History Literature / HowlsMovingCastle

* HeroesWantRedheads: Sophie, in her natural age and form, has flowing red hair, and is the only girl that womanizer Howl is truly interested in.

** Michael pointed out to Sophie the day that Howl, as vain and obsessed with beauty that he was, forgets to take 2 hours every morning to dress up and make himself look handsome would be the day that he's truly in love. So when Sophie was kidnapped by the Witch of the Waste, Howl arrives to her castle, disheveled and ungroomed.

* DressingDown: Michael remarks that he'll know [[AgentPeacock Howl]] has fallen truly in love only if Howl ''doesn't'' spend hours in the bathroom, making himself prettier before meeting a girl. [[spoiler:When Sophie is captured by the Witch of the Waste, Howl rushes to rescue her, looking disheveled and unkempt]].

* ThreatBackfire

Sophie Hatter is a sensible young woman who utterly lacks any confidence in herself. She works in a hat store owned by her late father, where she feels resigned to spend the rest of her days, until one day an encounter with the dashing and handsome young wizard Howl marks her as a target of the Witch of the Waste, a jilted former lover of Howl's. Mistaking Sophie for her sister Lettie, the Witch places a curse on Sophie which turns her into an old woman. After this transformation, Sophie exiles herself from her hometown and happens to become a house cleaner for Howl—who lives inside a moving castle with [[{{PortalNetwork}} magic doors]] leading all over the country. The castle is powered by the grumpy fire demon, Calcifer, who is linked to Howl in a mysterious magical contract. Calcifer, however, has grown to resent Howl over the years and agrees to free Sophie from her curse if she can, in turn, somehow void his own agreement with Howl. As Sophie and Howl grow closer, it becomes more and more apparent that all is not as it seems.

Sophie Hatter is a sensible young woman who utterly lacks any confidence in herself. She works in a hat store owned by her late father, where she feels resigned to spend the rest of her days, until one day an encounter with the dashing and handsome young wizard Howl marks her as a target of the Witch of the Waste, a jilted former lover of Howl's. Mistaking Sophie for her sister Lettie, the Witch places a curse on Sophie which turns her into an old woman. After this transformation, Sophie exiles herself from her hometown and happens to become a house cleaner for Howl - who lives inside a moving castle with [[{{PortalNetwork}} magic doors]] leading all over the country. The castle is powered by the grumpy fire demon, Calcifer, who is linked to Howl in a mysterious magical contract. Calcifer, however, has grown to resent Howl over the years and agrees to free Sophie from her curse if she can, in turn, somehow void his own agreement with Howl. As Sophie and Howl grow closer, it becomes more and more apparent that all is not as it seems.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Ingary is roughly equivalent to England. Rajpuht, in ''Castle in the Air'' is somewhere between Arabian, Persian, and Indian. High Norland, in which ''House of Many Ways'' is set, is quite Switzerland-like--with the rolling, snowy mountains and meadows, the cuckoo clocks/sleds, tiny impish creatures, and all.

* TheMultiverse: This trope shows up again in DWJ's work in a minor way -- Howl turns out to be from an AlternateUniverse, which turns out to be [[EarthAllAlong modern-day Earth]] (specifically Wales in the 1970s), which passes by without much comment from the other characters.

* RuleOfCool: Let's face it - moving castles are cool. It's justified in the first book as a means of eluding the Witch, but Sophie and Howl still have the moving castle at the very end of the third book.
* StandardHeroReward: Spoofed. Princess Valeria of Ingary is still a small child, and her father wouldn't dream of marrying her off until she's much older -- which proves embarrassing for several people over the course of the series who expect the Standard Reward without bothering to find out how old she is first.

* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: The Hatter sisters - Sophie (redhead), Lettie (brunette), and Martha (blonde).

* ConversationHog: Mrs Fairfax tends to ramble on about whatever the topic of conversation is, and whoever she's talking to has to watch for a good moment to insert their comment or else be obliviously talked over. The narration compares it to judging the right moment to jump into a moving skipping-rope.
* CursedWithAwesome: Subverted -- Sophie's curse is genuinely terrible but it is only as an old woman that she is finally able to feel confident in herself.

