris: This would fit. You could drop this into King Arthur. It would fit. You could drop this into Lord of the Rings and it would fit.
Chris: Sleeping Beauty. Any insert fairy tale here. That makes sense.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: But then One Direction, he turns the door handle. Suddenly they're in a backyard in Wales, and his sister is telling him how he's making poor life decisions, but his niece and nephew loves seeing their cool uncle.
Chris: What?
Nate Day: Wow.
Chris: Why?
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Who, why everything. Just fantastic. And again, there are 1,000 of these little tidbits throughout. We have the familiar, an angry witch feels slighted, so she turns this young, beautiful girl into an old, haggard woman.
Chris: who keeps running across these magical objects or are foreboding prophecies. And then...
Chris: And then the guy is going to be late for saving the prince and helping the kingdom because his Welsh rugby club is having a reunion at the pub. you You're just... it's It's in ways that are novel...
Chris: and unique enough, i I will say it doesn't 100% gel for me.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: But I see why so many people read it, why so many people love it. Because if nothing else, especially if you are an avid reader, this is something new and fresh without resorting to what I think is the crude club, someone like George R.R.
Chris: Martin wields, which is oh, I'll build a fun fantasy realm, but with a lot of sex and murder. Like, we can be more clever than this.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah, totally.
Chris: And I think she does that beautifully, which is where the ambiguity to me comes in. Is this a children's book? Is it not? It wouldn't be the first thing I would reach for, but
Chris: i could see reading this with my 12 year old nephew and both of us enjoying it. And that is a remarkable, a knife's edge to walk. And I think she does it brilliantly.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. So again, a a lot of the plot skipped mostly because I presume if you're listening to this, either you've read or watched it already or if this is enough encouragement for you to do it.
Chris: These are all fun little Easter eggs for you to discover for yourself. So it's not like avoiding spoilers, much like any fairy tale.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Kinda not. I mean, you know you know how fairy tales end right?
Nate Day: Right. Yep.
Chris: but So so the the value in this one is very, very much the journey and not the destination.
Chris: Yeah, I really struggled with what I could or should share. And I'm very curious what parts they did decide to bring over to the movie. But I kind of want to hear that from your side and compare rather than give because you you cannot give a synopsis of this book plot.
Nate Day: Yeah. yeah
Chris: It's it's a weird pockmarked road that does not lead anywhere you thought it would perhaps doesn't lead anywhere at all.
Nate Day: but
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah. Well, and I would say something similar about the movie, the movie quite famously deviates from the book. So it's still...
Nate Day: you know, got all of these sort of confusing subversions, not confusing, but
Chris: Oh.
Nate Day: I don't know another word, subversive subversions of the fairy tale genre. So kind of interesting to hear you say that about the book as well.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: So maybe he did a really good job of adapting, you know, of of really understanding sort of what's at the core of the text.
Chris: Yeah, interesting.
Chris: OK.
Nate Day: So I kind of had a hard time putting together notes for this one because a lot of what I and other people have to say about this movie and its history are sort of cyclical.
Nate Day: You can't really talk about anime without talking about Studio Ghibli and you can't really talk about Studio Ghibli without talking about Hayao Miyazaki and you can't really talk about Hayao Miyazaki without talking about, you know,
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: filmmaking and sort of walking this razor's edge between children and adult storytelling, family storytelling. So you'll have to forgive me as I jump around and like pinball around here a little bit. But The film adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle was released in 2004 and was directed by this guy, Hayao Miyazaki, that I've mentioned several times. He is one of the founders of Studio Ghibli, which is a huge, huge, huge animation company in Japan and is pretty much responsible for the like the biggest anime, at least film titles. I don't know how involved they are in television, but if you know an anime film,
Nate Day: You know, it chances are it's a studio Ghibli movie, unless you're, we've got a couple of friends that are like really big anime heads. So they probably know a few other studios, but on, on my behalf, at least if I know an anime film, it like 99% of the time, it's going to be a studio Ghibli film.
Nate Day: And this one, Howl's Moving Castle is considered one of the studio's crowning achievements actually. So that's kind of a big deal considering how massively popular anime is around the world.
Chris: OK. Oh.
