Miyazaki Marathon Day 9: Howl's Moving Castle

Name: Howl's Moving Castle
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 118 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 2004

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to.  I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Whisper of the Heart, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.

Today is the last day of this marathon (and thank God, since I was having trouble keeping up).  After this, I'm back to regular animes for about... a half a week, then I'm going to do another movie.  Not a Miyazaki, this is the last one for now, but a movie nonetheless.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed this marathon, and I hope that you'll watch all of these wonderful movies and make your own decisions about them.  Don't you get aggravated when some stranger tells you what to like?!  Why are you even reading this?!
... for the download link?  Yeah, I guess so.


Based on the book of the same name by Diana Wyne Jones, this movie is set in the fantastic world of... you know, it gets really hard to review something when they won't even tell you where it's set.  Fictional, I don't care, just fucking tell me!
This world is filled with mystery, magic, and strange, mobile castles that probably get about a foot to the gallon.

Worse than a Humvee.

The story is about Sophie, a eldest daughter to a hat maker who died a while ago.  Believing herself to be plain, Sophie has taken over general management of the hat store, leaving her younger sister to work at a apparently more glamorous life at a bakery, and her mother to roam the country, buying as much useless garbage as she can, like this.

Are those cannons on the top?

You see?  Who in their right mind would buy that kind of thing?!
Okay, the Queen of England's appeared in some whoppers, just like Prince Charles and... okay, so the entire English Royal Family... every Royal Family since the beginning of time, probably (I type as the S.A.S. busts in and drags me off to the Tower of London, and the guillotine.  Save me, my loyal fans!!  ...).

The entire town's having a royal military parade in anticipation of an expected war with some other country.

Goose Stepping.  Not a good sign.

This country appears to be in the middle of a steam revolution, but since military technology is about ten years ahead of conventional technology, they are probably in the middle of an arms revolution, resulting in both air and naval battleships galore.

I'm just this side of positive that those wing's wouldn't support that.

The rest of the girls at the hat shop decide to head out to try and pick up soldiers (I presume), and Sophie decides to stay behind... but gets bored quickly, and leaves on her own to visit her younger sister Letty.
There have been rumors of a mysterious magician named Howl circling around, rumors like this one.

On the way there, Sophie bumps into a couple of overly affectionate soldiers, and is about to be... accosted by them when a young man wearing a very pink coat over his shoulders appears.

The man flips his finger around a bit and the soldiers are carried away against their will by their own legs.  The man is obviously a magician who then offers to be Sophie's escort.

Along the way to the bakery, they are picked up and followed by a... bunch of blogs of slime in straw hats.

The young man apologizes to Sophie for having gotten her mixed up in his business (they're after him), and then takes a wrong turn.  Boxed in!  Gayahh!  Good thing he can fly.
... What?

Yes!  The dude with the effeminate pink overcoat (for lack of a better term right now) can fly!

Okay, Air Walk, not technically fly.

The man manages to escort Sophie onto the second floor of her sister's bakery without dropping her, and then leaps off the railing onto a safety net that is immediately pulled back and hidden for the wide shot (I'm onto their little tricks).

Inside, Sophie and Letty talk for a while about Sophie's experience, and then Sophie leaves when she realizes how much work Lettie has to do.
I personally don't really understand where Sophie gets the idea that she's not pretty.  I think she's cuter than Lettie... and every other female character in the movie.

Don't you think?  Well, it doesn't matter, since it's not you who's writing this.

When Sophie arrives back at the hat shop/home, the door is opened by a regular tub of lard in fur and a floppy hat (have these people had their fashion sense glands removed?).

See?  No contest.

The woman acts a total bitch to Sophie and when Sophie asks her to leave, the woman reveals herself to the the Witch of the Wastes (the Wastes is a place in this world), and then owns Sophie, since I don't know how else to explain it.

The spell which she's placed Sophie under is one that has made her suddenly... old.  Very old.

