In turn the film has had a marked impact on the development of the steampunk and dieselpunk sub-cultures. In 1986, while preparing Laputa, he revisited the country, taking inspiration from some of the older villages for designs in the film.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky takes inspiration from Jonathan Swift (Laputa is the flying island in Gulliver’s Travels), Victorian adventure stories and the UK miner’s strike, particularly in Wales, of 1984-1985 – Miyazaki visited the UK in 1984 and while in Wales witnessed the effects of the strike on local communities first hand and was impressed by their stand against the government. One of the hallmarks of Miyazaki’s work has always been the rich and diverse range of influences that he allows to inform his films. Together, he and Sheeta flee from Muska and befriend the Dola gang, eventually finding their way to the flying paradise of Laputa itself. Pazu’s late father, a pioneering aviation enthusiast, had taken a photograph of Laputa many years before and Pazu has become as obsessed with flight and with finding the castle in the sky as his father.

Falling from the airship, Sheeta’s descent is slowed by the amulet and she lands, unconscious, in a small mining town where she is rescued and befriended by Pazu (Mayumi Tanaka/James Van Der Beek). All sides are trying to get their hands on a blue crystal pendant that Sheeta wears, the pirates for its monetary value, the government agents, led by Colonel Muska (Minori Terada/Mark Hamill) because he believes it will lead him to the near-mythical floating city of Laputa, a huge flying island that hasn’t been seen for many years.

Young orphan girl Sheeta (voiced by Keiko Yokozawa in the original Japanese, Anna Paquin in the 1998 Walt Disney dub, the one now most easily found) escapes her government captors when the airship she’s being transported in comes under attack from Captain Dola (Kotoe Hatsui/Cloris Leachman) and her air pirates. Though Takahata directed films for the company, most notably the extraordinary and, for the time, atypical Hotaru no haka/Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Ghibli has become synonymous with Miyazaki who directed eight feature films under the company’s banner, beginning with Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

The success of Nausicaä inspired Miyazaki to establish Studio Ghibli with fellow director Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki, taking its name from the Italian “ ghibli“, derived from the Libyan Arabic word qibliyy which roughly translates as “coming from the qibla 1” but which is also used for the desert wind more commonly known in English as scirocco. The first of the Studio Ghibli films, Laputa: Castle in the Sky was the third feature film directed by the company’s co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki following Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro/Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and Kaze no tani no Naushika/Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), the latter based on Miyazaki’s manga of the same name.

Castle in the sky (1986)