Are We All Going to be Okay? Nihilism & Howl's Moving Castle 

The fact that war literally dehumanizes Howl in this movie is such a gripping image to me, there's so much to dig into. Easily my favourite Miyazaki movie.

Man it is beautiful and so refreshing to see someone praising movies in a movie lovers perspective, instead of a pure movie hate

"F*ck insurance companies." Probably the most universal truth ever said on this channel. Best of luck to you, man.

-“Are you opposed to Nihilism?” -“I’m indifferent to it.” I think this was a great ep. Thank you for your point of view. You offered some great insight to the picture. And I wish you a quick home recovery.

I went to check out the shop...only to discover the rest of the community had the same feeling I did. Much love you guys. I’ll keep an eye out for that restock.

Might be worth noting in the novels a key detail that was implied but never really explained in the movie: Sophie has her own magic gifts that essentially makes positive/negative reinforcement a literal thing for her (ex: she complimented a hat to 'make any lady wearing you look gorgeous' or 'Hey Cal, you can keep burning without a hearth, you don't need no cage' and it would be so.) But I think that is the only detail that seemed mildly muddy in the book-to-film adaptation. It sort of explains that the more positive she was with herself, the more youthful she looked through the film. The book steered its theme more towards what felt like a 90's rom-com because one of the plots was of Howl trying to get Sophie to make him clothes that will win him all the pretty girl's attention without her being aware of her gift to imbue inanimate objects with magic. The entire war aspect was far more Mayazaki's work, so taking the book's premise and using that as the vehicle telling this story was pretty nice, and I think made the movie stand on its own wonderfully. I wish you and your found family good luck!

Life definitely never stops punching. We just get better at taking the punches. So sorry, friends, that you’ve had to deal with ALL the 💩. Glad you are at least safe and in a place where it’s possible to get back on your feet. Hoping 2021 brings lots of merch sales. Also, thank you as always for your insight and charm.

I always share your stuff. You do such a great job, your videos are so well thought out and insightful. Your humor brings me joy. Most of all, it is continually inspiring to me that even though life has continuously run you over, stopped, backed up and run you over again--you keep getting back up. You keep trying to find joy in life. You keep spreading that joy by making things that give others joy. Your company is well and truly named. And thank you for all that you do, and the inspiration and happiness you bring me every time I watch your videos. I will buy as many shirts as I can. Keep fighting.

I'm sorry for what you had to go through and I'm glad things are getting better for you!

A bit late, but i just remembered your videos and swung back towards your channel. Laughcrying is a really strange action and feeling, after the joker movie I became very self conscious about it, seeing your videos I can't help it though, you just portray such difficult topics in such a direct and honest way that I can't avoid laughing at the absurdity of the deep and incisive problems that surround me. By laughcrying at these problems I think I can finally look them in the eye and confront them, as well as re-appropriate the action of doing so. Thanks for so much.

Great pic of Miyazaki as a child. True artistic beauty rising from tragic beginnings.

It almost seems magical the way you provide insight so easily. It is like you are painting mind images on the canvas of my brain. It is beautiful. Thank you kindly :)

Good to see ya back up and running Mikey, Hope things sort themselves out soon

It is always a pleasure and a surprise what I end up learning from these videos.

Awesome video dude, so sorry to hear about your pipes and all that destruction, that's gotta be so much to deal with mentally and physically. Definitely gonna go snag a shirt, thanks for your work

I'm glad this came out

Surreal has been the last 20 months of living in America. I watched this last year and couldn’t comment because I was in the throes of my own house proverbially burning down. I had thrown everything away that wasn’t nailed down in under 3 months. Lost my future, and have been reimagining my future since. What strange times we live in.

Engagement - Because this channel is fantastic and brings me joy.

The word nihilism portrays the situation as an ideological principal of the subjects when it is more an inevitable result of circumstances. Having heart or being heartless. Having empathy or being selfish, you can see what drives the characters where they are at every turn and you can see the power behind what changes their nature for the better. What is very powerful is our ability to project ourselves from any position on the characters. For better or worse we can see what changes that nature and there is no room to say it’s anything other than heart and empathy or selfishness and cruelty drive our changes.

Oh, Mikey. We love you. Thank you.

Oh hi Mikey, don't mind me having a little cry. Every single Filmjoy is exactly the thing I need when it's released. Thank you 💕

Always been a fan of this channel. Here to help with the engagement today, more than ever. If there’s anything else we can do to help - just say.