Now when I was talking about Sophie, I didn't exactly mean... this.  The young one is cute.  I don't know what best describes "Granny Sophie"... granny...

The Witch of the Wastes (henceforward referred to as WoW (no, not World of Warcraft)), departs, telling Sophie that the best part about the curse she's now under is that she can't tell anyone about it.  The WoW then sends her regards to Howl and leaves.

Sophie has a panic attack and goes to bed in hopes that the spell will break, or this will all be a bad dream.  Too bad it isn't.

The next morning, Sophie's mother bursts in (wearing the obscene hat), and when she goes to see Sophie, is surprised when she discovers that her daughter's now about six times older than she.  Not.  Sophie concocts some lie about a cold, and her mother stays out of her room.

A die-hard optimist, Sophie decides that she needs to strike out on her own to find the WoW and make her break the spell on her, and with that, Sophie sets out.

After going as far as she can to with the help of others, Sophie goes out into the mountains that presumably surround the Wastes (though the mountains could be part of/the entire Wastes right there).

During her hike, Sophie is suddenly struck by how much old age sucks.  When she spots a branch sticking out of a bush, she decides that it'd make a good cane, and so hauls it up, only to discover that...

... it's a scarecrow... that can stand on it's own... and can follow her, how creepy is that?  I'd probably burn it, wear the coat and hat and eat the turnip.  I dunno what I'd do with the pipe though.

Well some good did come of being kind and non-violent, and the scarecrow (now affectionately dubbed "Turnip Head") brings Sophie a cane... and then this.

Howl's Moving Castle... dun dun dun.  Despite the fact that it's allegedly the home of the most notorious killer in all of the world, Sophie still decides to hop on.  What's waiting for Sophie as she sets off on this new quest?


The last of the Miyazaki Hayao movies that have (to this point) attracted my interest, this movie was more than I was expecting.  Sure, it was a little melodramatic (or at least the English version was), but it was still epic, and a lot of fun.
I noticed that the vibrant colors appeared everywhere in this show.  A lot of blue and red, and not the kind that you usually see, but the vibrant shades that make up a beam of light, cool.

I liked the music to this one a lot.  No I don't know why, but I can tell you that I liked the song those star things were singing... or at least the first part.  I'm not sure what happened to it after that, but it was still fun to listen to.

I again liked the English version better, and after I got finished looking at the credits, I realized that they've had a person from the most recent Terminators in it.  Claire Danes was Katherine Brooster from Terminator 3 was San in Princess Mononoke, and Christian Bale; John Connor out of T4 was Howl in this one.  Kind of weird.  I'm not thrilled about the way he talks (no offense, but the kind of whisper thing distracts me or something), but it made sense for Howl.

I wouldn't discount the Japanese version.  I thought that they did better, but since the term "Quiet only when absolutely necessarily" pretty much describes me, I liked the more loud, cluttered English versions better.  And if you have trouble believing me (which a staggering amount of people do) you should know that I'm terrible.  Even when it is absolutely necessary, I end up drawing with my friend or recite Eddie Izzard routines in my head and start laughing.  Really pisses my more strict teachers off).

This movie backs Miyazaki's more humanitarian perspective, or maybe it's backing up Diana Wyne Jones' perspective.  Since I haven't (or probably ever will) read the book, I couldn't tell you.  If I had the... want, I could look it up on Cliff Notes or Wikipedia but... nah.

And thus, my dear reader(s), we are at the end of the Miyazaki Marathon.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Howl's Moving Castle Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Toradora!!

Miyazaki Marathon Day 8: Spirited Away

Name: Spirited Away
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 125 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 2001

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to.  I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Tuesday - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)


I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and Princess Mononoke, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.


Chihiro is moving.  Or more accurately, she's being forced to move.  Her parents have bundled her and all of her stuff into their car and set out for their new home.  The only thing that she has a reminder of her old life is a bouquet of flowers and a farewell card.

