Highly underated gem of the late 90s watched it on toonami block iirc

Miyazaki's father was an aeronautical engineer, and thus Miyazaki loves planes. It shows in a lot of his movies. What Miyazaki also loves is a battle cry to awaken the sleeping race to look around at the destruction of nature and humanity itself. The miners work hard in 'Castle in the Sky'; yet the mines have dried up; they don't even produce tin, let alone gold and silver. Once they blessed humans with extraordinary ores (uranium, for instance), which had great potential for the advancement of humans. And advance we did; we created flying ships, and even flying castles, as in this movie, but we also created WMD (weapons of mass destruction). Even after countless destructions, some want to wield that power again and follow the same pathway to doom. When humans are destroyed, and the cities are destroyed, trees remain to hold what is left together.

The two children at the centre of the story are brave, charming, and likeable. They impart the right emotional weight to the story, which is propelled into an action-heavy final act that, although spectacular in its own right, feels a bit clunky because there is too little time and too much lore is left unexplored. My favourite scene was how different the behaviour of the gardener robot (who did not live with humans) was compared to the other robot we encountered earlier.

Very minor spoilers for this film and One Piece (nothing recent) ahead.

And lastly, I cannot move ahead without addressing the obvious. Almost every bit of this movie has been an inspiration to 'One Piece'. Same voice actor for the male protagonist who has a dream to reach Laputa/Laugh Tale, pirates who at first appear very evil but have a heart on closer inspection, the character of Dola vs Big Mom, the retro-futuristic world, a very advanced civilisation which was lost many centuries ago, poneglyphs, Mother Flame, and that robot was literally Joyboy's Emet.

Often thought it got overshadowed by cowboy bebop but thought it was just as good when watching on toonami block

The Manga is coming soon again to North America market. I'm watching it this evening, it's such a fun experience. Wishing everyone well.

How has it taken until 1954 for anime's first kappa to show up? How many bad dog puns could Motion Times put in a ten minute cartoon? And just how unsubtle is OFUJI Noburo being this year?

Click the link to find out.

https://douglaswatchesanime.co.uk/2026/10/13/1954-kappa-dog-and-butterfly/

Finally and begrudgingly wrapping up YuYu Hakusho and man, you can clearly tell the authors heart wasn’t in it. I know it’s due to extreme stress, deadlines etc but even the tourney feels rushed.

Simple backgrounds, lazy transitions etc it really does suck that after Sensui it goes to another tourney.

Still one of the Goated anime’s but woof hahaha