Tenku no Shiro Laputa

The Pros: Laputa is a Ghibli film that features many of the highlights that make Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films a delight to enjoy. Laputa features an immerse world with an alternate industrial era-like world in which machines of the era are much more advanced than they were during the actual period. Planes and airships are a common sight to behold in Laputa, especially since they play a vital role in helping Sheeta and Pazu reach Laputa. As a common theme in most Ghibli films, the journey to Laputa serves as a coming-of-age trial for Sheeta and Pazu as both children acquire traits on their journey which change their personalities as the film progresses. It is this theme combined with the steampunk environment created by Miyazaki which make this film a captivating family-friendly adventure film comparable to Disney animated films. In terms of animation, Laputa features smooth quality animation that manages to hold up decently to modern animation standards. The airship and character designs look decent to animation standards of the 1980s while scenery designs looked lush and vivid to show off the immerse, industrial world that Laputa has to offer.

The Cons: There are a couple problems that are to be found in Laputa. The first problem would be the issue of the movie’s main antagonist, Muska. Miyazaki and Ghibli’s films normally feature no antagonist or an antagonist whose ideas regarding the problems in a film’s storyline are opposite to the protagonist’s personal beliefs, which give the antagonist some character depth. There is no character depth given to Muska as he merely served as the ‘villain’ archetype in the film. Second, the ending’s buildup was a bit of a letdown as the intensity leading up to the ending felt a bit Disney-esque as one action instantly resolved everything at the end of the film.

Facts on the Movie:

-Pazu and Sheeta bare resemblance in both traits and appearance to Conan and Lana, two characters from Hayao Miyazaki’s earliest directorial work, Future Boy Conan.

-Hayao Miyazaki did the screenplay, original story, and directing for Laputa.

Disney has taken Hayao Miyzaki and his Studio Ghibli titles to heart and are slowing releasing all of their movies into the R1-USA market. While I might not like Disney, I really can not find any fault or flaws in their dubbing efforts. They have taken this very wondrous adventure story and have made it available to English-only speaking children (most of whom would never be able to still enough to sit through and read a subtitled release).

This is very fun story which has some measure of violence and strange scary robots, so it probably should be rated as PG-7+, but the sophistication and complexity of the story is certain to keep any adults entertained. I have already bought three of Disney’s Miyzaki Anime Sets, one for myself and two for my various nieces and nephens.