Clever girl!

notcuddles:

velocicrafter:

good-gal-livin:

velocicrafter:

• the movie/animation style is Japanese
• the architecture is Spanish
• the accents are US’ian or British
• the clothes are ca. 19th C. European (largely british.)

what?

I mean okay yes, it’s also in a world where a giant walking machine & “demons”, wizards & witches are all commonplace enough, but still!

I’ve been watching you live blog this and all I can say is that you don’t question Miyazaki… you really don’t.

LOL

how cute.

…Well, lets see, the animation style is Japanese because it was made in Japan and that’s hardly relevant to the other points given that the animation style has nothing to do with the setting or over-all aesthetic. 

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but I’m not really seeing the point you’re trying to make pin-pointing the supposedly conflicting influences, given that the movie is set in a steampunk fantasy setting and never specifically pinned down as any particular European country.  There’s no reason not to draw influence from a variety of European sources (or, hell, any sources) when building the setting.

From what I’m seeing in GIS there seems to be a range of architecture - I’m seeing some stuff that looks Spanish but also some screenshots that look German or Swiss.  This makes sense given that one of the powers of Howl’s castle is that it jumps from place to place, and I see no reason that those places necessarily need to be the same country (as I recall they’re…specifically NOT in the same country, actually), so of course the architecture changes.  And conversely, in a large enough country the architecture will vary depending on the area, either due to environmental factors or influence of other cultures.  We don’t get huge amounts of world building or history for the setting, so we really have no way of knowing why they build their houses the way they do.

As for the clothing, again, I don’t see any reason for Miyazaki not to draw on a variety of sources for that either.  There’s nothing jarringly out of place and it all seems to fit in with the general “idyllic European steampunk fantasy world” aesthetic. 

And you can’t really hold the dub against the film since Miyazaki almost certainly had no control over what Disney did in that respect.  I mean, originally they all spoke Japanese, so…

In short: I’m not really sure what you’re getting at with that critique.  (Although that said I do agree with you over all - I didn’t especially like the movie.  It fell very flat for me, though I did like the female lead, but then again I almost always do with Miyazaki.)

the animation style aside, the rest of it comes off as inconsistent & w/o any real ‘reason’ for it. Even as a steampunk fantasy, it’s one thing to have styles that are “inspired by” or “derived from” any particular region or time period, but the buildings & outfits I noticed where fairly literal (albeit somewhat simplified, animated) representations of clothes & architecture from the time period. It reads as lazy storytelling.

I never said the accents had anything to do w/Miyazaki, soooo…. I’m not sure what you’re getting at there, though I can see how he probably wasn’t involved w/choosing voice actors, however, someone involved in the production was, & that person couldn’t be arsed to make sure that: 1) the characters sounded like they came from the same general region, or even that Old!Sophie & Young!Sophie had the same accent?

Finally, (like I mentioned before), I never invoked Miyazaki in my critique. I don’t watch a lot of anime & I was assessing this movie on its own; I didn’t even realise it was part of Miyazaki’s work til the Stans came out of the woodwork. That said, “don’t question it” as a general response never worked for me.