What Howl’s Moving Castle’s supervising animator wants you to appreciate on your next rewatch

Ghibli Fest is bringing Howl’s Moving Castle back to theaters, which means it’s time to revisit one of the movie’s great little visual puzzles.

The story of the film is relatively straightforward: Sophie, cursed by the Witch of the Waste, is suddenly transformed into a 90-year-old woman. With hopes to break the curse, she sets off on her own, starts working at the titular castle, and helps the great wizard Howl figure his shit out.

This being a Hayao Miyazaki movie, the visuals are, of course, sumptuous and gorgeous. In the 20 years since Howl’s first premiered, the level of detail in Howl’s spaces alone are the stuff of internet legend. But, as Howl’s supervising animator Akihiko Yamashita says, Sophie’s journey — particularly around her own curse — was its own nut for the animators to crack.

“Of course characters change, their costumes change, their hairstyle changes. But in the case of Sophie, her age changes depending on her feelings,” Yamashita tells Polygon.

The problem was ultimately solved with a Miyazaki brainblast: “He says, I found the formula method for why Sophie changes,” Yamashita remembers. “She [Sophie] strengthened that curse in the film.

“And because of that, the way she reacted to other people, the way she had relationships, that was different as well. So when I realized that, then I realized I could draw Sophie in the way she was from this change, even within a scene.”

The result is history; Howl’s Moving Castle is a beloved classic, known for the way the plot wanders through the rich, surreal magic of the world. Very quickly, viewers are introduced to a wide world of fantasy and fighting.

Anchoring it all is Sophie, stuck navigating the world in a way she has to resign herself to — and finding, suddenly and bizarrely, that the change in circumstance leaves her more powerful than ever. As she starts to forget herself — and in particular her self-consciousness — she’s able to not only enact change and be in the world, but break the witch’s curse. It’s a thoughtful approach to nerves, an elegant way of showing the old adage that your uniqueness is what people really see about you. It’s the sort of story that gives you something new to pull at every time you watch it, no matter how familiar you are with the lush visuals.

“I saw it last year when it was broadcast on television, and I happened to catch it partway through. And then it was so interesting that I watched until the end,” Yamashita laughs. “In a strange way, Howl’s Moving Castle is a difficult film to understand, so it’s hard to understand it if you just see it once. [...] Even I, in seeing it again, have new discoveries about the film.”

Howl’s Moving Castle is in theaters from Sept. 26-Oct. 3.