watching Nausicaa recently only brought to mind how shallow Miyazaki's last offering (Howl's Moving Castle) was in comparison.
Yes, Howl could have been
much better. Before the movie came out, I read the book by Diana Wynne Jones and, unlike the movie, it
made sense. I kept wishing the movie had been more like the book.
In the book:
1) There is no war.
2) The Witch of the Waste has two other victims — the King's brother, and the King's wizard Suliman. One is turned into a scarecrow and one is turned into a dog (I forget which is which). Sophie saves them both.
3) It's Sophie's sheer force of will that undoes the spell on them, although she doesn't understand it at first. She is terrified of the scarecrow, not realizing that she was the one who breathed life into it by talking to it.
4) The Witch of the Waste, like Howl, made a pact with a fire demon and gets her power from it. Unlike Howl, she has had been with the fire demon so long that it has already destroyed her. Once Howl kills the Witch of the Waste, he then has to fight her fire demon.
5) Lots of other subplots — Sophie has two sisters, and not just one.
6) All this is told in a narrative that turns the conventions of the fairy tale upside down, at the same time it pays tribute to them. The book and movie versions of
The Princess Bride did the same thing.
The book was much better, and I strongly recommend it. The movie was very good at the start but ceased to be coherent after a while. To me, the flick fell apart at about the same time the castle did.
But I still think Mononoke trumps Nausicäa.