Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986, Japanese)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Genre: Animation

   
Inspired by "The Gulliver's Travel" this is another anime masterpiece from the master of hand drawn animation. Miyazaki once again takes you to a dreamworld with flying machine, pirates, a young hero, and a damsel in distress!
 
The way Miyazaki captures the beauty of nature is better than anything you find onscreen. The creative efforts, thought-process are distinctly visible as always.

A must watch.
 
8/10

Howl's Moving Castle (2004, Japanese - Hauru no ugoku shiro)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Genre: Animation

World War I is the backdrop for this unusual and, as always, dreamy world of Miyazaki.

Howl’s Moving Castle is strange in an interesting, rather pleasing, way. It is more like a disjointed dream you enjoyed so much but can’t make much sense of. This is a sort of movie where you need to lose all your senses and go with Mayazaki flow. 

Howl is a wizard who falls for a young hat-maker Sophie. A jealous witch turns Sophie into a wretched old woman but this actually unleashes Sophie's enshrouded adventurous streak! They live in a world controlled by secretive magic where two Kingdoms are at war—because of a missing Prince. Howl has always avoided war, however this time he has a reason to get involved.

The movie is another perfect example of hand-drawn and beautiful Mayazaki animation, and its commercial success proves there is still audience that loves olde worlde style of animation. Even those fed on today’s top notch, hi-tech animation welcomed it as a breath of fresh air.

From my very personal perspective I’ll rate “Laputa” above it—as it was made in 1986 and is at par with “Howl” in terms of sheer creativity. Now, "Monoke Hime" and "Nausicaä" are at another level!

A must watch, and a perfect escapade from an unhindered dose of sequels and too much technology—courtesy the likes of Transformers!

8/10

Princess Mononoke (1997, Japanese – Mononoke Hime)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki 

Plot: Man is at war with the Nature that fosters him.

In this age of technological animation—where you can almost feel an on screen drop of water falling on you through your 3-d glass—Miyazaki is like a one-man army successfully leading the bandwagon of hand-drawn animation. And “Mononoke Hime” is “Avatar” of animation genre when it comes to visual creativity! Each and every character breathes freely to its maturity. 

Mononoke Hime is like beautiful bedtime story with loads of lessons in morality and right living. Such stories/movies are what make the world a better place. It is set in imperial age/iron age period of Japan and deals with the then society taboos e.g. lepers, prostitutes, outcasts. There are no negative characters in the movie as everyone of them is somewhat justified for their actions.

Main character Ashitaka is stuck between the battle of man and nature and tries to establish a harmony among them, in which he eventually succeeds.

This is an epic work even more substantial than “Spirited Away”.

While watching the English dubbed version I so badly wished for knowledge of Japanese so that I could watch and understand original too! As there are a few Japanese term which don’t have a meaning in English. Even though the dubbing is very impressive, I plan a re-watch with subtitles.

Wikipedia:

“It took Miyazaki 16 years to fully develop the story and characters of Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke came together after Miyazaki visited the ancient forests of Yakushima island, but he didn't fully complete it until well into production. The final storyboards of the film's ending were finished only months before the Japanese premiere date”

8.5/10