Nate Day: And then kind of an extra fun fact, the movie was distributed by Toho, which is another huge studio in Japan, which is very widely known for owning the rights to Godzilla. That's the studio that's kind of responsible for, for most Godzilla content and world wide. So really just all of that is to say that this is a product of huge, huge, just like juggernauts of Japanese culture.
Chris: Can you tell me what does that mean? if If Studio Ghibli is so massive, why is a different studio distributing the film?
Nate Day: yeah Sometimes studios collaborate like that to to split costs and frankly share profits.
Chris: I don't understand that. Okay. Okay.
Nate Day: This movie made a boatload of money. So it's it's possible. I don't know the the workings, the you know, the inner workings of Toho and Ghibli. Maybe they collaborate frequently.
Nate Day: Maybe they one of them owns another. I'm not totally positive on that because how that industry is set up is just so different than
Chris: Okay. Okay.
Nate Day: the industry here in america so it was it was just a way of spreading the love a little bit i think and by love i mean money miyazaki read the book like you did and was immediately grabbed by this image of the moving castle and trying to figure out how to turn that into an actual you know physical image like you said
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: That's that's sort of the biggest like what the hell moment of the story. Right. And that's what actually led to the development of the movie. He was so interested in, like, how would I draw this castle? How would I make it move? How would I make it believable in a film? And of course, he, as an anime filmmaker has some kind of extra leeway maybe because there's those are usually fantasy films and this is a fantasy story so you know you get to kind of do some silly things and you know eventually he landed I don't know have you seen a poster or a clip from this movie or anything have you seen what the castle looks like it's a massive big ugly uneven dump of a castle that walks around on chicken legs these little spindly mechanical chicken legs
Chris: Really?
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah. So kind of just interesting.
Chris: So that's that's exactly what I was picturing. And that is not what's described in the book.
Nate Day: Really?
Chris: And I've like taken a liberty with myself.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I don't know why. i need to i need to see a picture of this.
Nate Day: That's funny. Maybe you've seen it and didn't like realize, you know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah. yep
Nate Day: Or, or maybe you're on the same wavelength as Hayao Miyazaki. So that's kind of cool.
Chris: Oh, yep.
Chris: This looks like a beetle that haunts my dreams.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: Wow.
Nate Day: Interesting. Film adaptation was heavily influenced by Miyazaki's opposition to war in general, but particularly America's invasion of Iraq in 2003. And he set out to make a film that would sort of be alienating to American audiences because it lampoons, not lampoons, but it it really is a takedown of this idea that like war and victory and war are not
Nate Day: as glorious as we've been like sort of propagandized to believe, you know, and, it's an extra interesting perspective because Miyazaki was born into a family that actually made, i think a modest fortune, at least on manufacturing plane parts during world war ii And then he grew up as a pacifist.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: So very interesting. All of his films have contain messaging often about, you know, anti-war, anti-capitalism, pro-environmentalism.
Chris: All right.
Nate Day: He's a very, very political filmmaker and this film very much fits into that.
Chris: So this wasn't necessarily he saw that in the storyline naturally and thought he could bring it out. This is something he's reflecting onto his work.
Nate Day: Yeah, somewhere somewhere between those two things, because the substantial differences from the book include that the movie takes place during war time, which I believe the book is kind of just operating under the threat of war, right?
Nate Day: Like there's a sort of looming war.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The prince. Yeah, that's why they're trying to get back... I want to say Balthazar, and that's wrong. the The two missing dudes, that's kind of the
Chris: compelling factor to Howl going and helping find the prince and the missing wizard, because it's not just the king's brother, but like his greatest general, and there's this looming threat that they'll be attacked, and they need him back in time.
Nate Day: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So this, not really, but we're at war and I'm trying to, yeah, I'm trying to think one of the reasons that this matches so well with anime is because of that sort of quality you talked about where you're dropped into the story.
Chris: Does that line up at all?
Chris: Huh. Okay.
Nate Day: There's really not much exposition.
Nate Day: That's a pretty common trend, at least as far as I know, in anime. I'm usually spending most of the time in anime movies trying to catch up to to the lore and the story and the world.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: And that's that's the case here. So I'm i am a little foggy on why they were at war. It had to do with there was a missing prince.
Nate Day: Yeah. Maybe the other, maybe they thought he was kidnapped.