* EveryoneJoinTheParty: Sort of happens in the book, when an amazing number of secondary characters independently show up right before the climax; subverted in that they don't know they're ''supposed'' to be reinforcements ([[spoiler:really - that was Howl's plan]]) and so are bewilderedly commentating on the fight and swapping stories rather than really helping - afterward, this continues and serves as an {{Infodump}} about what's really been going on for the entire book.

* HeartTrauma: [[spoiler:Howl, who is frequently described as "heartless", turns out to literally lack a heart, having given it to Calcifer as part of a magical deal. When he gets it back at the end of the novel, he improves -- a bit. The trope is being played with; it's implied that although his literal heartlessness is wonderfully symbolic, his selfishness is just how he is, and was even before he met Calcifer.]]

* RewatchBonus: A ''lot'' of past scenes are put in a different light once you find out in the last chapters [[spoiler: Calcifer saw Sophie's curse and her magic power immediately, told Howl about it, and they were ''both'' hoping she could break Calcifer's contract]]; that [[spoiler: Howl's flirtations with Lettie and Miss Angorian were both put-on for strategy]]; and that [[spoiler: Howl is [[MagnificentBastard conducting a complicated, deceptive plan]] over not only the Witch of the Waste and Miss Angorian - who both have their ''own'' conflicting gambits - but over Sophie, the entire kingdom, and ''himself''. Almost the only action of Sophie's he didn't predict was her being decent to Miss Angorian]].

* TwinSwitch: [[spoiler:Mrs Hatter places Martha and Lettie in apprenticeships based on her expectations for their futures, but they each prefer the career path the other has been given. Martha finds a magic spell that lets them switch appearances, and they swap places. By the end of the book they are able to each continue their preferred apprenticeships openly.]]

The book was adapted into [[Anime/HowlsMovingCastle an anime film]] by Creator/HayaoMiyazaki, which took significant liberties with its setting, secondary themes, and minor characters.

The book kicked off a series. The first sequel, ''Literature/CastleInTheAir'' (not to be confused with Miyazaki's other film, ''Laputa: Anime/CastleInTheSky''), continues the story from the point of view of a new character, in the midst of a war, wherein most of the characters he runs across are characters from the first book, only (a) disguised or otherwise once ''again'' transformed into forms different from both their true natures and their original cursed appearances and/or (b) described in such a way as to make the reader unaware of the connection (seeing as the sequel's hero doesn't know any of them, he can't very well recognize them for us, either). It uses tropes and settings from the Literature/{{Arabian Nights}}.

Indeed, the main theme of the book is that everything in the story is something else, having been transformed by magic.

The book was adapted into [[Anime/HowlsMovingCastle an anime film]] by Creator/HayaoMiyazaki.

The book kicked off a series. The first sequel, ''Literature/CastleInTheAir'' (not to be confused with Miyazaki's other film, ''Laputa: Anime/CastleInTheSky''), continues the story from the point of view of a new character, in the midst of a war, wherein most of the characters he runs across are characters from the first book, only (a) disguised or otherwise not what they once were and/or (b) described in such a way as to make the reader unaware of the connection (seeing as the sequel's hero doesn't know any of them, he can't very well recognize them for us, either). It uses tropes and settings from the Literature/{{Arabian Nights}}.

** The first book has lots of them to ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz''. The main antagonist is the Witch of the ''Waste''. Sophie goes on a journey to gain a wizard's help, and meets a dog, a scarecrow, a being who is literally heartless ([[spoiler:Howl himself]]), and a being who self-describes as a coward but is brave when it really matters ([[spoiler:Howl again]]). Howl is a wizard who deliberately cultivates an image of being a lot more terrible and powerful than he really is, and [[spoiler:was born in our world]].

* TongueTied: Part of the curse on Sophie is that she is prevented from telling anyone that's she under the curse. Nothing stopping anyone from figuring it out themselves, though (Calcifer, for one, can tell just by looking at her), and once someone else figures it out, that someone else is at full liberty to talk about it to whoever they wish. This also means that Sophie is free to talk about the curse with anyone who figured it out on their own.

* AmbiguousDisorder: downplayed, but in modern parlance, Sophie is clearly neurodivergent. She's shy socially but can be dangerously blunt; hyperfocuses on millinery or cleaning but "has no method" and loses interest all at once; finds that she can only do some things when forced to (executive dysfunction); deals very badly with boredom; acts impulsively, and misses nonverbal cues, which leads to many a misunderstanding. Once she discovers her own powers, it doesn't hold her back.