Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)

Translator's notes in yellow.

5/5/04 (Weds.)

Today is May 5th, Children's Day. For the staff working during the holiday, we had kashiwa-mochi [rice cakes filled with bean paste and wrapped in oak leaves, traditionally eaten on this day] brought in. We know that some of you have children at home, so thanks for your hard work. But if we keep this up, everyone will start expecting kashiwa-mochi every Children's Day.

I've only written about Ghibli here, but those working outside the studio have also given up their holidays to work. With their help, in-between animation output was the same as on a normal day. Many sincere thanks for working through the holiday (from the production team).

5/6/04 (Thurs.)

For the past few days, animation direction output has been extremely good. During the holidays, material had started piling up a little on the animation direction shelves, but today it started going off to the in-between animators as usual. "Grow up into in-between animation and come back soon!" hopes the production team.

5/7/05 (Fri.)

The regular rush check. It was completed without incident. Looking at the number of cuts remaining, how many more times... No, the way we should think about it is, how many cuts do we need to do at each session in order to make it on time.

Of course, as the rush checks continue, cuts for which photography has been completed come out. The production team organizes these by cut number, but soon, we're going to run out of room. Looking at the number of remaining cuts, there definitely won't be enough. What should we do?

5/8/04 (Sat.)

Only a little bit more, and key animation will be complete. Just one more burst of energy and... That won't do, will it. Even when key animation is completed, there's still a long process to go afterwards. Still, it feels as if we have passed over one great mountain.

5/10/04 (Mon.)

Key animation remaining is finally down to the single digits. Animation direction passed the 100-cuts-remaining mark, too. The end of the whole has started to come clearly into sight.

Postproduction will be moving its work area on the 1st. I seem to remember them moving last year too. They're like nomads, wandering around Ghibli.

5/11/04 (Tues.)

We've been worrying about it, and finally we have run out of space to put the key animation and the cuts which have been photographed. With effort, we can fit the cuts which have been photographed onto the shelf, but even that will only do until the next rush check. There's nowhere to put the key animation drawings. In any case, we've organized them and lined them up. We urgently need to buy some shelves.

5/12/04 (Weds.)

The regular rush check was held. We touched on this before, but there are only a few cuts of key animation remaining. We should be mostly done this week. There are now four people working on key animation. The last person was holding animation planning meetings with the others. [?] However, the number of cuts he has on hand is also in the single digits. [For the key animators] as a whole, also in the single digits. Last week, we started to have days when no key animation was completed, which felt a little lonely, but this is something which happens every time. It's because forty-five people have been reduced to four.

5/13/04 (Thurs.)

An irregular rush check was held. This was so that we could, to a certain point, gather up what was checked and burn the data into film. The rush check ended without incident, we arranged the data, and took it to the developing room. It's finally time for it to become film.

In order to organize the production team's storage area, new shelves were bought. However, beyond these new ones, no more shelves will fit into the storeroom. Well, what should we do about the remaining cuts? Should we secretly expand the storeroom?!