Nate Day: I can't straighten out my thoughts without giving away too much. But it's during wartime and Howl is a wizard who is supposed to be fighting on behalf of the king of whatever kingdom he lives in, but he actually spends his time kind of roaming the kingdoms and interfering, I guess, in in battles, right? He doesn't really think that there's a good side or a bad side, so he's kind of just trying to stop the war altogether.
Chris: what so there's no subplot of wizard Howl chasing ladies
Nate Day: Yeah, because, so
Nate Day: No, it's sort of implied that he's a womanizer. But his romance with Sophie, the main character, is really sort of the driving force of the whole movie.
Chris: All right, no comment. Continue. This is bonkers.
Nate Day: Yeah. Along those lines, several characters are sort of compressed and combined, which is why I'm saying that like I couldn't really sort things out verbally without spoiling things because i this prince that's missing throughout the whole thing has a larger presence than you ever realized because of the way that they sort of rewrote some of these characters.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: I think the king got sort of compressed as well. i I looked up a list a while ago and you know, it's kind of like Lord of the Rings. It's like, I can't really read this list because I haven't read the book.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: So I don't really want to sit here and like preach. Like I do know what I'm not talking about.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I don't know how they would compress... The king is not a... Okay, okay, okay. Continue.
Nate Day: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Nate Day: But the the movie, for the most part, follows this young woman, Sophie, who's cursed by an evil witch and transformed into an old lady. And she goes to seek help from Howl, wizard that she encountered once, sort of by chance.
Nate Day: And then she ends up joining his resistance movement as they fall in love. It's sort of the the plot of the movie, if I could boil it down.
Chris: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah Yeah, okay.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: no we're we're tracking.
Nate Day: Diana Wynne Jones was not very involved with the production of the movie beyond meeting with Studio Ghibli a handful of times at the beginning of the process, which is obviously standard of, you know, there's like legal contracts it's involved.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: But she has said, I wonder if it's from this, if the quote is from the same essay that you mentioned, because I had a really hard time finding the
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: like original source of the quote. There was just kind of a lot of articles that quoted this quote of hers where she called the movie fantastic and said that the differences between the movie and the book were necessary and and very much natural when transferring media, which I was really...
Chris: Yes.
Chris: Interesting. Uh-huh.
Nate Day: happy to hear because that's, you know, we've talked about several times just this year how the art of adaptation is kind of its own thing and deserves, you know, sort of lighter boundaries than most people are willing to give it.
Chris: Yes.
Chris: Yep. Yep.
Nate Day: The movie went on to become a huge, huge hit in Japan and was eventually dubbed under the supervision of Pixar and released here in the U.S. s in 2005.
Chris: I saw that.
Nate Day: Billy Crystal plays the, the talking fire and the name is escaping me.
Chris: Calcifer
Nate Day: Yes. Calcifer. Yeah.
Chris: Yes. Those are phenomenal role choices.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nate Day: And then obviously, like I've mentioned, the movie's a big critical success as well.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: Many people have praised its ability to convey these nuanced ideas in a way that's easy for children and families to digest. i think I think that's mostly true.
Chris: Mm-Hmm
Nate Day: It's still, like I said, it's still sort of a lot of big ideas that are posed through symbolism and sort of so the subversion of fantasy tropes. So sometimes if you're like thinking about it a little bit too hard, you can kind of like think yourself in knots and circles and it's can be kind of difficult to digest, but for the most part, it is a very digestible story.
Chris: It kind of feels like... I mean, tell me if the tracking with the movie was like this to you. You remember that kinetic putty? Where like the more force you put into it, the more solid it becomes.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: But then if you loosen your grip, it falls through.
Nate Day: Oh yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah, actually. Yeah. That's a great analogy. Yeah.
Chris: Because I had the exact same experience that you just described. If I if i if i kind of... squint a little, don't look too close.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: It feels like it's flowing.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And then upon scrutiny, it feels like it kind of evaporates.
Nate Day: Right.
Nate Day: Yeah. And I think some of that, I have a hard time evaluating anime films just because they are so inherently from a different culture, you know, just like any, just like any foreign language film.
Nate Day: Sometimes you have to be like, i don't know what's going on. And that's because I'm not Danish or whatever, you know, or or Japanese in this case.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: And I didn't,
Chris: We're just going to ride this wave.
