Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.
Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.
Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.
In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.
In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)
In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.
The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.
In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.
Reveal of Welsh postdoc and rugby lad Dr Howell Jenkins (27) perennially one of the funniest things tumblr users can discover in fiction.
It’s unclear whether he finished his PhD or is still a grad student in the process of slithering out of his actual viva.
Here is Calcifer’s “silly saucepan song” that he sings to himself, which Howl sings when drunk (and Sophie doesn’t understand.) It’s a Welsh rugby song.
Also:
Howl changed his name from Howell Jenkins. His family believes him to be a jobless failed academic. His sister yells at him about his joblessness and the shitty car he keeps in her garage.
The Witch of the Waste curses Sophie by accident because Howl slept with the Witch then jilted her. Throughout much of the story, he's (pathetically, dramatically) pursuing Sophie's sister Lettie. The Witch finds out about Lettie, becomes jealous, and goes looking for a Hatter. Sophie just catches a stray.
The name Markl is a back-translation error. He's Michael in the books, a 15 year-old apprentice in love with Sophie's sister Martha.
Howl NEVER sees Sophie young. He eventually puts the pieces together, and while he'd met her in passing before her transformation, he never once sees her as a young woman after she's cursed. Sophie is an incredibly cranky old woman 100% of the time, and Howl falls for her anyway.
Sophie destroys Howl's suits when she's angry with him. While sewing one back together she accidentally charms it to make Howl irresistible to women, including her. She is livid about being in love with him.
Cannot overemphasize what a cowardly peacock book Howl is. Finding his courage and being slightly less vain for Sophie's sake is the marker of him truly falling in love.
