Character · Howl's Moving Castle
Howl Jenkins Pendragon
A wizard with a front door onto four cities, and a full personal crisis whenever his hair comes out the wrong colour.
In Otakana the clue reads: Vain wizard with a walking house
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Howl's Moving Castle
- Letters
- 4 · Easy
Howl is the most powerful magician in the region and spends most of that power avoiding responsibility. Two kings want him for their war. He answers to a different name in each town so neither can pin him down, keeps a castle that walks, and has rigged a front door with a coloured dial that opens onto whichever city he currently needs. It is a magnificent piece of cowardice.
The famous scene is the tantrum. Sophie reorganises his bathroom, the hair dye comes out wrong, and a grown sorcerer sits on the floor oozing green slime while the house fills with despair. Miyazaki plays it completely straight. The vanity is real, the misery is real, and the joke is that the most dangerous man in the country has been undone by a bottle.
Underneath the comedy he is losing himself. Every time Howl turns into the bird thing to break up a bombing run he comes back slightly less able to change back, and he goes out again anyway, which is the film's argument about what a war costs the people who refuse to pick a side. Takuya Kimura voices him in Japanese, Christian Bale in English.
Spelling HOWL
HOWL is four letters and, unusually for this dataset, an ordinary English word, the noise a wolf makes. The Japanese is a straight transcription of that, Hauru, with a U on the end that English does not want. No silent letters and no swaps. The only real question is whether the game wants HOWL or the full Howl Jenkins Pendragon, and it wants the four.