Review of Castle in the Sky

The summer of 2007 was when I stopped hating anime. You can thank the older Fullmetal Alchemist series and Adult Swim for that. But while FMA proved to me that anime didn’t have to be a merchandise vehicle (Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh) or an “edgy” OVA, it wasn’t truly earth shattering. That didn’t come until a month or so after that fateful evening I first watched FMA. I went to Hollywood Video sometime during that summer. Yes, video stores still existed back then, and I did remember that they carried anime. I decided to check around the store, hoping beyond all hopes that they would have somethingother than Dragon Ball Z movies. To my luck, there were DVDs of movies from a guy called Hayao Miyazaki. I knew Miyazaki because one of his movies won an Oscar, and I remember English-speaking anime fans lost their shit when that happened. That movie, Spirited Away, was there, but I had something else in mind. An acquaintance of mine was using the internet in high school (we had free time) one fine day, and he was looking up top-rated anime to watch. I saw one of the ones he was looking at: Castle in the Sky. The article said that Castle in the Sky was “The Casablanca of anime.” Because of that, I rented Castle in the Sky.

First correction: Porco Rosso is the Miyazaki movie like Casablanca, not Castle in the Sky. Whoever wrote that article was a noob. Second correction: Castle in the Sky is too good to be compared to anything else, even a masterpiece like Casablanca.

When I finished watching Castle in the Sky for the first time, I left my house and went for a walk. My mind couldn’t stop thinking about the movie. Not only that, I felt something I rarely felt when experiencing a work of fiction; a renewed purpose in life. I thought about the world we live in, how beautiful and delicate it was. I thought about civilizations, how they built many great things, but were often toppled by the greed and cruelty of destructive men. I thought about all the Japanese video games I had played that were clearly inspired by Castle in the Sky, how a lost culture would leave behind technology that could be used for both good and ill. But above all else, I thought about the movie’s message about compassion, compassion for people, nature, and technology.

I feel no need to summarize Castle in the Sky. It’s a single movie, not a lengthy series. It’s the first movie under the Studio Ghibli banner; even people that avoid anime (like my younger self) would make an exception for this. And, while it’s not a multi-part epic like Fullmetal Alchemist or even Miyazaki’s own Nausicaa manga, (Also highly recommended by me!) Castle in the Sky is still an epic. It achieves this by doing something most other animated films aren’t; be long. It’s two hours long. Most animated films are less than 90 minutes in length. It makes sense, for animated film is time-consuming to make, and they are often for children, and children have short attention spans. Yet here comes Castle in the Sky, also for children, yet manages to weave a wonderful world setting that most fantasy movies should be jealous of. The world is like ours, but it isn’t. There are steam-powered machines, flying ships, guns, cameras, and other early twentieth century technology, yet there is also the civilization of Laputa, with its mysterious, almost god-like technology, technology that inspires both awe and fear. The film manages to convey so much without wasting a single second of screentime, allowing the runtime to go by much faster than it ought to.

I first saw the movie on DVD. Early 2000s DVD technology is a disservice to the works of Studio Ghibli. Do not watch this movie in anything less than a 1080p resolution. Artistically, it is not the best-looking Ghibli movie ever. By anyone else’s standards, nearly every shot of this film is a work of art onto itself. Most of the film is far more smoothly animated that nearly every other work of animation at the time, and even the scenes with less-fluid animation honestly don’t look that much worse than the rest of the film.

The character art is typical Ghibli: simple faces and hair, nice variety of clothes, semi-realistic eye size. Simple and effective. In this day and age of rushed moe artwork, Ghibli character and vehicle designs have stood the test of time by not trying to be marketable or gimmicky or anything other than what they are. They just…are. The art suits the story, not anything else. The camera movements suit the story, not to show off anything cool. Most people, myself included, go on and on about the beauty of Ghibli, but that aesthetic appeal is just a side bonus: everything is in service of the script. It’s just that the scenario Miyazaki conceived of requires painstaking attention to detail, especially the background art.

Oh boy, the background art. This, more than anything else, is where Ghibli is number one in the anime industry. If you’re not convinced of this opinion of mine, take note of my favorite scene in the movie, that being when Pazu and Sheeta finally arrive at Laputa. Words cannot describe the majesty of Laputa, its forests, its robotic guardians, the creatures that thrive long after the humans abandoned Laputa, all of which comes to extremely vivid life thanks to Ghibli’s impeccable background illustrations. No matter how many times I see this movie, my mind is in awe of this scene, and my heart is lightened by the beauty of what was and still is.

I first saw this movie with the English dub that Disney recorded in the late 1990s. It’s the one with Cloris Leachman as Dola and Mark Hamill as Muska. It isn’t the best dub that Disney did for Ghibli—heck, it’s probably the “worst” one they did—yet it’s grown on me by sounding both natural and well-casted, especially when compared to nearly every other English dub from that time. I’ve also seen it in Japanese, but I’ve come to prefer Castle in the Sky in English, as it’s easier for me to laugh at the funny moments when I don’t need subtitles. Miyazaki has said he would prefer his movies be watched in whatever language the audience is most fluent in, so if anything, I’m honoring the author’s wish in doing so.

Then there’s the soundtrack. There’s two, both by the inimitable Joe Hisashi. The original synthesized 80s score, and the 90s re-orchestration. Debates abound over which one is better. Both are masterful, but I prefer the 90s score, as I feel it suits the epic nature of Laupta better, but that’s just personal preference. If you buy the blu-ray copy from Gkids, you can actually change which score to use if you want to watch the English dub. Options!

I don’t have a single favorite movie of all time. I once tried to write a list of top-ten favorite movies of all time, and yes, Castle in the Sky was on it, but I still didn’t find it satisfactory. (I really have something more like a top 40 favorite movies of all time list). I can safely say it’s both my favorite animated theatrical film and my favorite adventure film. Think about that for a moment: a children’s cartoon from Japan is a better adventure movie than all of the Indiana Jones movies. Indy never made me care about preserving the environment. This is a movie that, in my view, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with films like Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, Spider-Man 2, On the Waterfront, and Inside Out.

If you don’t know where to start with Ghibli’s library, start with Castle in the Sky. I did fourteen years ago, and I won’t regret doing so for as long as I live.