Its Overrated
Story: 2/10 D-
Animation/Art: 8/10 B
Sound: 8/10 B+
Characters: 4/10 D
Acting(subbed): 5/10 C-
Overall: 4/10 D

TLDR:
This is a beautiful looking and sounding movie that is completely let down by an absolute mess of a story and a cast of confusing characters that aren’t really all that enjoyable. Positives first though, the animation is beautiful, smooth, just great. I really like it. The sound and music omg it good. I mean you know the theme it’s legendary for a reason. But now for bad stuff. The story is a mess. It starts off slow paced, and then the movie keeps changing goals. It’s just hippity hoppity from one plot line to another. Then there’s this war going on that palys LITERALLY ZERO role in this movie. IT DOES NOTHING! YOU COULD EASILY REMOVE IT AND THE MOVIE WOULD STILL BE THE SAME!!! Characters are boring. Sophie is so boring. Howl feels so conflicted as a person. Is he mysterious or is he a child? Is he a coward or is he just being manipulative? He has no consistency. Everyone else is boring too. I hate them all. Acting wise it’s average. That’s it. Average. I don’t have anything else to say about it. I didn’t like this movie.

Story:
Ooh boy. The weakest aspect of this movie. Absolute mess. It starts off fine I guess. It immediately provides a sense of intrigue and mystery that makes you wanna keep watching. But after a while the whole story takes a complete turn. Then another turn. And then another. The story can’t pick a plot line. Right when you think they are about to start pursuing one goal, suddenly, THEY THROW TIME TRAVEL AT YOU AND REVEAL SOMETHING NEW!!! Not kidding by the way that came out of nowhere. This story is just a bunch of clashing plotlines like someone in the storyboarding room mixed up a bunch of rough draft ideas, threw them on a wall at random and said “this is a movie” and everyone else said “yeah this is a movie”. Theres just no semblance of consistency. Now I’m not saying it’s confusing. It’s fairly easy to follow along but because the main goal keeps changing, it’s hard to get invested in any aspect of the story. Also theres this war plotline. It could easily be removed. Super easily. It plays zero part in this story at all. I don’t know what else to say. It’s just not good.

Animation/Art:
This part is actually pretty good. The animation is beautiful. Especially scenes in the mountains, the background is a work of art. The action scenes are made better with high quality, smooth animation. I don’t have much else to say here. Studio Ghibli has always had excellent animation quality and this movie is no exception to that. That being said, it is a relatively old film and so looks like an old film. I don’t really have a problem with it but the style of this film feels softer than modern anime and is very clearly of an older era.

Sound:
The music here is legendary. Don’t tell me that you haven’t heard the main theme of the movie. Even non-anime fans are well aware of it. The rest of the soundtrack is just as good. It’s dramatic, it’s whimsical and it’s beautiful. It’s not the best though. In no situation did my mind just think “god damn this some good music”. I did sometimes think “nice music” but it was never something as good as “god damn”.

Characters:
Oh boy. Here we go. I suppose we should start off with the main character Sophie. Boring as hell. Just so boring. Her voice actor sounds boring. She looks boring. I just dont get it why is she so boring? She has some motivation but I feel like the VA just can’t put any heart into her. It’s just so sad. She just feels completely emotionless half the time even in moments that should be tense. And howl sucks. I can’t tell who Howl is supposed to be. Is he meant to be dark and mysterious, happy and whimsical, or a bumbling idiot? There is no consistency in his character and not like the has a manipulative nature and changes for different purposes, it’s like instead there are 3 different people writing for him at the same time each with a different purpose. He starts off afraid of someone but then ends up just getting over that and then he just brings in someone he knows wants to eat his heart? What is this? Then theres a villain and she is just the worst. What does she do? Well nothing personally. It seems like she will start off like a threatening villain to fight against but she never appears after her introduction. She just appears once to try and accomplish her goal and then disappears and just sends warships after him. And her motivation is completely unclear. She wants to end the war but takes priority fighting Howl but at the end when the Howl problem is resolved she just ends the war. What? Why didn’t you do that at the start. And remember, the war has literally no influence on the story. Literally zero. This section is really hard to write. Why? Because thats just how confusing the chracters are. God I hate them.

Acting(subbed):
It was fine I guess. Honestly not really all that impressed or anything. Sophies VA feels dead and boring inside. Howls is, fine. Everyone else is, fine. I just can’t think of anything else. It was just, fine.

Enjoyment/Overall:
I’ve said what I wanted to say. It’s a movie with good animation and good music and somewhat acceptable acting. But its also a movie with GARBAGE story and extremely confusing and inconsistent characters. How am I supposed to care for a character when I don’t even know what the character acts like or who they really are? How am I supposed to get invested in the story when the story seems to be written by 3 different people who have no idea what the story is supposed to be? I can’t see in anyway how somebody could like this movie. I’m glad that people do like this movie but I just can’t see why. Thankfully I’m the odd one out when in comes to this movie because so far I don’t know anybody else besides me that dislikes this movie. The TL;DR said most of it. This movie can go to hell. Goodbye.