Nobody has been able to make me get in my feels and let some tears fly like Mikey can, and I so, so appreciate that. Thank you for everything you're doing, truly. Hang in there Mikey.

First video i’ve seen of him. definitely going to check out more

Couldnt buy a tshirt, so I bought a pin for now xD Thank you for all you do Mikey, you make every new video feel impactful and I missed your voice :)

I know I have too many shirts. I don't know if I can ever have enough of FilmJoy.

One of my all time favorite movies!

I'm so sorry to hear about your housing situation! You put so much unrelenting good energy into the world

Awesome episode!

Fantastic! I love filmjoy I love Miyazaki I love Mikey I loved this video!!

Minor correction, The Witch Of The Wastes cursed Sophie to show outside her true heart. Sophie turned old only because Sophie felt she was old, in regards as a teenage spinster alienated from the hustle of youth around her. Which is why she has spurts of youth peak through the curse, because she feels the hope and love of tge youth in her heart.

Really great episode

Yaaas I wanted to have this video so badly 😆😆

❤️ you guys!

This is a good video, Mikey.

whelp. time to go rewatch howl's moving castle and cry i guess

This may have been pointed out already but the director's name is Miyazaki Hayao. Miyazaki is his family name. Hayao is his given name. So everytime you call him "Hayao", it's like saying "Martin" to mean Scorsese.

And one more, for the algorithm. I need to watch this film again.

idk what to say but this is such a great video

Hope everything works out with the house, thats craazy! Did the worlds end episode get taken down by you or youtube? One of my favourites of yours. (Ah crumbs)

You forgot the weezing dog!!!! He’s part of the family too!!

your pipes burst too? aw man that is hard I hope you guys get your stuff fixed quickly!

ive probably watched this movie more than 20 times in the course of my life, but this video brought out some facets that i hadnt thought about before! one thing: howl isnt a vampire wizard (except in that he sucks at sophies patience). they SAY he eats young girls hearts, but this isnt true. in the book its explicitly a rumour howl started, in the movie its more open to interpretation, but its more about womanizing than. literal eating of hearts. btw if you want a dub recommendation, try the german dub (no, really). it has really good casting, and germany is an expert dubber anyway because basically all english languages films are dubbed before they screen here.

So still in love with you, and this movie. I think you might find that Howl has been drafted twice by the same side, not once each from two different sides...? (~2:20)

Huge respect for Miyazaki, taking a stand against warmongering despite being nominated for and winning an Oscar.

3:45 can't... breathe... laughing... so hard...

Welp, haven't related to something so hard in a while. The fireplace was nice to have and friends with firewood, but it was still cold and 2020 still sux

That was an awful storm. I’m sorry y’all had water damage.

Planning to introduce my partner to Ghibli, but have been torn on where to start. Thought I had it narrowed down to Kiki's Delivery and Princess Mononoke and now the cannon hats are calling me 😅

I'm subscribed but I didnt get a notification for this video

Another happy happy fun pic from Mikey. Is he okay? _Had anybody checked in on him?? 😱_

I engage too!

Hello fellow Sophies

Super video! I applauded for $10.00 👏👏👏

Can we have a cap 2winter soldier video please

Where can I get those nacho slurpees tho?

Rewatching this in November 2022, as a trans woman in the state of Texas, days before Greg Abbot is re-elected as governor and my entire country picks its trajectory for the next 2 years, and is preciptiously close to falling over the edge into all in fascism... fuck man.

(spoilers for Howl's Moving Castle) In the movie, Howl values his own life so little that he intentionally abuses magic to the point of turning himself into the giant bird monster. He knows ahead of time that he's going to do this and the end consequences of it, but does it anyway because he thinks disrupting the war in any way possible is more important than anything that happens to him. There's even a scene where he's literally preparing his found family for life after he's gone, altering the castle and setting them up with a new shop to help support themselves with. It's only because Sophie refuses to give up on him, and refuses to let him give up on HIMSELF, that he makes it through the end of the movie and gets a happy ending. I don't know if we're all Sophie necessarily... I think some of us might be Howl. And the rest of us need to be the Sophies for the Howls.

Super video! I applauded for $10.00 👏👏👏

Okay but can we talk about how Sophie’s curse is actually a perfect metaphor for how young people have to grow up faster/give up their youthful optimism in a world of vast and wildly escalating crises they inherent from the older generation (ie senile witch of the waste)

You forgot the spy dog who ends up adopting Howl's Family, and only report to its previous owner once she can't hurt his new family anymore.

