Alicornutopia

I basically feel the same way about How to Train Your Dragon, although I've only seen trailers of that.

For Howl's Moving Castle, you could consider the two versions to be like two runs of the same glowfic scenario. One player runs Sophie and the castle, while a different player each time runs their own magician Howl.

It may be worth noting that I watched the movie first, and still found it incomprehensible. :P

But it's so prettily incomprehensible.

The book, on the other hand, is a tour de force of Diana Wynne Jones being Diana Wynne Jones. I recommend reading it and then reading absolutely everything else the woman ever wrote.

My favorite is spirited away, I think spirited away might actually be my favorite movie of all time.
I also really liked castle in the sky, I spent a lot of time imagining what had happened.
I saw Howl's moving castle first, and then read the book and was delighted.

Soft spot in my heart for Princess Mononoke, as the first time in my life that I encountered anime that I liked, much less liked enough to want to find more by the same people. Miyazaki stuff is still pretty much the only anime I wholeheartedly recommend, though; I've seen a few others (things that aren't his) that are tolerable-to-decent, but something about the whole genre tends to rub me the wrong way.

Haven't seen *or* read Howl's Moving Castle yet; it's on the current top of the list.

How about Naussica of the valley of the wind?

Have you read The House of Many Ways? It's set in the Howl's Moving Castle universe, and I've always wondered how deep the house went.

I really liked Naussica, though I never read the original graphic novels.

Spirited Away is still my favorite though. I've seen it far too many times.

Has anyone watches the more recent movies by Ghibli?

Just came back from Batman vs Superman: Dawn of super-battles. It was a lot of fun. Had the expected problems of non-rational fiction, but pretty fun.

I think that might be the first time I’ve heard a positive review of it.