Character · Howl's Moving Castle
Calcifer
A fire demon powering a walking house, working under contract, and audibly regretting every clause of it.
In Otakana the clue reads: Fire demon living in the hearth
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Howl's Moving Castle
- Letters
- 8 · Normal
Calcifer lives in the hearth of Howl's castle and does very nearly everything. He heats the water, cooks the bacon, and moves the entire clanking building across the wastes. He is also a fallen star, bound to the wizard by a bargain that neither of them will explain to a house guest. Ask him about it directly and he changes the subject at volume.
What he mostly does is negotiate. Sophie arrives, informs him that she is cleaning the place, and he starts trading information for firewood positioned exactly where he wants it. Their relationship is the film's best running argument: two people stuck in the same house, both under curses they are forbidden to discuss, working out an arrangement over the washing up.
Miyazaki adapted Diana Wynne Jones' 1986 novel in 2004, and Calcifer is one of the few elements that survives the trip almost unaltered. Tatsuya Gashuin voices him in Japanese and Billy Crystal took the English dub, which gives the character two quite different senses of humour. He is drawn rather than simulated, which is why the flame has a face that never entirely settles.
Spelling CALCIFER
CALCIFER is eight letters and the middle is the trap. It is a C, not an S, so CALCIFER rather than the CALSIFER your ear keeps proposing. The name is built out of calcify, and that C does the same soft work it does there. Japanese writes it Karushifaa, adding a U and stretching the ending. Drop both of those and the English spelling is what remains.