Nate Day: Right. And I didn't grow up with anime like a lot of people did. I've got a good buddy, Codie that probably knows and loves this movie and has watched anime his whole life and is just able to tap into that more than I am. And and our buddy JD as well really likes anime and I don't dislike it. I just feel like I kind of missed sort of like, again, Lord of the Rings. I so feel like i sort of missed boat.
Nate Day: getting into it at the right age.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: And sometimes that makes it a little harder to consume, you know, uh,
Chris: Yep.
Chris: Yep. Yep.
Nate Day: like all Ghibli movies and Miyazaki movies praised for its animation and, and it's yeah. nuanced on storytelling, like I mentioned and was ultimately nominated for best animated features at the Oscars, but lost. I just think this is so funny because of what this, of what,
Nate Day: Howl's Moving Castle is as a film. It lost to Wallace and Gromit, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which is a great movie. I love those Aardman movies. i just think it's so funny that this anti-war piece came out and lost to a movie about a were-rabbit.
Chris: this just some claymation.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: So that's kind of the movie. Just really beloved, really beloved stuff there.
Chris: Woof.
Nate Day: But tell me, what kind of discussion questions do you have?
Chris: Oh, that's so funny.
Chris: so as i alluded to earlier there are so many options for how this story in particular could be manipulated or
Chris: dissected to create a film because you clearly cannot include everything especially this exactly what you talked about the number of ideas that in the writing as well and I presume that's why in the movie she does a fantastic job of giving this nuanced kind of summation of what would always are otherwise be a difficult topic to discuss especially as a children's story
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Chris: But there are so many of them, so, so, so many of them. Do you think studios are taking that flexibility into consideration or kind of chicken and the egg other way around? Are they looking for purely fun, good plot and the flexibility, the hard choices will come later?
Nate Day: Depends probably on the country that you're talking about. if it's If it's a country like Japan that produces a lot of movies like this, where where Studio Ghibli lives, they're probably looking for ways that they can exercise that flexibility.
Chris: Mm, fair.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: American studios are a lot more risk-averse, so they will be looking for something that has this sort of checklist of things that will make it successful which includes unfortunately like a the plot of a movie that you can understand while you're also playing Candy Crush so I I hate to sound so bleak but uh that's kind of how they do it here in America and and the flexibility
Chris: Aha.
Chris: Okay.
Nate Day: This is, i'm I'm dancing around a certain idea, which is that in the last five or six years, especially animation studios have decided to pull away from any kind of messaging in their films here in America because, you know, there's this huge anti-woke movement and in America and and Trump was elected by popular vote this time. So that these studios read that and and think, well, fine, nobody wants, you know,
Nate Day: black characters or gay characters in movies anymore. So we're going to stop putting that in And that's just a misread, obviously, of culture.
Nate Day: And I'm just, I was trying to avoid getting political, but here we are.
Chris: No, I mean, especially an animated studio. So what you're talking about, i want to check my understanding here. So this risk aversion is if we're going to put this much money in, we do not want the baggage of a potential that plots too difficult so it flops commercially.
Chris: Am I understanding that correctly?
Nate Day: Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Chris: That sucks.
Chris: Interesting.
Nate Day: Anyway. Yeah.
Nate Day: Okay. I was kind of curious having read the book.
Chris: Mm
Nate Day: I know that I told you beforehand that it was an anime film and that was kind of one of the reasons we wanted to do it was to explore a different sort of medium or genre.
Nate Day: But is anime the medium that you would have expected for this? Because it's really fascinating to me that this is a British book and really it's only adaptation has been this Japanese movie.
Chris: hmm.
Chris: Hmm. no. That feels very surprising to me, especially with the the lineage that they have there.
Chris: I mean, whoever produced it was willing to make just a comical farce of CGI for that early, early Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that I know we haven't discussed yet.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I'm surprised they didn't want to tap into some of these huge names. I mean, how cool could the cast have been? This young kind of brash wizard.
Chris: They have a thousand options. The the old spited Haggard witch, a thousand cool options that we are so that we've seen, you know, historically in the Lord of the Rings films, in the James Bond films.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Mm-hmm.
Chris: They clearly could have done it, and it would have been fantastic.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: So I am very curious why this is the direction they went, and I don't know if that's a choice they would have asked Jones about. Is this just who bought the rights?
