In Need Of Sleep

So far this is what I’ve come up with for each of their favourites (and I’m very open to suggestions):

Alison’s favourite is Howl’s Moving Castle, she’d put it on one night for her choice for Film Club, and it’d be all of their first time watching a Studio Ghibli film (and probably also an anime).

Pat’ favourite is Pom Poko, I haven’t seen it for years, but from what I remember it’s just his vibe.

Robin’s favourite is Princess Mononoke, for obvious reasons.

Julian would deny liking any of them but My Neighbour Totoro would absolutely make him cry and think of his daughter. Maybe occasionally when he’s sad and missing her he’d tell Alison that Kitty wants to watch it, and that he’s just being nice by sitting with her while she watches it. Alison and Kitty would both know it’s bs but they would go along with it for his sake.

Kitty would love The Cat Returns and Ponyo, and I think her favourite would actually be Kiki’s Deliver Service, but as Howl’s Moving Castle is Alison’s favourite favourite she’d probably declare it to be hers too.

Thomas would really see himself in Howl (for all the wrong reasons) but he’d also scorn Howl for overlooking Sophie, who he’d view as Alison. I think he’d actually love Spirited Away too. He’d probably be like me and sob over the train scene but never really be able to articulate why.

Mary, I’m not really sure, I think she’d love the ones with strong fantasy elements, and of course all the complex female characters. Maybe Howls Moving Castle, for Sophie’s journey in finding her voice and confidence, though given all the witches and how Calsifer is a demon, maybe not…

Lady B I think might struggle to connect with animation as a medium and many of the fantasy elements, and dismiss them all off hand, until Arriety, which I think she would really love for its themes of home, and her own memories of losing her home as a young woman. After that I think she’s be able to rewatch some of them and see what she’d missed before.

The Captain is more complicated, given how heavily Hayao Miyazaki’s experiences of WWII as a child and his anti-war sentiments influenced his films. The Captain grew up in WWI, but clearly had a very different response to war (obvsly WWI in England was a VERY different experience to WWII in Japan). Still, despite his idealisation of the military and his ideas on the nobility of fighting in a war, I still wonder if he’d actually love Boy and the Heron. Maybe it’d make him look back on his teenage years in a different way, as well as take a more honest look than he normally allows himself to at all that he lost to war. I’m not sure how he’d feel about The Wind Rises, again portraying such a different view of a time he lived, maybe he’d love it for the engineering and Nahoko’s spirit telling Jiro to live on might make him think privately of him and Havers. Outside of that, I think he’d love the female protagonists of most of the movies - we already know he loves Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

Humphrey might have complicated feelings at first about Howl’s moving Castle, given the main character being called Sophie, but other than that he’d like it. He’d probably love Sprited Away and relate to Chrihiro, how in the face of loss of childhood innocence and powerlessness she always chooses kindness, even if she isn’t always very good at it. I think it’d remind him of how much he had to adapt to being just a head in the afterlife. (But he’d get frustrated with Thomas giving his very wrong interpretations of the symbolism every time they watched it.)

Mike would fall asleep barely 20 minutes into most of them, but I think when they have Mia and she’s old enough to watch them, Ponyo would be his favourite of her favourites.

They obviously couldn’t watch Grave of the Fireflies until after Mary had moved on, and they’d only watch it once. Maybe even Alison wouldn’t really know what they were in for when she puts it on, but they would all be in tears by the end. Kitty, Thomas and even Pat would be sobbing, Robin would have to be comforting Julian, who would have given up trying to hide his tears. Mike wouldn’t even have fallen asleep (and if he watched it after they get pregnant he’d be having nightmares for a while afterwards). The Captain would be haunted for ages at such a depiction of the consequences of the war (again, I know, his experience of the war had relatively very little to do with the Pacific and especially the atomic bombs, but still, it’d really challenge his beliefs and perspectives on war and the weapons of war).

Overall I think Howls Moving Castle would be the general house favourite, with Button House feeling like their own version of the castle, and it’d be tied with Spirited Away as the most watched.

Finally complete :’)