In it, Sophie starts off unsatisfied with her life but still believes she’s doomed to fail because popular wisdom in her world tells her that the eldest sister is always doomed to fail in life. The characters in Jones’ world live their lives based on prescriptive fairy-tale-like aphorisms, and a large part of Sophie’s character is unlearning those and finding the courage to forge an unconventional path. In the movie, Sophie’s family members are minor characters, but they play important roles in the book—both as characters in their own right and as forces that help Sophie deconstruct her own misconceptions. Early in the book, the girls’ father dies, and Fanny, who is stepmother to Sophie and her sister, Lettie, and mother to their youngest sister, Martha, makes decisions about their future based on the fairy tale aphorisms mentioned above. While she means well, Lettie and Martha have ideas of their own. Martha, who becomes a witch’s apprentice, wants nothing more than an ordinary life, so she and Lettie, who’s sent to work in a bakery but only wants to learn magic, find a way to body switch, and live their dreams! Not only do they get to have fun on their own terms, but they also teach Sophie a valuable lesson about how one should navigate unwanted circumstances and prejudices. This is a marked difference in subject matter; while Prince Justin, whose disappearance is a pretext for the war in the movie, is also missing in the book, this doesn’t warrant a war there. The movie’s anti-war sentiment is associated with Miyazaki’s background, and, in this case, his distaste for the war in Iraq. In the book, Sophie soon finds out that Howl actually originates from our own world, where he’s a Welsh man named Howell Jenkins. Howl more or less became a wizard and escaped to another world to avoid work and responsibility—not that he doesn’t do the same in Sophie’s world. This is a nice and unexpected isekai touch and some fans think it’s a pity that there wasn’t time to explore this in the movie. The movie, in comparison, features some weird technology, particularly with regard to the castle, echoing something that verges towards steampunk. And, of course, war and devastation make for a much darker aesthetic, so, in that sense, the movie is a bit less escapist compared to its book counterpart, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t magical or that its messages aren’t important. The movie’s Madame Suliman, who is the King’s wizard, is partly influenced by the wizard Suliman from the book. In the book, wizard Suliman is male, is missing for most of the story, and not evil, but rather a victim of the Witch of the Waste. In the movie, the Witch of the Waste, the main villain in the book, is neutralized rather early on making Madame Suliman—who perhaps also has some elements of Howl’s magic tutor, a non-evil witch—the movie’s big bad.
