Laputa: Castle In The Sky

This Optimum Releasing 1080p AVCcodec encoding looks absolutely beautiful. Purists might argue that it has been scrubbed up so well that some of the original 'grain' and ebb and flow of the animation has been lost but for my money more is gained than sacrificed, with the subtleties of colour and background detail captured in all their glory.

Both the Japanese version with subtitles and the English dub are available. The English version - featuring the voice talents of Cloris Leachman, James Van Der Beek and Mandy Patinkin among others - is excellently done and differs in from the Japanese original in only one or two places. The most notable change is that, in the original, there is a little more emphasis on Pazu 'becoming a man' and that Sheeta, for reasons I cannot imagine, is 'softened up' a little in places in the translation.

The extras, while not exhaustive - most likely due to the age of the film - are very enjoyable. The Laputa Promotion featurette runs at 13 minutes and was clearly shot around the time of the film's release. It's interesting to see how the animation used to look before it was cleaned up here and to see Miyazaki talk abou the inspiration behind it. His overall message is that he hopes it will encourage people to "live positively".

Behind The Microphone is a brief four-minute chat with the American voice talent - also shot at the time of the film - it's basic but sweet, with Mark Hamill, in particular, winning you over with his joy at playing the bad guy.

New to this edition is an additional series of featurettes, clearly shot much more recently, taking a retrospective look at the film. Under the banner Behind The Studio, they are The World Of Laputa (two minutes), Creating Castle In The Sky (four minutes), Character Sketches (three minutes) and Producer's Perspective: Meeting Miyazaki (three minutes). These feature Miyazaki for the most part, talking about the influence of everything from Jules Verne through to Superman and his desire to put "everyday kids" in the central roles. The Producer's Perspective is a particularly quirky, if slight, tale of how Miyazaki basically made Toshio Suzuki stalk him before he would even speak to him after they met the first time.

Fans of behind-the-scenes material will welcome the addition of the film's entire set of storyboards, which can be viewed using a picture-in-picture option that inserts them into the bottom right corner of the frame. In addition, it is possible to watch both the title and end credit sequence without text.

The extras are completed with the set of Japanese trailers for the film and a Ghibli trailer reel. All in all, well worth adding to your collection.