Nate Day: I think it's just who bought the rights and then because of, I mean, like I said, Hayao read the book, Miyazaki read the book and kind of just fell in love with developing these ideas and that turned into the development of a movie.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: So I guess, I don't know, I mean, but How this is avoided that like reboot treatment, I don't really know, but I'm i'm glad for it.
Chris: who
Nate Day: i hope I hope the rights are locked away in a locker at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Japan somewhere and it never gets touched, you know?
Chris: right There's so many... i know you know what I'm talking about. That guy, the he was... nuts. He was a young wizard. He's in the Jackal now. I don't know if you've watched that.
Nate Day: Oh, Eddie Redmayne. Yeah.
Chris: How great would he be for... Wizard Howl
Nate Day: Yeah, he'd be good.
Chris: The old witch that first curses Sophie. I'm picturing like Dame Judi Dench. Like, come on.
Nate Day: yeah Yeah, that'd be cool.
Chris: Come on. I just, I think it could be done very well in a way. I don't know. i shouldn't i shouldn't I shouldn't say this. I haven't watched the anime yet. I'm sure I'm going to love it. But i to answer your question, no, it feels very curious.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And maybe that's the point.
Nate Day: Yeah. I mean, she was totally okay with it. Like I said, so interesting.
Chris: Yeah, 2007. And that was only four years before she passed. Which, from the other authors we've discussed, that's when they start...
Chris: pulling all punches and being brutally honest with their reviews.
Nate Day: yeah
Chris: So I think we can trust this one.
Nate Day: That's true. That's true. That's true. Okay. What else do you got?
Chris: Yep, yep, yep. So this one I thought about constantly throughout. And it's so funny to me that this is the title that it's really coming up as an important question.
Chris: And we've touched on it a couple of times already. But what what came to mind for me in regards to these like tropes and stories, and what keeps them fresh and exciting for an audience
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: at these clearly pivotal decision points, tense interpersonal interactions, grand plan is coming to fruition and they have to finally go put it into action, as these points are clearly approaching, especially in a film for you, do you like to try to guess the outcome or do you sit back and just wait to be surprised by whatever comes?
Nate Day: I try to sit back and be surprised. I think it's more fun if you just let whatever the story is, whether it's something like this, or I think maybe we kind of touched on this in the Agatha Christie episode too.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: I kind of, i I think I have more fun if I'm not doing mental gymnastics the whole time, trying to pretend like a master detective or or a master fantasy storyteller or or whatever.
Chris: Yes.
Chris: Yes. yes yes
Nate Day: It's really tough as somebody who, loves storytelling, loves writing. It's tough to not sort of play those games.
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: But I really try to just let it wash over me and like enjoy the roller coaster ride.
Chris: Yeah. That's why I wanted to ask you, because I suspected something.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And you're right, it did come up with Agatha Christie. But those, I mean, it's literally the genre mystery.
Nate Day: Right. Yeah.
Chris: Who done it? There is a question inherent and implied where this very easily could have included
Nate Day: Mm hmm.
Chris: very few of these forks in the road questions, and she deliberately baked it in a lot.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Again, I know we're trying not to spoil some of those parts, but there are some turns here that, at least for me, were kind of like Whiplash. Like, he did what?
Nate Day: yeah Yeah. I would totally agree with that.
Chris: that That was what character you're hiding? You know?
Nate Day: Yeah. yeah Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about.
Chris: Like, a lot.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Okay. This one you've kind of touched on already, but what other fantasy worlds as you were reading this, did this feel comparable to? And I ask this because usually Studio Ghibli films to me can kind of only fit into their own world.
Nate Day: You know, we sort of like, for example, we've talked a little bit about the shared lineage between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and how you could sort of conceivably pick up one character from those movies and drop them into another and it would kind of work, right? Like it would kind of make sense.
Nate Day: here here As a Tolkien purist, I know you're...
Chris: a horrible crime you've just committed, but yeah, okay, continue.
Nate Day: yeah I'm just saying, like, Gandalf fits in at Hogwarts.
Chris: Nope. Don't just say it, though. you That is what you're just saying, but don't. Okay.
Nate Day: So I was curious if this world felt like any others to you as you were reading it, since the book is not intended to be anime and isn't, you know, and like, held up by those sort of Studio Ghibli pillars that I saw it.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. the So the world building is quite curious here. As as you already mentioned, we are just dropped in. You know, nobody's, there's no surprise.
