Howl's adaptation of the novel to japanese animated film. Dialogues between literature and cinema in Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle (2004) is a renowned feature film in Hayao Miyaza- ki's filmography. Despite incorporating the distinctive style character- istics of the Japanese director and Studio Ghibli, this film is based on the adaptation of the eponymous novel written by Diana Wynne-Jones (1986, 2003). This study analyses the similarities and differences in the treatment of the characters in the literary and cinematographic versions of this story, focusing on Howl's case, given his relevance to the plot and the lack of research related to his character. To this end, a methodology based on Chatman's (1990) notions of "existents" is developed. Ultimately, the study explores the original particularities of the transposition of the screenplay to the film.