Laputa - Castle in the Sky

Waking up today, feeling a bit glum, I sat down on the sofa and wondered what to do with myself. I stared at the shelf of DVD's and Blurays, and realized I barely ever watch them. My eye was drawn to two DVD covers sitting next to Pippi Longstocking and Serenity. One is the (rather unfortunately named) Laputa - Castle in the Sky, and the other is Nausicaä - Valley of the Wind. While I've seen both, I've not seen either for a few years, and I remembered Laputa to be especially uplifting. I've previously reviewed the film, but it was plagued with subtitles for the Disney dub, so I've decided to redo it properly again and focus on the film instead of the subtitles.

It's a Studio Ghibli film, which if you've heard of, will automatically tell you a few things: it's a Japanese animated film, it's full of wild imagination, and the animation quality is good. Laputa falls under the genre of high adventure, and is one of Ghibli's better films. My favorites will always be Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, but also Laputa is definitely worth seeing whether you are a child or adult anime lover.
My particular DVD version is the Finnish Rakkautta & Anarkiaa (Love & Anarchy) release and comes as a 2-disk edition with lots of extras. The film is originally from 1986, but it still holds up to modern films. You can see it's hand-drawn, and a lot of care has gone into it. My DVD didn't come with English dubbing, so I can't comment on how that sounds to those who wonder, but I generally prefer the original voice acting anyway, as dubbers tend to give all girls squeaky voices and sometimes insert a lot of extra dialogue where there is none originally, or change the story or relationships to suit a more western point of view. (For example: in Kiki's Delivery Service the protagonist's damn cat just won't shut up and takes on the mantle of Captain Obvious in all its observations, whereas in the original it never even speaks.)

The film is optimistic, beautiful, and energetic. The music is haunting at times, setting the tone to the gorgeous visuals, but some of the most beautiful scenes even take place in complete silence and are all the more striking for it. Anyway, if you're a fan of steampunk, you've got to see this one: it's set in an industrial world with flying machines, zeppelins, steam-power, coal-power, railroads, air pirates, and magic. I can't help daydreaming about how Ghibli would render China Mieville's stories like Perdido Street Station, as it has many similar elements: a huge, sprawling, towering city, clunky steam-powered flying vessels, vast beautiful countryside, and bizarre creatures.

On the surface, it's a story about a girl, chased by both the army and air pirates. At first, we're not sure why, other than it must be related to the strange glowing stone our protagonist Sheeta carries. Aiding her on her quest to escape her would-be captors is the boy Pazu, who works as a miner and dreams of creating his own flying machine to reach the legendary flying city Laputa, mentioned in Gulliver's travels.

Both children are orphans, but their lives are influenced by their parents' actions: Sheeta was left with her little stone necklace, told never to show it to anyone, and is being hunted because of it; and Pazu wants to clear his father's name, who was labeled a liar for making claims about the existence of Laputa. They are both extremely determined and very capable and likeable, though I think Sheeta needs to see a doctor (she faints far too much), and Pazu moves like a demonic love-fueled monkey in some scenes, scaling walls and squeezing through impossible spaces.
The story sweeps them out of Pazu's industrial city, populated by stubborn and cheerful miners, into the grasp of the greedy and power-hungry military, and the equally greedy (but strangely loving) family of air pirates. Of course, the last part is played out on Laputa, which I can't help wishing I could see in real-life.

The air pirates are lead by Dola, a powerful mother-figure, whose entire crew seems to consist of her children and her brother. I can't help wondering what kind of a youth Dola lead, as there are quite a few crew-members. They fly an airship called Tiger Moth, which looks a bit like a fat metallic chicken, complete with a bird-head. Meanwhile, for more delicate strikes, they employ highly maneuverable 2-man mosquito-like planes (apparently called "flaptors").
The military, meanwhile, flies the massive battleship "Goliath" and is split into two factions: the short-sighted but powerful army and the power-hungry, secretive, and manipulative spy Muska. We soon see Muska is using the army for his own ends, but what they are I won't reveal.
It's special in the sense that none of the antagonists are really evil: they are all motivated by something, and you can't help feeling for them.

  

Laputa is a great film, and although it's aimed at children it's definitely capable of entertaining adults. It's fast-paced, romantic, and imaginative. I haven't seen anything quite like it. It doesn't resort to any of the cheap tricks that are so frequent in anime these days: there are no schoolgirls in miniskirts, love triangles, or embarassing scenes of inconvenient nudity and random spurting nose bleeds. The main characters don't waste time staring at each other with glossy eyes, and the plot isn't driven by misunderstandings that could easily be resolved if someone just said something. Although there are plenty of guns, grenades, explosions, lightning turrets, and even a humble fist-fight, it doesn't come off as any kind of gorefest, and is definitely suitable even for smaller children. I'll admit I even got a bit misty-eyed in one part involving a misunderstood robot.

Laputa makes no attempts to explain how its science works, but that just means it doesn't need to fill its scenes with technobabble either. There are many familiar elements comparable with today's world, which leave me wondering if it is perhaps set in a parallel universe, or sometime in the future, or alternative past.
There is one part which is a bit creepy: the air pirates (who are all grown men) become besmitten with Sheeta, who is in her pre-teens. But then again, they've clearly got mommy issues and are air pirates, so they've probably not got the world's best moral compasses. Somehow, that doesn't stop them from being sort of loveable. Supposedly in the Disney redub, this is changed pretty drastically. This is another reason why I avoid English re-dubs like the plague since I don't think the purpose of dubbing is to change the story and characters, even if the original is a bit creepy.

The Rakkautta & Anarkiaa release comes with a few short extras: "The history of the castle", The making of Laputa", the trailer, theatre trailer, TV spot, title sequence animation (without text) and outro, and a bunch of Studio Ghibli trailers. The second disk contains a back to back comparison of the drawing board and film, where you can change angles. I imagine it is interesting to the budding filmmaker/animator.

I strongly recommend seeing Laputa - Castle in the Sky (in Japanese with subtitles if you can). I give it 4½ out of 5 stars.