Book Review: The Art of Howl's Moving Castle

[Krystal109]

The Art of Howl's Moving Castle
By Hayao Miyazaki

   

Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Format: Hardcover (256 pages)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1421500493
ISBN-13: 978-1421500492
Dimensions: 11.9" x 8.3" x 1"
Price: $23.09 (USD)


Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is one of my favorite Miyazaki films. Based on Diana Wynne Jones' popular book and released on film by Disney with great voice actors such as Christian Bale and Billy Crystal, it is sure to make you fall in love with it.

Unlike The Art of Spirited Away, which was released by the same publisher, The Art of Howl's Moving Castle is full of information from members of the art team and only a small introdcution from Miyazaki himself. Once again, the book is full of concept sketches by Miyazaki, including bits of his storyboards. The book flows through the design of the characters and environments in the same order that they appear in the film.... it's like watching a concept art picture show of the film, but with little bits of quoted information here and there and even some larger text sections about certain aspects of the film including productions and how they did it sections.

While full of sketches and finialized art that the reader hasn't probably seen before, there are plenty of screencaps taken straight from the film. In the back you will find 2 pages with some foreign advertisement posters and the final pages information about the book on which it was based and the original screenplay on none glossy paper. Overall, it's a great book for Miyazaki fans or lovers of anime in general.

Pros

• Covers the whole film in order, leaving nothing out
• Tons of finalized artwork and sketches
• Nice flow of information without having walls of text
  

Cons

• I would have liked more than a paragraph about the original author of Howl's Moving Castle as the idea would not exist without her.
  

Review by: Krystal109 (krystalnexus (at) yahoo.com)