Editor’s Note: Mr. Yamashita’s responses have been translated from Japanese.

For all that Hayao Miyazaki has tried and failed to retire as a director over the last handful of years, there’s no denying that his films are some of the most iconic stories ever told in animation. His work defined a generation for many people — including those who worked with him, like animator Akihito Yamashita, who’s served in various roles over twenty-odd years with Studio Ghibli.

Having worked on titles like Spirited Away, The Wind Rises, and Ponyo, Yamashita has been a key part of Western culture’s favorite Ghibli movies over the last two decades, but arguably one of his most important roles was as supervising animator on Howl’s Moving Castle. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, the film about a young girl with a curse who falls for an enigmatic wizard is a cultural cornerstone for many people, and for Yamashita as well, who I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with about the film’s anniversary, despite being all the way on the other side of the world.

He says that, while it was a “real turning point for [his] development as an animator,” the kind of work required to make a film like Howl’s Moving Castle is something he “could only have done in [his] thirties,” as the production was so massive and required an incredible amount of detail:

“What I still remember is the amount of work that had to be done was just incredibly large, and we had to do so much…we really had a lot of work that we had to do, and
I’m amazed that I was able to do it at that time
. Of course, I would’ve liked to struggle a little bit more on the creative aspects, but there was really no time to work on that. It was just drawing, just getting the animation done, that was so much hard work.”

Known for his quick work and ability to produce a large number of frames for any given film, including Howl, he says his speed comes from a technique he developed that allowed him to animate straight from storyboards, which allows him to speed up his process. Though he does still question himself in the process, and whether he can get “close to what Miyazaki has in mind” for certain characters — proof that even if you’re one of the best animators in the world, imposter syndrome can still be a real pain.

‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ Has Left an Interesting Legacy Behind

But the lasting legacy of the characters he helped bring to life has certainly proven his talents, even if their impact surprises the animator a bit. For him, it seems a little “unusual” that characters from Howl’s Moving Castle have become such a ubiquitous part of pop culture, appearing on everything from posters to t-shirts to stuffed animals. (I told him that I have a pair of socks with Calcifer printed on them, which might the oddest thing a Ghibli character’s ever appeared on.) “Usually the cute characters become the mascot characters from a film,” he says, “And those are the ones that become stuffed animals or characters that people like to purchase. But I think, in this film, they’re not those kinds of cute characters.”

He’s not wrong, either. A film about a woman cursed into old age, surrounded by an animated scarecrow, a fire demon, and a witch of waste doesn’t exactly seem like it fits the usual “cute” Ghibli mold, which has produced characters like Jiji and Totoro, who’re both ideal mascots to plaster over everything. But there’s heart to Howl’s Moving Castle, much as there is in every other film from the studio, and perhaps that’s what makes it stand out, despite a lack of aesthetically adorable characters.

Making ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ Gave Yamashita Unique Filmmaking Insight
Image via Toho

There’s also the heart of the novel it’s based on to consider. Yamashita says that there was a good amount of creative freedom involved in designing film versions of Diana Wynne Jones’s characters, but tells me that his original visions for Sophie and her magical friends didn’t exactly work out:

“We had some time before we got into production, so I drew some characters that I thought were based on the novel, and Mr. Miyazaki looked at that, and said, “These are no good, you should be ashamed of yourself,” and he put it up on the wall to show me that I was wrong. [laughs] So, of course, depending on the interpretation of, then, the filmmaker, you can have different types of characters being shown, and mine were not attractive. Mine were not something that people would really want to get pulled into seeing. And then, when Mr. Miyazaki came up with his characters, they’re all attractive in certain ways.
So it was very interesting for me to have my interpretation compared to what Mr. Miyazaki came up with,
and I learned a lot from that aspect as well.”

That criticism is vital to his process as an animator, just one part of a large team, and it’s obvious that Miyazaki’s animators trust him implicitly. For Yamashita — like most people — Miyazaki remains a juggernaut in the world of storytelling, someone whose films are both universal and relevant to the times they’re made at once. Not an easy task, but Yamashita says that one of his strengths is that he’s never worried about “[chasing] after what’s popular right now”:

“If you try to make a film [about] something that’s popular right now, then five years later, it will be old.
But because he doesn’t chase after current trends, and fashion, and popularity, then the films do not turn old, in terms of both the drawings as well as the story. And so it could be viewed at that time when it comes out, and later, and it could still have a lot of meaning. [And] this might seem a little inconsistent, [but he] is very good at reading the atmosphere of the times as well.”

Howl’s Moving Castle will return to AMC Theaters for one night only as a part of 2024’s Studio Ghibli Fest, in celebration of its anniversary. For tickets, check out AMC’s website.

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