The Garden

Thank you for forewarning me to basically expect a different movie; I’m sure my watching experience was much improved as I tend to be quite nitpicky with adaptations. I enjoyed it a ton, as did my little brother who watched it with me

I also thankfully knew Michael wouldn’t be in it and therefore had plenty of time to grieve my favorite character. I really liked Markl, though. He’s very sweet and I loved the relationship he and Sophie ended up having! She was a very maternal figure to him and him hugging her and saying he loved her was so sweet

I agree with Diana Wynne Jones when she said in the interview in the back of my book that the characters in the movie were “more noble” than the book ones. I can see how Howl gets so many girls much easier in the film! Especially since he doesn’t seem to spend as much time in the bathroom (and he spent far less time seducing women) (and he protected Sophie from catcallers as opposed to being the catcaller. At least he was a nicer catcaller in the book) (the list goes on) (his tantrum was done well though)

In other news, I was so confused about who to root for! The scarecrow showed up and I was prepared for trouble but he kept helping Sophie, the woman who trained Howl showed and I told my brother that she was nice multiple times before it was shown that she wasn’t, and I feel sort of guilty about the Witch since I was quite wrapped up in my preconceived notions and suspicious of her throughout the whole film. It took me ages to be like “oh she only wants Howl’s heart because she fell in love with him and he jilted her… she’s the victim here” because I was so wrapped up in who she was in the (very different) book. I was like dang I’m like those villagers who believed Howl actually ate girls’ hearts. I am very chastised

Calcifer was fantastic and portrayed amazingly. He was my brother’s favorite. My brother, by the way, got very into the movie despite asking a lot of “so… what is the actually… about?” questions in the beginning. (He watched it with me because he likes anime, but neither of us had seen a Studio Ghibli movie before and he tends to prefer the more violent, action-packed shows). By the end it was a lot of “is Calcifer gonna die? Is Calcifer okay? WHERE IS CALCIFER?” There’s one split-second scene where it cuts to the witch in front of the fire and the fire looks like it’s gone and me and my brother both freaked out. He didn’t know that Howl’s heart was in there, but every time the witch had mentioned the pretty fire I’d immediately say “stop looking at the fire!” And he’d already had a few near-death experiences so my brother was devoted to his wellbeing

The change I’m saddest about is that Howl is no longer an Isekai protagonist from Wales. The change I liked the most might be some of the sweet moments between Howl and Sophie- they bickered much more in the book!

It was a ton of fun trying to figure out the plot points from what I knew from the book. Like when Sophie was pulling out the stick that would be revealed to be the scarecrow, I was like “I wonder if there’s gonna be a dog in the bush do you think there’s a dog there? Huh, guess the dog isn’t gonna be here…” And then later when Heen showed up I went oh there’s the dog!