On the way to their new house, Chihiro's father takes a wrong turn, but, being a man (We big and strong.  Don't need directions or manuals, just meat and salt), he follows the path that he's taken... until he almost rams into a tunnel.

Chihiro's parents get out of the car and investigate the tunnel, finding that it is made of plaster.  They decide to delve further into the area, but Chihiro isn't as enthralled with the idea, and tries to get them to get back in the car and go, but they decide to explore anyway.  Chihiro, with her only company being the creepy statuette, decides that anythings better than staying in the car alone, and follows them.

On the other side, Chihiro's dad points out that the area probably used to be an amusement park, one of the many that were built all around Japan during the early 90's but all of which eventually went under.  With that being said, the parents continue on, with Chihiro still trying to get them to go back, but eventually following.

Chihiro's dad, who's got a nose like a hound, smells something delicious on the air and eventually leads the family to an outdoor restaurant that's loaded with food convieniantly laid out in huge bowls.  The parents dig in, the dad saying one of my all-time favorite lines;
"Don't worry, you've got Daddy here!  He's got credit cards and cash!"

I like the English version of this line better, though.

Chihiro goes exploring around the area, and eventually finds a mammoth Bath House that also seems to be running.

Note the chimney.

Underneath her, Chihiro hears the sound of a train, and watches as it comes out of a tunnel.  She runs over to the other side of a bridge to see where it's going, but notices somethings different about her surroundings.

Uh, hello?

The young man freaks out, telling Chihiro to leave immediatly, and when lamps suddenly start to turn on randomly, he pushes her away, shouting at her to go right now.

You can probably find this image just about anywhere, so I decided to conform.  It's also an awesome picture, just a little overused.

As Chihiro is running, a bunch of... weird shadow sludge things start to open the doors of the shops and come out of the cracks, intent on buying things.
Sure now that thing's aren't exactly going great, Chihiro searches for and finds her parents.  Or...

Oink?

Two pigs wearing human clothes.

Chihiro runs back towards the stairs that she and her parents had come from, but when she gets to the bottom, she ends up waist-deep in water.  Chihiro clambers back to shore and looks out over the instant ocean.

I'm pretty sure that's where she came from.

Convinced that she's experiencing some kind of dream, Chihiro tries to wake herself up, but to no avail.  Actually, it works to her detriment, and she starts to fade away.

Chihiro dashes away from a boat-full (literally) of spirits and runs to hide in a quiet place.

After a while, the young man who helped her back on the bridge comes and finds her, telling Chihiro that she needs to eat something from this world in order to remain in it, so he gives her a mint or a jellybean or something, and Chihiro gets better.

With no other choice but to stay in this new world until she can find her parents and arrange a way for them all to get out, Chihiro asks the young man what she needs to do.


In this film, Miyazaki's more whimsical.  As far as I can tell, this movie wasn't made so the viewers would have psychologically taxing questions about the planet or human nature, but rather for them to just enjoy.  It is pretty surreal, and my dad's only recollection of it was that it was creepy, but that's okay because I liked it.

Oh, and do you remember the soot gremlins from My Neighbor Totoro?
Well they've found a new home.  Kamaji says that they're from the soot in his "office", but I'm not fooled.

 Leaving...

 In search of their new home.

... and then they have a party.

... and unless you've watched the movie already, you're totally lost right now.  "Kamaji?"

The music was kind of like Princess Mononoke, though I didn't find myself humming it later.  It was nice and kind of catchy, and it flowed well.  Actually, if you were looking (and if I had mentioned it earlier), you might notice that Miyazaki's been working with the same guy on music for... ever.  Hisaishi Joe and Miyazaki have worked together on every movie that I've reviewed, and even on Howl's Moving Castle, which is tomorrow.

I also listened to this anime in English first.  I watched the Japanese versions, and I wasn't totally won over by it.
A general rule of thumb is that the Japanese is good, and the English version is lucky to reach the quality of Japanese voice acting.  What I'm talking about here isn't so much the quality of the acting, both sides did well, but more my own preferences, which would have made for a strange mixture.

