Studio Ghibli: 7 Unforgettable Moments That Defined Their Films

2. The Robots Of Laputa

Film: Castle in the Sky (1986) Watching Castle in the Sky is a throwback to the origins of Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind may have led to the creation of the company in 1985, but Castle in the Sky was their first official release as a fully-formed studio, and it remains one of their most critically-acclaimed films to this day. It depicts the abandoned flying city of Laputa, which looms above a setting that takes inspiration from Gulliver's Travels and an old Welsh mining village. With airships, aeroplanes, and abandoned mines serving as remnants of a civilisation's rampant industrialisation, the film succeeds in portraying the quiet grace of a once-powerful society after catastrophe and decay. Nowhere is this sentiment more pronounced than with the introduction of the floating island's mechanical residents, who are equally adept at maintaining Laputa's garden and unleashing large-scale destruction. These enigmatic automatons stand up as one of the highlights in Studio Ghibli's cast of weird and wonderful side-characters, conveying a mixture of tranquillity and earth-shattering strength that courses throughout the film while lending it an atmospheric clout that ensures it has aged very well indeed.