Fire and forest spirits are ready to lend some light wherever you need it.
Howl’s Moving Castle’s Calcifer should be, from a design standpoint, pretty difficult to pull off. He’s essentially an anthropomorphized cooking fire, a concept that simultaneously sits at both ends of the spectrum of Studio Ghibli’s incredibly high standards for detailed depictions of natural phenomena and emotionally expressive character movement. Of course, if there’s anything the past 40-someodd years have taught us, it’s that you should never bet against Ghibli’s anime artists and animators, and through their talents Calcifer steals pretty much every scene he’s in.
But the challenges start all over again when making merch for Calcifer, since, once again, he’s supposed to be made of fire. Here too though, Ghibli has come through, or, more accurately, Ghibli specialty shop Donguri Kyowakoku has come through, with a Calcifer key chain that emits an enchanting ember-like glow.
Appropriately, Calcifer is housed inside a lantern, which has a purposely weathered texture to give it a dash of antique-evocative charm. There’s no actual fire risk here, as the light is electric, controlled with an on/off switch so that you can have Calcifer shine bright if you want some illumination or to make yourself more visible, or turn him off in the daylight or when you’re ready to get some shuteye.
The designers have wisely anticipated that fans might want Calcifer lighting up the room even when they’re staying home, and so the lantern’s flat bottom allows it to stand on its own as an interior decoration. Donguri Kyowakoku also says that the chain can be detached, through the promotional images seem to simply show it folded discretely out of the way.
Donguri Kyowakoku has one more light-up Ghibli character keychain currently on offer, and while there’s no backstory justification for putting this one in a lantern, it’s hard to imagine anyone not being happy when Totoro suddenly shows up somewhere.
Technically, it’s the white/small Totoro who’s the muse here, so maybe you could make the argument that, as the most compact of the forest spirit trio from My Neighbor Totoro, this little guy is the most likely to fit inside a lantern.
Both of the lanterns bear the letters “GBL,” which is supposed to be the “American casual clothing” sub-brand of Ghibli merch, but that vague theme often gets expanded to include various retro, rustic, and rugged items.
Both the Calcifer and Totoro lantern keychains have recently been restocked, and are available for 2,420 yen (US$15.60) through the Donguri Kyowakoku online store here.
Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2)
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