Japan's animator looks to spark Asia's imagination

Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki's latest fantasy Howl's Moving Castle, which has broken box office records in Japan.

Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki's latest fantasy Howl's Moving Castle, which has broken box office records in Japan, is set to start its march on Asia in a new sign of a widening audience for a genre once focused on children.

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With its magical imagery acclaimed for transcending time and place, the movie has already proved a major success in France and South Korea, its first two overseas markets.

Howl's Moving Castle will next move to Taiwan on February 5, Singapore on February 24 and Hong Kong on March 24. Distributors plan to release it in 50 countries in all, with the United States later in the year, in what they hope will be a rare adult animation blockbuster.

"East Asia is the cultural bloc for Miyazaki's animation," said Toshio Suzuki, the producer of "Howl's Moving Castle" and president of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.

"Every time we make a film we try to surprise the audience in what it's expecting. Miyazaki could have had the castle move on tires, but instead gave it chicken legs," Suzuki told AFP.

But some critics are cautious about the future for animation after "Howl's Moving Castle," believing it could be the swan song of Miyazaki, the king of Japanese animation, who at age 64 has repeatedly said he is ready to retire.

Howl's Moving Castle, based on a children's fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones, tells the story of 18-year-old Sophie who is turned into an old woman by a witch. Sophie enters a moving castle full of magical surprises kept by the dashing but mysterious wizard Howl as she searches for a way to become normal again.

Wakana Kono, an associate professor at Chiba University specializing in visual arts, said the innovation of the film was in its universality.

"Miyazaki's film has lots of Japanese elements such as superstition, myths and the way it uses colour," Kono said.

"It also has European or international tastes which are understood in the world. So his film gives foreign audiences both familiarity and freshness."

"Howl's Moving Castle" debuted in September at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Osella for outstanding technical contribution, and broke the box office record in Japan by drawing 1.1 million viewers in its first two days in theaters.

Despite only being released on November 20, Howl's Moving Castle was the country's top-grossing film for all of 2004 at 20 billion yen (193 million dollars), according to the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan.

More than two months later, cinemas are still packed in Tokyo with advance tickets needed to see the movie.

Miyazaki's previous film, Spirited Away, won the Academy Award in 2003 for best animated feature, Japan's first Oscar for a full-length work in nearly half a century.

His promoters noted that Spirited Away, a tale of a 10-year-old girl's adventures in a dark supernatural world uncovered when her parents move to the suburbs, was also a hit in other parts of Asia.

In South Korea, which only began allowing Japanese cultural imports in 1998 due to sensitivities over Japanese colonial rule, Howl's Moving Castle drew 2.7 million viewers in the month after its December 23 release, making it third at the box office, said Daiwon C and A Holdings which handled the film in Korea.

Miyazaki has a cult status in France, where art house animation has a wide following, with more than 345,000 tickets bought to see Howl's Moving Castle since its release on January 12, according to distributor Buena Vista.

The figure surpasses turnout during the same period for "Spirited Away," which drew 1.4 million cinema-goers in France.

But for all the acclaim for Miyazaki, there is some grumbling that he has become so larger than life in Japan that no one is pointing out weaknesses in "Howl's Moving Castle."

"Japanese film critics don't want to be quoted as criticizing his film for fear of ruining their relationship with Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki himself," said critic Yoshio Shirai, former editor-in-chief of leading film magazine Kinema-Junpo.

He dismissed the theory that Miyazaki was creating animation that appeals both to children and adults, saying that in his quest to show gravitas, "Howl's Moving Castle" was too complex to be understood, particularly by children.

Suzuki, the producer, countered that the story was tangential.

"An audience doesn't go to watch a story. They go to take in the details, such as how the castle moves and how Sophie climbs up the steps as an old lady," Suzuki said.

But Shirai, the critic, said too many cinema-goers were out to see just Miyazaki, with his name enough to sell any film.

Shirai said that the acclaimed animator was burned out and would prefer to devote himself to training a new generation, but that he was under intense pressure to keep directing for the sake of the box office.

"I think Miyazaki is struggling to find just the right time to bow off the stage," Shirai said.