The Castle Of Cagliostro Blu-ray Review

29th Oct 2012

Directed by the inimitable Miyazaki, The Castle of Cagliostro was his directorial debut and deserves to be viewed on that fact alone. The story is pretty straightforward; a pair of thieves set out to rescue a Princess from an evil Count. However, their motives aren’t completely honourable; they are also looking for the Count’s secret counterfeiting press and to take over his counterfeiting Empire.

I knew nothing about the film before I watched it, and I was pretty surprised that it was made in 1979. It holds up really well; it’s a complex plot with plenty of gags. The animation isn’t as good as current Studio Ghibli productions and this is no comparison with titles like Spirited Away and Ponyo. This is probably a little unfair, as this is a non-fantastical story. Personally, I prefer the Studio Ghibli films that completely depart from anything close to reality. If you liked their recent adaptation of The Borrowers, Arrietty, then you’ll enjoy this one. However, the trademark Studio Ghibli look is there, with the beautiful backgrounds in watercolours and the over the top animation.

As well as English subtitles, the DVD has English Audio, but I wouldn’t recommend putting them on together as they are wildly different to each other. The dubbing is really good though, with proper characterisation. Researching on Wikipedia revealed that there was some controversy over the audio which takes liberties with the dialogue, but it all flows really well.

There’s a distinct lack of extras, in fact there is just one – but if you’re a film or animation buff, it’s a great one. You can watch the film alongside the original storyboard, frame by frame. It’s a great teaching tool for students to see what a storyboard should look like, and how the original storyboard translates into the film.