Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)

Translator's notes in yellow.

3/1/04 (Mon.)

Well, it's March. It's time for the stretch. Today's in-between animation output was extremely good. Because of that, the animation direction shelves are empty. Tonight and tomorrow, we'll have to have animation direction put in some hard work.

This is my personal feeling, but it seems that when things go well at the start, unexpected things tend to happen afterwards, producing this sort of unease, but maybe I'm thinking about it too much.

3/2/04 (Tues.)

Layout was finished without incident. Only one part of the animation process is done, but it feels like much more. There's still a long way to go, but we have really passed a milestone. Still, there are many more milestones to go.

In-between animation output in contrast to yesterday was... However, it looks like output will be good again tomorrow. Recently, differences from one day to the next have been extreme.

3/3/04 (Weds.)

Today was Hinamatsuri [The Doll Festival, a traditional holiday for girls], but for the production team, which is made up entirely of men, there were no flower decorations, no traditional sweets, only preparation for next Monday's editing session, being sure nothing had been overlooked, preparing the photography, and checking everything, just an ordinary day at work.

3/4/04 (Thurs.)

Key animation passed the 300-cuts-remaining mark, and animation direction passed the 400-cuts-remaining mark. We also finished preparing the material for reel three. All we have to do is check it and gather everything together. However, it feels as if the amount of material to be photographed has increased. From here on out, it's a race against time.

3/5/04 (Fri.)

With today's rush check, we finally passed the 800-cut mark.

These last few days, we have been walking a tightrope because of animation direction output and the amount of material ready for the in- between animators. Today, we thought we had accumulated a little bit of material, but there was soon a telephone call [from in-between animators] asking for new work. We were happy to get the call, but we had mixed feelings.

3/6/04 (Sat.)

For the weekend collection of in-between animation, we had to send production assistants out one after another. The cars never stopped running. But, with that, we have recovered from the dip over the last two weeks in in-between animation output.

There will be an editing session early next week, and it looks as if we will be on time with the necessary material. But, since editing of the next reel is planned for the end of this month, we still have to continue checking and encouraging the key animators and in-between animators every day.

3/8/04 (Mon.)

The editing session for reel three was held today. After watching it all the way through, work began. Since there was a cut whose timing they wanted to play with, we looked for the photographed cut, but couldn't find it. Perhaps it was still in the photography room? But it wasn't there. Perhaps in finishing? Of course it wasn't there either. Then we looked for it in the production team's "out" area. We still couldn't find it, but finally we discovered it on a key animator's desk. We brought it back to use as reference, but since of course there was no reason to think that a key animator had taken it on his own, the production team's organization of cuts was called into question. So that this doesn't happen in the future, we quickly prepared a lending chart.