Chris: Suddenly this guy has magic powers.
Nate Day: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Chris: There's just the expected, oh yeah, that's the wizard. Oh yeah, you're going to train with the witch. That's what you're going to become. Cool. While you continue being a hatter and making hats, because that's what you do.
Nate Day: here
Chris: all of the, and I love that, the expected, just no, treat it like normal, move on with the world. The comparison that I drew, I guess, I don't know if this will entirely answer your question, but i already wrote it out, so I'll just say it.
Chris: It was part of my recommendations. There is a clear through line and lineage that I can see that I think is logically drawn out from Jones's writing, again, just in this book, I'm not familiar with her other books yet, where I could see like the form of storytelling and how you develop as a reader in particular, going from something like the Rick Riordan,
Nate Day: Oh, Percy Jackson.
Chris: yes, the Percy Jackson books, where it's not it's not a Tolstoy level of character observation development that would be that would turn off a young reader it kind of enough and the world building is almost supplementing to keep you interested where i would say that maybe into narnia i guess i don't know what order i would put it with narnia in terms of the bigger themes but moving into this where it is the same level of the world is not crazy
Nate Day: Right. yeah
Nate Day: and Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: you're You're not having to chew on it to understand. And neither are the characters, which as a not child or young adult reading, i would love a little bit more, but I kind of see why she did it.
Chris: And I see that pretty naturally transitioning into some of Neil Gaiman's writing. And I suppose Pratchett too, where I could see like you go from Percy Jackson to Howl's Moving Castle to American Gods and are introduced to the ideas of how these themes swirl together, almost learning how to digest those worlds.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: To her credit, the way that she writes, takes what should be the most, this this this world building should fit most akin to like Arthurian Camelot Canterbury Tales.
Nate Day: Okay.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: Which is to say, to to your question, I think the world building becomes a necessary, not in a bad way, but a crutch to explore in a palatable manner some more useful, more interesting themes.
Nate Day: yeah Yeah. Those are some good comps. I was struggling to come up with any that were not Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.
Nate Day: Cool. Well, how about recommendations? Who do you, if anybody, who do you recommend this to?
Chris: Yeah, I'm, that's tough. I don't know that there's a single adult reader that I would say this is going to be your new favorite fantasy book.
Nate Day: Sure.
Chris: I, in my mind, this is firmly YA, like I have many students that I would and probably will recommend it to.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: i would see this as a jumping off point into, oh, you say you don't like reading? let's explore some of these realms outside of maybe what you've been exposed to and see if that does something for you and and like i said i can see sort of that linear path i've got tons of students that love the rick riordan books i could see this being a very logical next step into the high fantasy realm that maybe hasn't been experienced but if if fantasy is already something you like right now
Nate Day: Yeah, cool.
Chris: I think this would feel like a step back in a confusing way and maybe not amusing.
Nate Day: Okay. Sure. Okay.
Chris: I don't know, which I feel bad about saying because it really is a good book and uses some cool writing devices. I don't know. it's It's kind of a genre of its own.
Nate Day: Yeah, that's i'm I'm in a similar boat, actually, because anime, especially here in America is such a black licorice for so many people like either you love it or you hate it.
Chris: Okay.
Chris: Mm.
Nate Day: And I've
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: I wouldn't go so far as to say that I love it, but I think I've sort of found a way for me to catch the wave and understand, like appreciate these movies and often walk away with positive feelings, but I'm almost never gobsmacked the way a lot of people are.
Nate Day: And that's, that's just to say that, you know, I think it's rare that I'm, I'm sort of in the middle of that love it or hate it.
Chris: Uh-huh.
Nate Day: spectrum so i kind of feel like my recommendation is if you like anime you'll like this movie which feels like sort of a dumb thing have on a podcast you know what i mean but uh i i don't know i'm i'm not really going to recommend it to people that i know don't engage with anime that often because that's sort of the number one hurdle i guess i would say although i don't i don't
Chris: Hmm, no, I see.
Nate Day: love the implications of that word but for some people it truly is a hurdle so i don't i don't have a great like net to cast for this one maybe if you're a fan of fantasy storytelling but i also know that there's a lot of stuff out there you you ran through like five or six that are heavily influenced by or did influence this text so there's there's other options i guess if anime is not your thing
Nate Day: What about, what'd you rate it?
