Time and Perception in the Anime Film Howl's Moving Castle

The present study examines Hayao Miyazaki’s film Howl’s Moving Castle from the perspective of the change in Sophie’s perception of time, while also serving as a background text for a later reflexive-methodological study. Its point of departure is the question of how time—which is not directly accessible to the senses—can become perceptible in film. Drawing on the time-sociological approaches of Norbert Elias and Martin Kohli, the analysis argues that it is the destabilization of Sophie’s life course and her sudden aging that turn time into a bodily experience: slowing down, fatigue, and physical limitation give a new quality to everyday time-perception. Through the relationship between Sophie and Howl, the paper also places the opposition between youth and old age, as well as outer and inner beauty, within the perspective of time, while the motifs of memory and time travel make the interconnectedness of past, present, and future visible. The study concludes that in the film time appears not as mere passing, but as a qualitative experience saturated with moral and existential meaning. (This document is intentionally presented in an unedited and non-revised form. The decision not to correct or standardize the text is methodological: it allows for a later examination of mistakes, ambiguities, and structural issues as part of the research itself.)