Andrea Purcell

ALT Domee Shi (director, Turning Red): I don’t know how Miyazaki, this old Japanese man, made the greatest meet-cute of all time. It’s got everything. It’s suspenseful. There’s danger, there’s intimacy, there’s magic, there’s heart fluttering. He shoots it completely from Sophie’s point of view. We feel her nervousness when two guards corner her in that dark alley, and then all of a sudden, a tall, mysterious figure comes up behind her, and protectively puts an arm around her. That’s your first introduction to Howl. He saves her, but then he whisks her away into the air because he’s being followed, and they end up waltzing into the sky to escape.

ALT All of the details Miyazaki puts into this sequence make us feel what Sophie’s feeling. He emphasizes things like the glittery jewelry that Howl is wearing. He animates a glint to them — that’s the first thing you notice when Howl enters the shot. He also animates Howl’s beautiful hair falling in front of his eyes. Every time he turns his head, that hair moves fluidly with him. His delicate hands drape over her shoulder, and again when he hoists her into the sky and they start walking together. You get this fluttering feeling of first love, of attraction, of danger. It’s incredible how he was able to design and animate Howl in a way to appeal to the female gaze. Not a lot of male directors, let alone male animation directors, can do that, but he was able to with Howl’s design, his movement, his speech, his actions, and what he does with Sophie. Miyazaki treats the feelings of girls and women in a lot of his stories seriously and sincerely.