The first of Studio Ghibli's films, Castle in the Sky follows the journey of two children as they search for the legendary floating city of Laputa. It is arguable that Nausicaa came first, however that one was not produced under the name of Studio Ghibli.
At the very start we are introduced to Sheeta (voiced by Anna Paquin), a young girl who is being transported by the military until their airship is attacked by a gang of air pirates. Taking this opportunity to escape, Sheeta knocks out Muska (voiced by Mark Hamill), her captor, and climbs out of the window. It's probably not the brightest move when you're onboard an airship, and sure enough she loses her grip and plummets through the sky until a strange stone around her neck lights up and slows her descent.
This is where Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek), a boy from a mining town catches her before she floats down the mining shaft. All this time she is unconcious though when she awakes the following morning she doesn't seem to be that startled to be in strange surroundings. We learn Pazu's father was an adventurer who discovered the long lost floating city Laputa - the only surviving floating city from long ago; however what we don't learn is how his father died after he'd been ridiculed for believing the city still existed. It also seems strange that Pazu despite his relatively young age seemingly lives alone with no relatives around. When they are forced to escape Dola's gang we see the towns people band together to protect Pazu and Sheeta as they make their escape onto the rail road.
What follows is an adventure where the two of them are being chased by both the military and Dola's gang of air pirates. At one point they are eventually captured by the military and taken to a large fortress where we learn that Muska is also trying to find his way to Laputa as he see's a city with such power as a threat to the safety of the people living on the land.
The story kind of feels like it could have been a sequel in some ways to "Gulliver's Travels". In that book Gulliver unwittingly falls upon a flying city named Laputa although Castle in the Sky is in no ways connected with Jonathan Swift's book. A slightly more surprising source of inspiration for the film comes from the two World Wars. The uniforms of the military are like a combination of German and Soviet WW2 uniforms complete with an Iron Cross which was awarded by both Germans and Prussians. Even the weaponry looks similar - their rifles look like short magazine Lee-Enfields (which were in service from 1907 until the present day) or K98 Mauser rifles, and Dola is seen to use a number of German "stick" grenades. On top of this some of the imagery of old 1940's telephones in castles makes me think of Colditz. The huge flying robots that protect Laputa also bear an uncanny resemblance to the robot in The Iron Giant (the 1999 movie adapted from the 1968 novel, The Iron Man) and I'm sure that this was no coincidence that Warner Brothers based the Iron Giant on these.
I enjoyed this film a lot more than Nausicaa, despite them being consecutive films and having similar themes. Both films look at humankind's relationship to the Earth and the power it holds. In this film it is the power embedded in a rare type of rock which allows Laputa to float. As a general overview you can also liken the film to many other stories such as the one in "Mysterious Cities of Gold". For example: some children who are orphans are in search of a long forgotten city which has advanced technology. There are more than one group of people after them with whom they work with either willingly or against their will, one is a descendant of the people who lived in the city, there is a medallion of power which is the key to the cities power and it ends with them having to destroy the city they tried so hard to find. Sounds familiar? I thought so, that brief synopsis could have been describing either of them.
If you get the opportunity to watch this film then I certainly recommend giving it a try, I'm sure if you've liked any other Ghibli films that you will like this one also - even the soundtrack by Joe Hisashi isn't bad (though not as good as the scores he did for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke). I'd rate this to be in my top 5 Studio Ghibli anime movies.
