Castle in the Sky

One of the two Hayao Miyazaki films I received for my birthday was Castle in the Sky, a steampunk adventure that follows two young kids, a band of air pirates, and the government that's after them as they search for a legendary floating island castle. Although I was looking forward to this film a good bit more than the other one I received (Kiki's Delivery Service), it turned out to be a bit average for me, much like how I feel about Miyazaki's somewhat similar (though more recent) Howl's Moving Castle.

I'm starting to realize now that I usually find Miyazaki's work most successful when the subject matter is at its most fantastic, Spirited Away - a story about a girl caught in a ghost world - being the prime example. Of Miyazaki's eight feature-length films, only two others seem to be of the type I'm most interested in: Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä. For the sake of having a complete collection though, I think I might go ahead and buy the three films I'm missing from his oeuvre, despite the fact they might be slight disappointments like this film.