"I assume that if you watch Miyazaki’s TV show work, like Future Boy Conan, there’s some stuff that you can also see developing into Castle in the Sky. However… I have not."
As a matter of fact, the robot design in this movie originally appeared in the Miyazaki-directed last episode of Lupin the Third Part 2, "Farewell My Beloved Lupin."
Also, having watched Future Boy Conan, yes. And of course, Nadia is built from an unproduced proposal by Miyazaki, and Wikipedia says that ideas for Nadia turned up in both Conan and Laputa. There seems to be a similar relationship between The Village Beyond the Mist and Spirited Away.
On that note, maybe this is the result of Miyazaki and Takahata starting out with Lupin and World Masterpiece Theater, but it's always been interesting to me how much of Ghibli's (and by extension, Studio Ponoc's) output is based on or inspired by Western source material.
On the characters' age: it always kind of bugs me in animation when they cast grown men as what are clearly supposed to be preteen boys, which I believe the Disney dub does here.
And of course, floating islands, ancient superweapons, and boys going on adventures with girls who have mysterious powers are major themes in Japanese RPGs to this day.
My 4 year old and I've been making our way through a lot of Miyazaki's lately, for the first time. Though we/I haven't seen all of castle in the sky (so this is an uninformed comment), the image of a tree floating up in outer space feels alike with the endings of a bunch of his movies––so many involve a release, letting go, persevering on in the face of ecological devastation, bravely accepting the end or loss of one world for another... the Nightwalker dissolving into the sky, the freeing of Calcifer, Fujimoto releasing his daughter, Ponyo... Maybe I'm not saying anything particularly novel, here, just that a tree taking root in Earth would feel almost too optimistic for a Miyazaki, too definitive, not ambiguous enough.
Anyway, thank you for this. Also, just have to say, it's so surprising to me that this showed up in my inbox just now because I happen to put this on to watch––for the first time––with my 4 year old, last night. (We didn't finish it. It was bedtime right when the robot was reawakened and, judging by your synopsis, was before things got a little too scary/bleak for a 4 year old!)
I'm embarrassed at how long this comment has become.
I’ve been waiting for this post so I can tell my story about this movie so here it is. I watched it for the first time when I was maybe 8 or 9 and it scarred me because of the scene where Muska shoots off Sheeta’s pigtails and says he’s going to do her ears next. Naturally, I thought to myself, he’s going to do it because this is a Japanese cartoon and that’s the kind of thing that would actually happen.
"I assume that if you watch Miyazaki’s TV show work, like Future Boy Conan, there’s some stuff that you can also see developing into Castle in the Sky. However… I have not."
As a matter of fact, the robot design in this movie originally appeared in the Miyazaki-directed last episode of Lupin the Third Part 2, "Farewell My Beloved Lupin."
Also, having watched Future Boy Conan, yes. And of course, Nadia is built from an unproduced proposal by Miyazaki, and Wikipedia says that ideas for Nadia turned up in both Conan and Laputa. There seems to be a similar relationship between The Village Beyond the Mist and Spirited Away.
On that note, maybe this is the result of Miyazaki and Takahata starting out with Lupin and World Masterpiece Theater, but it's always been interesting to me how much of Ghibli's (and by extension, Studio Ponoc's) output is based on or inspired by Western source material.
On the characters' age: it always kind of bugs me in animation when they cast grown men as what are clearly supposed to be preteen boys, which I believe the Disney dub does here.
And of course, floating islands, ancient superweapons, and boys going on adventures with girls who have mysterious powers are major themes in Japanese RPGs to this day.
My 4 year old and I've been making our way through a lot of Miyazaki's lately, for the first time. Though we/I haven't seen all of castle in the sky (so this is an uninformed comment), the image of a tree floating up in outer space feels alike with the endings of a bunch of his movies––so many involve a release, letting go, persevering on in the face of ecological devastation, bravely accepting the end or loss of one world for another... the Nightwalker dissolving into the sky, the freeing of Calcifer, Fujimoto releasing his daughter, Ponyo... Maybe I'm not saying anything particularly novel, here, just that a tree taking root in Earth would feel almost too optimistic for a Miyazaki, too definitive, not ambiguous enough.
Anyway, thank you for this. Also, just have to say, it's so surprising to me that this showed up in my inbox just now because I happen to put this on to watch––for the first time––with my 4 year old, last night. (We didn't finish it. It was bedtime right when the robot was reawakened and, judging by your synopsis, was before things got a little too scary/bleak for a 4 year old!)
I'm embarrassed at how long this comment has become.
I’ve been waiting for this post so I can tell my story about this movie so here it is. I watched it for the first time when I was maybe 8 or 9 and it scarred me because of the scene where Muska shoots off Sheeta’s pigtails and says he’s going to do her ears next. Naturally, I thought to myself, he’s going to do it because this is a Japanese cartoon and that’s the kind of thing that would actually happen.