In what’s officially the first Studio Ghibli feature, Castle in the Sky carries the torch of Nausicaa’s legacy where flight is an expression of the innovative and the nearing toward the heights of the goal. The motif debuted in Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind where flight is the modus for accelerating destination-to-destination and a means to skim over the signature painterly panorama of the animated landscape. In a Miyazaki picture, the trademarks of flight evoke the adrenaline of adventure. Miyazaki can’t keep his heroes and heroines anchored to the ground for long. An old miner gives the two kids fair warning: to behold the island would be magnificent, but “to the Earth, we must return” for Earth is their roots. He rejoices when he learns Sheeta’s crystal heirloom is the key to rediscovering a legendary island in the sky, a floating Atlantis that his late father had caught a glimpse of.
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The girl from the sky lands in the arms of a boy of the earth, a precocious coal miner by the name of Pazu. But unbeknownst to her knocked-out consciousness, her magic crystal necklace, an heirloom, slows down her plummet into a gentle floating descent onto the Earth. In the midst of a pirate raid on an airship, young Sheeta attempts to flee her captors and unfortunately tumbles off. Laputa: Castle in the Sky (or Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta) opens airborne in the dreamlike clouds.
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“Laputa, the dream of mankind.” – The man who tries to seize its throne.