I liked the Japanese Chihiro way better than the English one (Daveigh Chase), but I liked most of the other English actors (especially the father as I already stated).
The weirdest thing about it was that I think that the English dialog/script was better (although Haku's spell sounded kind of corny.  It didn't sound corny in the Japanese version because... I don't speak Japanese too well, so I can't compare it).

With more physical gags than his other works, Spirited Away is still considered one of the best movies today... I know, right?  It's aways gratifying to see a relatively lesser-known form of art gain such recognition.

Think of it...
Citizen Kane
Gone with the Wind
A Streetcar Named Desire
Princess Mononoke
and...
Spirited Away

Bitchin.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Spirited Away Minitheatre

Coming up next (and last)!

Day 9: Howl's Moving Castle!

Miyazaki Marathon Day 7: Princess Mononoke

Name: Princess Mononoke
Type: Movie
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 133 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1997

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to.  I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)


I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Whisper of the Heart, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.


During a more fantastic age in Japanese history (specifically the Muromachi Period), spirits were a more common sight than they are today.  Sure, those soot gremlins out of My Neighbor Totoro appear randomly, but not around America.

In this time, everybody's heard of the "Spirit of the Forest", which is... the spirit of the forest, the very life of the woods of Japan, but that's not the point right now, the point is that there is a very small village in the extreme countryside of Japan that's having some kind of spiritual... scare I guess, although they could be freaking out about bandits or something like that.

Prince Ashitaka, the... prince of the village (and of the Emishi people (look it up if you care, this is semi-historical)) is riding out to the watchtower on Yakul, a red elk.  He's going out there to find out what's got the village people so worried.  On the way there, he passes his sister and her friends, telling them to return to the village quickly.

At the watchtower, he peers out into the forest and spots something moving behind the barrier placed there.  As he and the old man on guard watch, a demon smashes down the wall and then... sneezes, I suppose.  When it does, the things "skin" comes off in the form of a bunch of weird worms.  It's a boar underneath... or at least until the worms fall back on top.

Achoo!

The demon spots Yakul and obviously sees a meal in it, and so charges towards the tower.  Ashitaka manages to scare Yakul out of his stupor, but in exchange, he doesn't have the opportunity to get down, and so the demon rams and tips over the tower, so Ashitaka grabs the old man and hops to safety in a tree.

Ashitaka gets down, the guard shouting after him to watch that the demon doesn't touch him, less the curse be on him too.

Ashitaka gets Yakul and then dashes after the demon.  When he manages to catch up with it again, Ashitaka tries to ward it off by... asking it nicely, since that's all you can do with a god/demon.  But it doesn't work.

 

The two burst out of the forest, Ashitaka and Yakul dashing on, but the demon pauses and then notices Ashitaka's little sister.  More food.

When it goes after them, Ashitaka gets in it's way, and when one of the little girls falls down, Ashitaka starts a fight with the demon, shooting it in the eye.

The demon gets seriously pissed, chasing after Ashitaka, and managing to grab onto his arm.

Ashitaka rips himself away, then fires another arrow, striking and killing the demon.

After the battle, all of the people run out to see what's left of the demon and their prince.  The place where the demon grabbed Ashitaka is burned with some kind of evil mark now.
The wise woman is fetched and she tends to the boar god, asking it to pass on peacefully, but the boar's bitchy and doesn't agree, and actually curses all the human race.  Wow.  That's not very nice of him.

Later that night, the village elders all meet (along with Ashitaka.  He is a prince, after all).  The wise woman uses fortune telling to determine Ashitaka's fate.  He's going to die.  That mark on his arm will eventually consume his entire body and kill him.  Kind of like cancer, I suppose.

 

Maybe because they don't like living with a cursed person, or maybe because of some ancient tradition, Ashitaka is forced/obligated to leave the village, which he does without complaining.
The only clue he's given is to go West.  That's helpful.  But wait!  The wise woman reaches insider her robe and pull out this; a ball of iron, in case you're wondering.

