This world is conjured with an extraordinary sense of detail – from the workings of the mine machinery to Pazu’s quaint brickwork house. (The title of the film is incidentally taken from the third book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) where Laputa was a flying island of mad scientists that Gulliver travels to).

In this case, it feels that Miyazaki has constructed an alternate world out of Victorian airship fantasies, in particular the illustrations of Albert Robida – the fabulous array of airship sketches that take place over the opening credits are pure Robida. Like several of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, Laputa: Castle in the Sky gives the impression of taking place in an almost-familiar alternate world. Many of the nutty chases scenes here with the pirates running around a railroad track in a car, the parody of mano-a-mano confrontations between pirates and miners, or the scenes aboard the airship with the pirates joining Sheeta in the kitchen could easily have been transplanted from the manic delirium of The Castle of Cagliostro. There is also a great liking, at least in Miyazaki’s earlier films, of slapstick comedy capers. Sheeta and Pazu in their flight from the Dola pirates Most of Miyazaki’s young heroines seem to like flitting about on highly manoeuverable one-person flying machines – Nausicaa’s flying surfboard, Kiki’s broomstick. There is always a great love of flying in Hayao Miyazaki’s films – the numerous airships, bombers, biplanes and novelty flying machines that turn up in in particular Nausicaa, Kiki and Porco Rosso. Both The Castle of Cagliostro and Nausicaa were made with a limited traditional anime style, but with Laputa one can see the blossoming of Hayao Miyazaki’s extraordinary visual strengths and beauty. As such, Laputa: Castle in the Sky can be surely regarded as Hayao Miyazaki’s first fully realised film.

Miyazaki formed Studio Ghibli in 1985 due to his dissatisfaction with working for others and Laputa: Castle in the Sky was the first film to emerge under the Studio Ghibli banner. Miyazaki subsequently went onto direct stunning works like Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind/Warriors of the Wind (1984), Laputa, My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992) and the international hits of Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001), followed by Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea (2008) and The Wind Rises (2013). Miyazaki first appeared, working as an animator and then director on various Japanese animated series – Lupin III (1971-2), Panda! Go Panda! (1972), Heidi (1974), A Dog of Flanders (1975) and Future Boy Conan (1978) – before making his directorial debut with the slapstick caper film The Castle of Cagliostro (1980). Hayao Miyazaki is one of the modern masters of Japanese cinema and is almost certainly the finest animator at work in the world today.

Castle in the sky (1986)