Today is a very special day: it’s the 300th anniversary of Castle in the Sky Laputa. More accurately, it’s the 300th anniversary of Gulliver’s Travels, the influential 1726 book by Jonathan Swift that follows Lemuel Gulliver as he travels to four fantastical lands. Let’s learn how Studio Ghibli’s 1986 film became a beloved classic, and how we’re all being trolled by a writer from three centuries ago!
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40 Years Ago: The Story of Laputa
A girl named Sheeta is riding in an airship when an attack by pirates causes her to climb out onto the ledge outside the ship. She falls, but instead of dying, a blue stone around her neck starts glowing, enabling her to gently drift down to the ground. There she meets Pazu, a boy with a yearning to prove that his father, who discovered the ancient floating city of Laputa before his death, wasn’t crazy. This starts an incredible chase as Sheeta and Pazu must outrun the military led by the evil Colonel Muska, who wants to use the power of Sheeta’s levitation stone to take the power of Laputa for himself.
Castle in the Sky is the First True Studio Ghibli Film
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is often viewed as the first film by Studio Ghibli. But it was technically animated at studio Topcraft. It was the commercial triumph of Nausicaä that allowed Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki to establish Studio Ghibli in 1985. Laputa was the first project produced directly under the Ghibli name.
Nausicaä was important for another reason: it was the first film made under the Production Committee model. When the fantastic (but fantastically expensive) Lupin III film Castle of Cagliostro failed to make back its huge budget, it almost took out its parent company Tokyo Movie Shinsha. So Toshio Suzuki — always the money guy — came up with the current model where various companies invest money in a holding company, spreading risk across several companies. In a real way, the modern anime industry was made possible because of this one idea.
Jonathan Swift was Trolling His Countrymen With the Name
Of course, la puta is Spanish for “the whore.” This was an intentional joke inserted by Jonathan Swift, who knew the language. The Laputa title caused quite a few problems for Spanish-speaking markets, and the film got renamed to Castle in the Sky outside of Japan. I gather the Spanish dub of the movie is hilarious to watch if you speak Spanish.
In Gulliver’s Travels, the Laputians were technically advanced, but so caught up thinking about fancy mathematical theories that they were of no use to anyone. Swift was making a point about the members of the Royal Society, who he viewed as being so obsessed with abstract science that they never did anything of practical value for humanity. The tyranny of the Laputians over the continent of Balnibarbi was Swift hiding criticism of the British Crown’s abuse of Ireland inside satire.
Laputa Has Become a Meme Machine in Japan
I remember watching Heroes, which featured two Japanese characters making Star Trek references…in Japanese. This made me facepalm, because the dialogue had obviously been written in English then translated.
No one in Japan would quote Western sci-fi movies like that. Japanese people don’t even like Star Trek. They’d be much more likely to obsess over famous anime quotes from Gundam, or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Or Castle in the Sky Laputa, which has become such a meme machine in Japan that many fans can quote the whole movie. In Spy x Family, when Anya said, “Look! The people are just like garbage!” (見ろ！人がゴミのようだ！) while looking down on the city, she was quoting a famous line from Castle in the Sky.
The Festival of Balse is a National Event in Japan
Every Friday, Nippon TV shows a popular film in their Friday Roadshow slot, and every year or so they’ll show Castle in the Sky. Whenever this happens, fans will watch along with their phones ready. When Sheeta and Pazu utter the spell of destruction (“Balse!”) at the end of the film, everyone will tweet バルス！ at the same time, sometimes crashing Twitter’s servers. The record so far was 143,199 tweets at the same moment. This has come to be called The Festival of Balse by fans of the film.
(There’s a funny urban legend that whenever a Studio Ghibli film airs on TV, “big moves will happen in the US stock market.” This is because the 9 pm slot in Japan is right when the US releases numbers on employment and inflation in New York. This accidental timing causes Japanese to connect Ghibli films with big stock market moves.)
An Incredible Soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi
In 1983, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was hired to create the soundtrack for the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, starring Beat Takeshi and David Bowie. Sensing the potential that Japanese composers would one day have on the world stage, a young musician named Mamoru Fujisawa decided to change his name to Joe Hisaishi (久石譲). The name is a tribute to one of his favorite musicians, Quincy Jones.
While Joe Hisaishi’s eerily beautiful score for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is wonderful, he really distinguished himself with the soundtrack for Laputa.
The End of an Era: How Miyazaki Mined Gulliver’s Travels for Ideas
Back in the 1970s, some of the most iconic anime series were based on famous works of Western literature through the World Masterpiece Theater series. These included Anne of Green Gables, A Dog of Flanders, and Heidi, Girl of the Alps. The latter film has become a national treasure in Europe.
Miyazaki worked on all these series, so he was already familiar with mining Western classics like Gulliver’s Travels for story ideas.
What’s a “Ghibli”?
A ghibli (pronounced with a soft ‘g’) is an Arabic word describing a hot, dry wind blowing off the desert. Miyazaki took the name from the Caproni Ca. 309 Ghibli, an Italian airplane from 1937.
Pazu Broke His Promise to Not Become a Pirate
Pazu promised Sheeta he wouldn’t join Dola’s pirate gang, but he was lying. He’s going to become the pirate king! It’s funny because both characters are voiced by Mayumi Tanaka in Japanese.
Thanks for reading this blog post about the 300th anniversary of Gulliver’s Travels, and the importance of Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky Laputa film. Now I think I’ll head home and rewatch this classic tonight. Balse!
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Halloween is coming up, so we decided to have a big sale for you! Through November 3, you can get 15% off all orders shipping from Japan! That means 15% off all onaholes for male stress relief, awesome ero lotion, JAV DVDs and Blu-rays, hentai anime, and more! Browse all our sale products now!