Before he actually manages to leave though, his little sister runs out (defying village law), giving him a crystal dagger to remember her by.

 This is important later.

And so Ashitaka sets out to the West to search for the answers that the wise woman was talking about, but he's going to find more than just answers.  There's always been a shitload more questions than answers, believe me.


Like I said a couple of posts back, this was probably the first anime that I ever watched, and I'm pretty happy about that.  I mean, it's got everything that a teenager needs; samurais, battles, blood... and that's it!  We're easy to satisfy.

Miyazaki's naturalist theme is back with a vengeance, along with a humanitarian element that has been rather rare since Nausicaa (it was a lot more stressed in the manga, but you could still pick up on the small issues in the anime).
This portrays the natural element a lot more forcefully.  It's presented as a battle, humans and technology vrs. the forest and spirituality.  It's kind of sad how you can relate this to pretty much every one of the world's issues...

The music was nice.  It wasn't to my specific style, but I found myself humming it quite a lot after I had finished watching it.  Serious Japanese influences, mainly because this is a semi-historical film.  The only thing in it that's not accurate is... you know, the flamethrowers.  I don't think that you can do that with gunpowder.
... and if you can, please don't write a million comments protesting your insane knowledge of explosives and firearms, because I find it kind of creepy and... boring.

Actually, I listened to the Japanese version for the first time.  It was really weird, amazingly.  The Japanese version was a lot quieter than the English one.  The Japanese voice actors were a lot more toned-down than the American ones, so that made is quieter, but there was also a lot of stuff said in the English version that didn't have a place in the Japanese one.  That was kind of cool.
... and Moro totally sounded like a guy, only it's not.  Kind of creepy, just like this.

Bwa ha ha ha ha!

It was my favorite one of all the Miyazaki movies, and in the unlikely situation that you actually agree with something that I've written here, you'll like it too.  So watch it, if nothing else.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Princess Mononoke Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Day 8: Spirited Away!

Miyazaki Marathon Day 6: Whisper of the Heart

Name: Whisper of the Heart
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 111 min
Directed By Kondo Yoshifumi/Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1995

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to.  I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Sunday - Princess Mononoke (1997)
Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)


I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.


Shizuku is a typical Japanese high school girl.  She gets decent grades and has a close circle of friends.  Granted, she probably devotes a little too much time to a specific extracurricular activity than she should, but that's a teenage girl for you.
... It's reading!  Jeez, your minds are in the gutter.  It's a Ghibli movie, dammit!

That's always a bad sign.

Her friends are all members of some kind of choir/band or something.  For some unexplained and uncared reason, they're doing Country Road by that dude John Denver.  Only one problem though... it's in English.

So they've enlisted Shizuku to write them a Japanese version...

 Yes, an armature song writer myself, I'd say you've got talent.

... but that's a side note.

The main story here is what Shizuku finds written on the library cards of some of the books that she's brought home.

... that reads as Amasawa Seiji, by the way, in case you were like me and had to read the subtitles.

So who is this "Amasawa Seiji"?  What does he look like?  What are his interests, his favorite foods, his hair color?  And most importantly, why is he reading all of these books too?

These are just a couple of deluded questions that I'm sure were rocketing through Shizuk's head when she saw this, though she voiced only a couple.

The next day, she and her friend Yuko at their school.  This is another concept that I suppose only people who care about their school success could understand... why are the school gates open on a... not school day (I don't know the actual date)?

Either way, she goes into the school library and finds a book that she's been looking around for... and guess what's on the inside of the cover?

... Donated.

Kind of anti-climactic of me, yeah?

... FOOLED (NOT!)!

The book was donated by none other than her knight in paper armor Amasawa... Seiji.

She goes outside and meets her friend Yuko, giving her the lyrics that she's come up, and Concrete Road, possibly the best song ever written in Japanese.

