 A quick impression, a quick recommendation, I didn't get my special light sets out or anything, but wow, Castle in the Sky. This is a Miyazaki film that you never hear people talk about. It's one of his early ones and one of his better ones, if you ask me. It doesn't resemble Totoro or Kiki in any way at all, except you can tell it's Miyazaki. This film contains some truly exciting chase scenes, truly exciting adventure scenes. It's an adventure film. It's not a slice of life mood piece like Totoro and Kiki. And yet at the same time it includes all of the Miyazaki trademark world building and characterization, the characterization, the such depth of character in these films that he conveys through facial expressions and mannerisms, things that you don't normally associate with animation. The correct title for this film is actually Laputa. In recent years they've taken the call and yet Castle in the Sky because I think the word Laputa is difficult for Westerners to say. It's named after one of the chapters from Gulliver's Travels. In fact, they mention Gulliver's Travels near the beginning of this film. It's the final of the four worlds that Gulliver visits. If you're not familiar with that, you should. I've mentioned Gulliver's Travels so many times in my various reviews over the years and I'm going to mention it again in an upcoming review of Erewhon. Maybe I should review it sometime. It's an excellent book. Anyway, the plot of Castle in the Sky is difficult to describe. It has such a large cast of characters and diversity of characters. It has the trademark Miyazaki young girl protagonist who meets a young boy who shares in her adventure. Without there being a romance, Miyazaki has a particular thing about that. It's possible to have a boy and a girl protagonist together in the film without there being a romance. I mentioned world building before. Nobody world builds like Miyazaki. He creates these worlds entirely from scratch. Everything in his worlds is new. He doesn't take designs, he doesn't seem to be inspired by anything else. Everything he creates has an entirely new Miyazaki look to it. And yet it's all believable. The technology in this alternate world is completely unfamiliar to us and yet it's believable. These flying machines that so much of the film revolves around in Castle in the Sky. I only saw this film once before. I'm sure I've only seen it once before and that was many, many years ago, probably in the 80s after I first learned about Miyazaki. So it's been 25 or more years since I've seen this. I remembered it being excellent and yeah, I remembered correctly. I also remember associating it with Nausica, which is the film coming up next month. As the movie was starting this time, I was thinking to myself, why did I associate it with Nausica? And then as the film went on, I saw why. The look of it is very similar to Nausica. It looks to me like Castle in the Sky and Nausica could be set in the same world. The technology looks very similar. The ancient robots look very similar. Like maybe they're in the same world but centuries apart or maybe even millennia apart. I don't know. I don't think they're supposed to be in the same world. But they have a look. And when you watch this film, and you should, all the way through it you'll be saying to yourself, okay, this looks like a video game. And that looks like a video game. Now that scene looks like a video game. But of course this film was created in 1986, I think, years before all the video games that you think you're referencing in the film. Miyazaki did it first. There's not much more I can say about the film except to just rave about it. How beautiful it is, how well-made it is. It's Miyazaki. And a month from now I will be seeing Nausica in the theater. I understand that they've expanded the Miyazaki festival a bit and there are some other films that are going to be shown. I think Lupin the Third is going to come up sometime in September before Nausica. If it is, I'll see it and I'll review it here. Bye. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen. And then subscribe so you can come back next time. I do science fiction book, TV and movie reviews all the time. And please consider becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below.