Castle in the Sky

Laputa: The Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta) (re-titled Castle in the Sky for release in the United States and aired on ITV in the UK as Laputa the Flying Island) is a 1986 Japanese animated adventure film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki that marked the cinematic feature debut of Studio Ghibli. It follows the adventures of a young boy and girl attempting to keep a magic crystal from a group of military agents, while searching for a legendary floating castle.

The film was distributed by Toei Company, Ltd. Laputa: Castle in the Sky won the Animage Anime Grand Prix in 1986.

Dubbing History[]

UK ITV *Laputa the Flying Island* title card

An English-dubbed version, produced by Magnum Video Tape and Dubbing for international Japan Airlines flights at the request of Tokuma Shoten, was released theatrically in Hong Kong on June 26, 1987. On November 13, 1988, it was shown as part of the selection at the 11th Annual Asian-American Film Festival in Houston, Texas.^[1] It was also briefly screened in the greater United States by Streamline Pictures in 1989 and 1990, as well as being aired on in the UK by ITV on New Years Eve in 1988 and on one more following occasion on January 3, 1993. Carl Macek, the head of Streamline, was disappointed with this dub, deeming it "adequate, but clumsy". Following this, Tokuma allowed Streamline to dub their future acquisitions My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service.^[2] The Magnum-produced dub of Castle in the Sky was released only on the Japanese Studio Ghibli Laserdisc Collection in 1996 and on the first Region 2 DVD release in 2002, both of which are now out of print.

The Disney-produced English dub was recorded in 1998 and planned for release on video in 1999, but the release was canceled after Princess Mononoke did not fare as well in the US as Japan, and so Laputa's release date was pushed back yet again; on occasion, the completed dub was screened at select children's festivals. The film was finally released on DVD and video in the US on August 16, 2003 alongside a re-release of Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away.

Although the plot and much of the script was left intact, Disney's English dub of Castle in the Sky contains some changes, including added background chatter and one-liners where dialogue was not originally present, and most notably an extended and partly re-orchestrated score by original composer Joe Hisaishi to fill in moments of silence. According to Steve Alpert's memoir Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki himself gave the go ahead for and approved of Hisaishi's reworking,^[3] but post-2010 releases of the film undo a large amount of these changes, including the music score and added dialogue. Recently, however, the film has been re-released by GKids with two different mixes of the Disney dub: one with the original score, and one with the revised score.

Cast[]

Image	Character	Seiyū	Dub Actor
Image	Character	Seiyū	Magnum Dub	Buena Vista Dub
	Pazu	Mayumi Tanaka	Barbara Goodson	James Van Der Beek
	Sheeta	Keiko Yokozawa	Lara Cody	Anna Paquin
	Muska	Minori Terada	Jeff Winkless	Mark Hamill
	Dola	Kotoe Hatsui	Rachel Vanowen	Cloris Leachman
	General Shogun Muoro	Ichirō Nagai	Mike Reynolds	Jim Cummings
	Uncle Pom	Fuji Tokita	Edward Mannix	Richard Dysart
	Charles (Shalulu)	Takuzō Kamiyama	Barry Stigler	Michael McShane
	Louis (Lui)	Yoshito Yasuhara	Dave Mallow	Mandy Patinkin
	Henri (Anli)	Sukekiyo Kameyama	Eddie Frierson	Andy Dick
	Mr. Duffi (Boss)	Hiroshi Itō	Clifton Wells	John Hostetter
	Okami Duffi	Machiko Washio	Lara Cody	Tress MacNeille
	Train Operator	Tomomichi Nishimura	Eddie Frierson	Matthew Kermit Miller
	Pa Dola (Motro)	Ryūji Saikachi	Clifton Wells	Eddie Frierson
	Madge	Tarako Isono	Barbara Goodson	Debi Derryberry

Additional Voices[]

Magnum Dub

Daniel Foster

Buena Vista Dub

Notes[]

Most releases in America drop "Laputa" from the title. Although meaningless in Japanese, the name "Laputa" comes from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. English language dubs of Laputa have been released under three different titles by three separate distributors, which is largely because it is identical to the Spanish rude term "la puta" (lit. "the whore").
Some of the other changes in Disney's dub
- Pazu and Sheeta are made to sound several years older, placing them in their mid-teens rather than their pre-teens.
- Several modifications were made to the Dola gang's dialogue regarding Sheeta, including a declaration of love by one of the pirates. In the original Japanese version, the dialogue presented Sheeta as a potential mother figure to the pirates, rather than a potential romantic interest.
- References to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels were removed, the latter of which had also been removed from the original Magnum dub.
Both of Magnum and Disney’s dubs feature identical dialogue in certain scenes, most notably The General’s congratulatory remarks towards Muska in the finale and Charles’ line “All good pirates listen to their mom!”. Possibly due to Disney using the original dub’s script as a basis for their dub script, as a similar situation occurred with Kiki's Delivery Service, though this has never been confirmed.
Eddie Frierson is the lone voice actor to be in both dubs.

Video Releases[]

Distributor	Year	Dub	Region	Country
Tokuma Shoten	1996	Magnum	NTSC	Japan
Tokuma Shoten	2002	Magnum	2 NTSC	Japan
Buena Vista Home Entertainment	2003	Disney	NTSC	United States
	2003		1 NTSC
	2010		1 NTSC
Madman Entertainment	2011		B DVB-T	Australia
Buena Vista Home Entertainment	2012		A DVB-T	United States
Optimum Releasing	2017		B DVB-T	United Kingdom
GKIDS	2017		A DVB-T	United States