Extending upon what you said about having little to no control over one's life; When Howl freaks out about his hair turning ginger and saying "I see no reason to live if I can't be beautiful", I don't think he's saying it out of vanity, but he already has almost no control over his life. He's slowly turning more and more into a bird monster, and he has to fight in the war on both sides AND he's cursed to have no heart. Self-Care and looking-as-best-he-can was pretty much all he had in terms of control over himself, and once that was threatened, even just a little bit, he had a bit of a mental breakdown, not a tantrum.

"Subtlety is in a casket being paraded through the streets." This video is perfect. Thanks for the cathartic tears I didn't know I needed to let out. Take care, be safe.

I've always loved how when they first meet Howl's ring is glowing and he says, "There you are, I've been looking for you forever." I like to think Howl knew who Sophie was from the beginning. Sophie tells him as a child to find her in the future and so he does.

I love how Sophie is literally the ideal worker, but the world needs more than just good workers. It needs human beings, multifaceted and empathetic, and the way we are expected to live our lives I think at least seems to act against us being just that. Wishing you and Tara all the best, Mikey. I’m sorry you had to go through that, and I’m glad you’ve got a new place to stay at and work in. Thank you for putting this out despite how hard things are, I’m sure a lot of people needed this video.

Can I get a, "We are all burning away slowly, and everything is fine," shirt?

"FOR THE ALGORITHM!!!" the only acceptable battlecry!

The way I read the Witch of the Waste and Sophie's spells: The Witch cast a spell on herself to look as young/old as she *wants*. Sophie's spell makes her look as young/old as she *feels*. Sophie is never truly shocked when she ages up or down. When she's excited, she turns younger. When she gets sad, she gets older.

This was so painfully relatable in ways I can't accurately articulate. We Are All Sophie. Gonna go cry for reasons. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and loving art of all kinds, wherever you find it.

Do you see me, RU-vid!? This is me engaging!!!

For me Howl's moving castle has maybe a different meaning than for other people. As many I could identify myself very much with Sophie. Like me when I was around 13/14 years old without any friends she sat at home and was doing some crafts and wasn't really living life (although she was a little bit older than me). It was only after the curse that she finally began to live to her life. It was one of my first Studio Ghibli movies and I loved it from the beginning. Sophie din't have a positive outlook (or even an outlook at all) on life. She was wasting her life and youth. And through Howl she was introduced to the chaos of life and that kind of has woken her up. There wasn't a Howl in my life to wake me up in a healthy way but I took the lesson from the movie and learned that there is more to life than to just sit at home and do things on your own (which I still like to do but there needs to be balance). So in the end I think Howl rescued Sophie from herself because he introduced the excitement of living to her. And Sophie rescued Howl because she gave him a meaning and the courage to not run away anymore from difficult things. And I think we should all strive for a balance of excitement/fun and responsibility in our lives.

We don't choose to have no beliefs -- they are taken from us. *chefs kiss*

There's a very short scene in this movie, where Howl and Sophie escape from the palace on the flying thingies. In the background, in the town square is a protest with lines of soldiers shooting into the crowd. Just in case anyone needed clarification on what type of society it is in Howl's Moving Castle.

An unnecessary counterpoint to feed the algorithm: the Optimistic Nihilism of Kurzgesagt. In short, 'we only have this one life to live, let's use that to make _everyone's_ lives better'. Howl's Moving Castle provides a wonderful, fanciful view of nihilism in these two contexts, we can let nihilism wear us down to make us less than ourselves, or we can let it motivate us to connect to those things that make us more than what we are, each other.

"We can't give in to nihilism" really hit me right now, thank you for that. Great vid as always

12:16 "I wanted to comment on the creeping nihilism we are all beginning to feel. I know everyone knows what this feels like“ wrenched a sob from me

Wow, it's weird for me to think of Spirited Away in the context of the Iraq War as I was studying in Japan when it was released, which was the summer of 2001. I guess in my mind it was pre-911. But Howl's I saw in the US in 2004, so that definitely resonated with the war themes in the movie. (I do love the book though. It's very different from the movie, mostly in the second half, but do recommend as it's own thing.)

I will make sure to buy two shirts when the store re-opens. Shirts are love, Shirts are Life.

"Good morning. We are all burning away slowly, and everything is fine." This sense of nihilism is what I'm fighting against in my thesis, and what I hope to push back on in my research and that line just... hits like a ton of bricks. Thank you for making this.

