I’m a sucker for nostalgia, that’s no secret. So, it really shouldn’t be a surprise at all that the day I found out Castle in the Sky manga existed, I went ahead and bought all four without a second thought. And sure, I’ll be the first to admit that if I didn’t love this movie as much as I do, I probably wouldn’t be so immensely determined to own these, in fact, I probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance. With that said, I’m actually thoroughly pleased with myself for having all but one currently sitting on my shelf (the last is in the mail).
Driving that nostalgia train.
The manga novelization of Castle in the Sky is basically movie screen captures spread out into a book format. You’re not really getting anything new and, in fact, you’re kind of getting less since portions of the dialogue are either missing, changed, or cut down. I found this kind of interesting, considering the fact that everything was taken from the film. That said, I believe it was translated directly from Japanese to English rather than taken from the English dubbed film version. In that sense, I’m not really surprised or upset about how everything transferred over.
This is only 1/4th of the story, so you’re pulled in just as you were in the film. You meet all the key characters and quickly fall in love with Sheeta and Patsu. Before you know it, you’ve been thrown into a journey filled with excitement and danger. Honestly, I have so many emotions about the story these two characters experience that there really wasn’t any question of me loving this book.
So colorful.
The artwork, unsurprisingly, was beautiful. I mean, you’re basically taking the movie and putting it into a book. Of course the artwork was gorgeous. One thing that made me immensely happy was to see how colorful everything was. Since everything had to be colored for the movie, it didn’t really take much to include the colored versions in the manga. Unlike typical manga that I read, like Fullmetal Alchemist, where coloring would be costly and time-consuming, it was a bit easier to do it here.
As a result, I absolutely love flipping through these pages. There’s a genuine sense that you’re almost watching the movie as you read it, which was kind of exciting to experience. Now, volume one ends right in a moment of extreme tension; not much has happened yet in terms of the journey these two characters experience, but you find yourself somewhat at the edge of your seat.
And just as the tension mounts, it is brought to a somewhat abrupt halt as you watch the two characters pass into an unknown, yet safer space than the one they were in before.
🦊🦊🦊🦊
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Reader Fox 