Chris: Well, what did you rate it? No, too late. I asked First it.
Nate Day: Okay, I gave it three and a half stars. Obviously, i I love the messaging. I think there's a lot to appreciate. Like I was just saying, there's so many ideas in this movie being presented at at all times. And like I said, a lot of them are through symbolism. And some of it's tied to you know mythologies and and other sort of storytelling,
Nate Day: like historical perspectives that I just am not... in touch with because I'm not Hayao Miyazaki and that it kind of, it sort of can be a hurdle. i I know I just said, I don't like that word, but.
Nate Day: And they they're able to do some really cool things to like Sophie's, you know, she's turned into an old lady, but the her age sort of wobbles back and forth based on how in love with Howl she is.
Nate Day: And that's something that, you know, i thought was just like, really, really masterful and
Chris: Yep.
Nate Day: you know, something I didn't even catch on to until the end of the movie. I was like, why does she look like a kid again? with But she's got gray hair.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: And then I was like, oh, yeah.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: So there's there's just so much going on that I can't really give it the super high rating on my first viewing because I just couldn't digest it all.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Nate Day: But but it is good. So three and a half is where I landed.
Chris: yeah yeah yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.
Nate Day: How about you?
Chris: Honestly, along the same lines, I feel ashamed of this, but it is a firm three. I see why so many people loved it.
Nate Day: Okay.
Chris: And again, based on the analysis and further discussion that I've i've gone and sought out since reading it, I'm tempted to bump it up. But the text itself is what I'm trying to rate here.
Chris: And it this is not saying it's a bad text.
Nate Day: who
Chris: It's saying it falls outside of my wheelhouse.
Nate Day: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: the the The fantasy aspect is, again, all of these choices she made seem very understandable and reasonable. But for me, the fantasy aspect is like not really that otherworldly.
Chris: It's a little downplayed.
Nate Day: Mmm
Chris: And the human interaction also falls a little bit flat because of the amount of plot.
Nate Day: Okay.
Nate Day: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: being fit in here. And it's not like it's a short book. I didn't even check the total.
Chris: 329 pages. she was She wasn't trying to be brief.
Nate Day: All right.
Chris: Yeah, I don't know. It's like each each category gets gets to gets to three out of five and just not quite past it.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: I think 20 years ago, this would maybe be a very different answer.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Nate Day: Oh, OK.
Chris: But for today and now, the different aspects that I could see seeking in this text, we simply have more appealing options that I think I would reach for first.
Nate Day: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. i'm Yeah, I'm in a similar boat.
Chris: Which, again, it feels bad to say because it's not a bad book.
Nate Day: Cool.
Nate Day: Right. I know when I rated it on Letterboxd, I obviously looked at all the people that I follow and some of the, you know, reviews and stuff. And it it means so much to so many people.
Nate Day: And so it's, you know, this is kind of a weird one for the podcast because I, we kind of, neither of us have a very good, you know, recommendation, like, like group of people to recommend this to,
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Nate Day: So i i I guess what I'm trying to say is that at least i and it sounds like you as well, kind of understand well enough why people love it that we we feel bad saying that we didn't.
Nate Day: But, you know, we don't want that to influence any opinions of of listeners.
Chris: Yes.
Nate Day: If you think you're going to like it, you're probably going to like it.
Chris: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. I know that there are people that would absolutely adore this, and I'm sure I will run into, again, maybe a student, maybe a fellow reader that something clicks and I say, wait a minute, this could be for you.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: And I hope that they love it.
Nate Day: Yeah.
Chris: it's There is a difference between quality writing, quality craft, and... the The simple fact that not everything is made for everyone.
Nate Day: Yeah, exactly. Which is the point of adaptation.
Chris: Yes. I see what you did there.
Nate Day: Yes. Thank you all for joining us for our conversation about Hayao Miyazaki's and Diane Wynn Jones's Howl's Moving Castle.
Nate Day: Next up, we have a very special surprise episode that we're actually not going to reveal here because it involves some of our listeners that we are trying to catch off guard.
Nate Day: So stick around.
Chris: Bye.
Nate Day: It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll have a few guests. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to next time.
Chris: i e
