Howl meets Atlantis

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2005)

I like Miyazaki movies and this one is no exception. However, after a few animations like this, the theme of innocent romance and youthful courage defeating the corrupt power of government and military alike start getting old.
The story: in an alternate world resembling very much the world in Howl's Moving Castle, only a lot more airborne, there is a legend of a floating island where riches and enormous power can be found, named Laputa. Of course, people start looking for it, for various reasons, resulting in a massive conflict of interest. In the end, being human, young and alive is far more important than being powerful and technologically advanced, therefore the child queen of Laputa utters the word of destruction and everything blows away. Everybody good lives, everybody bad dies.
In the end the animation is great, but I expected that, so is the music and the basic storyline, however the moral got lost somehow between the obviously Japanese fear of technological disaster and characters of unreasonable courage and moral strength. I never expected Miyazaki to be realistic, but at least I wanted the movie to be unpredictable. It is full of clichés.
Maybe the overall resemblance to Atlantis: The Lost Empire also made me fear a Disney contamination of Japanese anime, but in the end, both movies have the same audience, so why not be more like each other?