I'm not an overly emotional person, but the last year's forcing me to bury my stress just to get by has resulted in strong moments of profound sadness just blurting out. In December, while at work, Bing Crosby singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on our shop's Pandora station hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had to hold back choking up for several hours. I'm not a cryer, and it felt surreal that this feeling was happening at all, moreso that it was happening around coworkers where I have even more walls up. And dude, when you started to talk about your house, just now I started to weep. I'm so sorry for you. I've been lucky through the pandemic overall, but if something like that happened to me, I think I would actually be sobbing and at a loss for what to do. I can't imagine what you've been through.

The Netherlands has our national election next week and this feels so relevant. I have no power to stop the pull towards more right wing policies and it's making me feel damn nihilistic. Thank you for the perspective. It helps!

I have one thing that I'd like to contribute because I feel it fits beautifully. Howl needed Sophie as much as she needed him. At the end when Sophie calls to Howl in the past it is what sets everything in motion. The process through which they both grow is independent and intertwined. In the end when they lose the castle they still have each other. They still have their found family. They still have people who they can rely on. Even as the world strips everything away through no fault of their own. It can't take that. Because it's always been there from the moment Howl met Sophie and the moment Sophie first, and finally called to Howl. This is the case although at each of there respective lowest points, neither of them could see it. This to me is the ultimate lesson, no matter where you are in life if you understand it or not, there is a family, a person, something that will come to lift you up just as long as you try your best to lift others in return.

Sooooo...when are we getting a "F*ck Insurance Companies" shirt?

A Studio Ghibli movie will make you cry twice: first whilst viewing the film and again when watching the video essay of it by Mikey. Thank you, Mikey.

This hit pretty hard and got me thinking about how much we take it as a personal failing when the world takes away our ability to act. The idea that it's not a moral fault to feel your ability to care stripped away puts things into a context that really lessens the weight on your soul. I didn't know I needed this right now, but I did. Thanks, Mikey.

Glad to see this stuff's actually appearing in my bells now that I started commenting.

Wait, I'm pretty sure Howl gets drafted twice by the same king under his two aliases, not by two different kings. I could be mistaken, but thats how i've understood it all these years.

This is like the MwM of old and I'm here for it.

"2021 is here and subtlety is in a casket being paraded in the streets" is probably the best line I've heard all year. You are a lyrical god Mikey.

I don't have anything insightful to say, so as Lindsey Ellis would say: Engagement!

It takes courage to say the thing you need to hear, recognizing that your need is a universal one. Of all the things you do, Mikey, the courage you display by baring your heart to the world is inspiring - like, very literally, because I'm pushing myself to do the same. The world is always that much harder for big hearts because they have more surface area with which the world can affect them. Seeing a big heart on a website that, if anything, concentrates the world's casual cruelty and provides a forum to wield it reminds me that I can show the same courage and survive whatever may come. That maybe I NEED to do so. Because other big hearts are out there, and maybe what I need to hear is what they need to hear too. Hopefully that all makes sense to you. Thank you.

This is probably the most empathetic work of critical content I have ever experienced. As these past 2 years have been taxing, this piece of journalistic art fits to a tee. And thanks for helping me understand these times better. Peace onto you.

This was ACTUALLY on my suggested videos today! Bout dang-ol time!

"Good Morning, we are all burning away slowly, and everything is fine." Gonna be another glorious smack in the face from Movies with Mikey I see

I’ve got nothing to tell you, just a quick comment to help with the invisible hand of the algorithm. Love you and your team, Mikey!

“Aah beans” boy ain’t that the truth 💜

It’s maddening that this channel has less than 300K subs. Please take a moment out of your day and give this channel and Mikey the respect they deserve. Love -The Almighty Algorithm

"... a character who always inherits other people's messes." Hoo boy, am I feeling that now. This movie got me through the mixed feelings I experienced getting married and moving into the house my spouse and I inherited from my FIL. It was pretty clear that said FIL is not well versed in home repair work, yet still insisted on doing the repairs which resulted in a LOT of damage that we still unearth from our various home improvement projects today. The house is a mess, and we've been spending the pandemic trying to fix it up so that it is less so. Also, I completely forgot that you lived in Texas until this video. I'm glad you and your loved ones are safe and getting through this as best as you can.

“Fixing yourself takes more than just you” (Looks across the room and my wife and son) (Bursts into tears) Why you do this Mikey

Mikey, seeing you continually refuse to give in to Nihilism is an inspiration. Keep it the hell up, and thank you.