I’ve just been watching Howl’s Moving Castle and plot points in it resonate strongly with something I thought I’d seen before. The thing I think I’m remembering went something like this:
-Some kind of magical entity turns a young girl into an old, ugly woman - causing her to run away into the wilderness. She takes refuge in a cave and lives there for some time in a lonely state. She finds a bird tangled in a thorn bush and rescues it. The bird then helps her in some way - either by bringing her food, or by protecting her, or both.
Obviously these themes significantly appear in Howl’s Moving Castle (except it’s a scarecrow that’s stuck in the bush, not a bird), but the thing I’m remembering is definitely not the same movie. Did I just dream it, or is it out there somewhere?
Could it be one of those Grimm’s Fairy Tales animated things they used to show when I was a kid? They were actually anime, although of course I didn’t know it at the time.
It might be Spirited Away that I’m thinking of then - I did watch that at my in-laws house at new year - My memory suggests that the scene might have been a narrative reference, rather than part of the action itself.
Hmm… back to square one. More information… possibly unreliable… the bird may have been a crow/raven, or a bird of prey - the implication was that the girl should have been scared of it, but was brave and helped it, so it helped her in return.