Howl's Moving Castle Details

Surprisingly Good

I don't normally like the Japanese style cartoons, but this is very good. Having the voices of Christian Bale, Billy Crystal and other english speaking actors and actresses made it more appealing.

The story was strange yet enjoyable, basically a young girl is turned into a old woman by a witch and goes to work as a cleaner onboard a wizards moving castle! Sounds stupid but it makes a change from everything else.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Your stereotypical Japanese animation.

I've not seen many of these Japanese animation films really, but I have to be honest what I have seen, I'm not that keen on. This was no exception. Initially, I was only really interested because I discovered Christian Bale and Billy Crystal were voicing two of the characters in it - which I totally didn't expect. Yes the animation is great - often superb. And there's so many imaginative ideas and creativity to it, really the only thing that kept me watching. But like all of these Japanese animations, it's really obscure, sometimes a bit naff and on a whole never seems to make any sense. There isn't nearly enough explained to the audience of what the hell the story is about, and new characters just seem to pop up all the time without any real idea of who on earth they are. It's as though the creators just make it all up as they go. I do sort of understand why so many people love these movies, they are unlike anything else I've ever seen, the characters and onscreen visuals are certainly unusual and therefore quite interesting and entertaining to watch, but I think it's certainly an aquired taste and I for one am not impressed. Instead, I find them pretty boring, there's really nothing to keep you keenly watching. And I couldn't really get close to any of the characters either. I expect this will be the last one I will bother with for some time.