I always find the “How did you get into anime?” discussions fascinating. Way before my first proper anime experience I watched an obscure animated feature film that gave me great memories. I mentally filed it under Something I’ll Never See Again and almost fooled myself into thinking I’d forgotten about it, so it was quite something when I spotted a familiar-looking image on the front of a DVD case over a decade later and bought the thing on the spot. The DVD in question was Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which I later bought again on Japanese import because that was the edition that contained the older English language dub I remembered so held the real nostalgia value.

I wonder if the quoted value of 5cm per second for sakura petals is altitude-dependent

While I normally blog from the point of view of the cynical 27-year-old I am today the reason why my opinion of it is the way it is stems from experiencing it through a child’s eyes; it is after all a kids’ adventure story so that tack makes more sense to me. I’ve done a very simplified run-down of my favourite bits from my original viewing, with numbered annotations to include the benefits of hindsight. It’s an unusual approach for me, so I hope it works here.

One of the things I loved as a kid was its imaginative interpretation of retro flying machines. It features a load of outlandish yet awe-inspiring balloons and airships[1], hitting the ground running with an attack of a passenger craft by sky pirates: all kids love pirates, right? These pirates are sky pirates, which I guess makes them twice as awesome…there’s something mind-boggling about someone who’s old enough to be your gran brandishing a gun too, I might add. 0_o

A pretty girl who, for whatever reason, carries a trinket the pirates are after is aboard the airship but when trying to escape she falls, seemingly to her death, until that strange stone of hers emanates a flash of light and somehow lets her drift harmlessly and gently away to safety. What follows through the opening credit sequence is a fascinating alternate history of a civilisation that harnessed the power of the wind, built enormous airborne islands and eventually returned to Earth[2].

The entire film is everything a young boy could want from an adventure story: a pretty girl floats down from the sky, the boy rescues her, villains chase after the hero and heroine who manage to outsmart the clueless adults and escape, before embarking on a big adventure to find a mysterious land that is hidden away in the sky. A Place Promised Beyond the Clouds, you might say[3].

The pacing is brilliant here: a chase involving a vintage car and a train on a railway suspended precariously above a valley; an armoured train with an evil mastermind aboard; another daring rescue of the girl by her fearless new friend, right off the top of a castle tower. It moves briskly from one set piece to another, keeping the viewer’s attention throughout and introducing a world that’s familiar yet somehow exotic[4].

Neat little touches, such as a military fortress that’s painted in camouflage and the way that the exact time or place in which the story is set are never specified, give it a fantastic sense of escapism. Finally those scary sky pirates are actually pretty cool and not bad guys after all, and offer the young pair a chance to realise their dream of travelling to their island in the sky[5].

The only thing I was disappointed about by this film is that, within even two hours, there’s hardly enough time to explore the full extent of Miyazaki’s skyborne creations. The two kids walk through gardens and corridors, climb the roots and branches of trees that have grown throughout the island’s abandoned city and fly home to a happy ending but back then I desperately wanted to learn more about it. It was the first adventure story that made me think “I want to go there too!”[6]

The point is that a high-technology civilisation that can build something like this disappeared for a reason. Fuelled by this idea, the full destructive power of Laputa itself was eye-popping and a tiny bit frightening. Even a youngster can appreciate the contrast of the lush gardens and grand terraces above and the austere mechanics of the sphere below, which is as far from lush and grand as is possible to get. The merciless nature of the villain and his agenda whips up an atmosphere of urgency; of a fight by two children against the odds[7].

Pazu was one hell of a role model for me at the time: he can fix engines, look after himself even though he has no parents, and he will stop at nothing to fulfil his dream of going where ordinary kids cannot. Needless to say I was captivated by Sheeta too – in an innocent kind of way obviously (I was around nine at the time, don’t forget): her gentle nature and inner courage were really quite memorable[8].

It was clearly written by people who knew instinctively what children wanted beyond mere heroism, capers and pretty-shiny explosions. This film was literally a world away from the Western stuff on TV at the time[9].

In closing, I’d like to add that this post that I’ve put off for so long was prompted by a conversation with a guy in my local pub who remembered it being on TV at the end of the 80s/beginning of the 90s. That conversation created something that reached critical mass: so many anime fans I’ve spoken to over the years have similar memories, which makes me wonder how many of us were converted by those obscure airings.

Footnotes

1. Last Exile, anyone?
2. Things go full circle when a young girl, who looks just like the lass who escaped from the sky-pirates minutes before, is shown standing next to a windmill-like machine that hints at how civilisation has returned to its more primitive technology. The op sequence to Laputa owes a lot to the exposition technique in the intro to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the character designs for two leads seem to be inspired by Future Boy Conan too.
3. Makoto Shinkai cites this as his favourite anime film too, and in an interview following the UK preview screening of 5cm Per Second stated that one of his main driving forces as a film maker is to capture the feeling Laputa gave him as a youngster. It still doesn’t mean the ‘New Miyazaki’ label pinned on Shinkai is fair on either director, though.
4. The rendering of Laputa itself, and the eco-fable cautionary tale that makes up its thematic core beyond being an old-fashioned kids’ adventure story, means more to me now in that I now know where Miyazaki’s inspiration came from. The name and came from a Jonathan Swift novel; the terraced gardens that evoke classical images of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel; the world below based on the Victorian mining communities, both in the UK and Japan, that were disappearing around the time the film was given its initial release. There are echoes of Nausicäa in the dark heart of Laputa itself too, not to mention some familiar-looking squirrel creatures.
5. I was getting a lot of déjà vu moments when Akiyuki joins the postal ship in Xam’d: Lost Memories. The themes of going on a journey to discover more about yourself are pretty universal of course, but eh. If you’re going to draw inspiration from someone else’s production, it never hurts to choose well.
6. It would make a fantastic TV show actually – the journey-like nature of the story would suit an episodic format.
7. The use of a foreign language in the spell incantations, not to mention the misuse of the power that results, does I think highlight what a strong impression the Earthsea stories made on Miyazaki as a storyteller; Sheeta’s heritage reminds me a lot of the Language of the Making too. Oh yeah, the part where everything disintegrates is one of Joe Hisaishi’s finest moments.
8. If you’d asked what the nine-year-old me thought of her, I would’ve blushed furiously and said something like “S-s-silly time traveller! It’s not like I like girls or anything!” When I were a lad, we hadn’t even heard of moe but tsunderisms transcend the ages.
9. And it still is. That’s pretty much my argument for why this is still relevant. A film that’s carefully put together and has a solid premise is always going to age well.