By the time Pazu and Sheeta finally reach it, they find the castle's automatons already overgrown with plants.
Though not as well-known in the U.S. as its successors, the first official Studio Ghibli film made a seismic cultural impact in Japan that endures to this day. Final Fantasy and related video game franchises are nearly unimaginable without Castle in the Sky, which had a foundational influence on the steampunk genre as a whole. But for all that iconography, the story of a girl named Sheeta who falls from the sky and inspires a boy named Pazu to pursue his father's dream still contains elemental magic. One of the most fascinating things about the floating civilization of Laputa is its relationship to the struggle between nature and man-made technology that dominates so much of Ghibli's work. By the time Pazu and Sheeta finally reach it, they find the castle's automatons already overgrown with plants. Not even the imaginary zenith of human civilization can overpower nature forever. — C.H.