... But little does Shizuku know that their get-together was not just about the song, but also about (what else) love (kissy kissy).

... No, not with each other, that'd just be a little too over the top for Ghibli.  Actually, Yuko has a secret crush that's only secret from the guy that she likes eventually.  To make things worse, she's been asked out by another guy (oh, the drama!)

They're both baseball jocks, but the guy that Yuko's into is named Sugimura (who's in their class), a fact that Shizuku discovers when Yuko nearly has a heart attack when Sugimura starts talking to Shizuku.  No, I don't know why this would freak her out so bad either, but there you go.

Yuko dashes off, and Shizuku follows her, dropping her new book and the sheet music as she does.

After a "Duh" conversation, Shizuku finally realizes what's happened to her stuff and dashes back to the school, only to find some creepy other high school reading the book.

... okay, he's not that bad actually.  He's good enough to make wisecracks, and gave the book back without arguing or anything.

But then he went and said this.

WHAT, FUCKER?!

Pissed off for obvious latent-attraction reasons, Shizuku goes home and... reads some more.  She also fantasizes about Mr. Amasawa some more too.

On a semi-unrelated note, Shizuku's sister who's come home after an extended leave has returned home for another unknown reason.

After a while, Shizuku's sister has her deliver their father's lunch to him at the library (he works there).  So she sets off grudgingly, since almost nobody gets along with their siblings...

On the way there, she meets... a cat.

Now, I don't know where the fascination with this obviously strange cat comes from, and I don't understand why the cat didn't just scratch her face off like my old cat did to my friends (it was actually kind of funny).

Either way, at Shizuk's stop, the cat also ditches and Shizuku goes running after him, only to lose him at a crosswalk.

As she continues her walk to the library, she finds the cat again, and after violating several trespassing laws, manages to follow it into a boutique of antique collectibles and crap... and a clock with this on it...

Can you read that?  It says Porco Rosso... does anyone get this?  Is Porco the Dwarf?

While there, she also meets...

Zie Barron von Vaderham.

... just the Baron.  I don't know who in their right mind would give such a title to a porcelain cat, but then again, I don't know why anime girls go into such a panic when the guy they like starts talking to someone they are talking too.  Keep your cool, girls (although it's kind of cute.  Unrealistic, and people looking for that are probably never going to get a girlfriend, but cute nonetheless).

After having a nice talk with the proprietor, Shizuku realizes that she's close to being late to delivering her father's lunch, so she dashes out of the store, inquiring if she can return again later.

Shizuku runs all the way down the stairs, a feat that is beyond many professional athletes, and arrives at the steps before the library... only to discover that she's dropped the lunch somewhere.

Just then, that guy who was reading her book back at school shows up, delivering her lunch to her before making another comment and riding off... singing Concrete Roads... good.  He's been converted... or assimilated.

... and I'll just leave the rest to the spoiler section.

Okay, so you're probably wondering what's with the / in the director section.

Miyazaki Hayao didn't actually direct most of this movie.  It was still written and produced by him and stuff, but actually that other guy; Kondo Yoshifumi directed pretty much everything.

It's a-freaking-live!!

Miyazaki directed the "fantasy" sequences of the movie, short though they may be, you could probably be see a little more of his style in there.  Elements from Kiki, Porco, and even Nausicaa, not to mention an almost trademark freeness of camera and angles, though it's a lot easier to do when you've got people flying.

Like I've said before, the music was epic.  Country Road in Japanese, not to mention Concrete Road, it just couldn't get much better.  Throw in a My Love is a Stapler, a Fuwa Fuwa Time, and you've got the best anime score on Earth!

Yet again, go with the Japanese.  There wasn't anybody outstanding in the English cast this time, but then again, it was a little-known movie.  I didn't know about it until I researched Miyazaki to do this.

This was a pretty good show, especially if you like semi-depressing plot lines.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Coming up next!

Day 7: Princess Mononoke!