Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie Review

Castle in the Sky was released theatrically in 1986 following the conclusion of a period in which Hayao Miyazaki alternated between feature films and TV series productions. Shout! Factory recently acquired this GKIDS title and has released an upgraded edition compared to the Disney/Buena Vista dual-format set five years ago. Shout! has fixed some of the dubbing/subtitles, included an alternate English sound/music track, and added a few minor extras.

This Blu-ray & DVD Combo Pack comes with a slipcover and an Elite case for the discs. Cover art on the slip and keep case covers is the same (see #s 1 and 10). For thoughts on this third full-length movie by Miyazaki, please see my colleague Kenneth Brown's review of Disney's 2012 BD/DVD twin pack here.

Front of slip cover and back of BD case.

Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! presents Castle in the Sky in its originally projected aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on a BD-50. The Buena Vista Blu-ray only carries an average video bitrate of 24.00 Mbps but Shout! easily exceeds that with a mean bitrate of 33000 kbps for the MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer. There is a healthy standard bitrate of 42.29 Mbps for the entire disc. There's some telecine wobbling throughout which evidently was also present on the Disney disc but maybe not as frequently as here. It's still a very good transfer. See and click on Screenshot #s 5-9 for frame enlargements.

Shout! supplies viewers with a generous twenty-four scene selections.

Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are four audio options to choose from on the BD: the original Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (2011 kbps, 24-bit), an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (4221 kbps, 24-bit), an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix (448 kbps, 48 kHz), and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo dubbed in French. The Japanese sound track contains Joe Hisaishi's original score while the uncompressed English remix features a more recent recording of the symphonic music. Not included on the Disney release is the original synthesizer score, presented here as a lossy 5.1 track. Also new are correctly timed "dubtitles" for both English mixes and a literal English translation of the Japanese stereo track.

Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature-Length Storyboards (2:04:34, 1080p)

• Promotional Video (12:39, 1080p)

• "Behind the Microphone" featurette (4:11, 1080p)

• "The World of Laputa" featurette (2:22, 1080p)

• "Scoring Miyazaki" featurette (7:22, 1080p)

• "Producer's Perspective: Meeting Miyazaki" featurette (3:15, 1080p)

• "Creating Castle in the Sky" featurette (3:38, 1080p)

• NEW Textless Opening and End Credits (4:46, 1080p)

• "Character Sketches" featurette (2:43, 1080p)

• Japanese Trailers (4:21, 1080p)

• NEW 12-page Booklet with Producer's and Director's Statements - This has more text than the other re-releases and several nice color photos.

Castle in the Sky Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shout Factory! has amended some faults and technicalities on the prior DVD and BD editions of Castle in the Sky. Purists will be pleased that both English sound track versions have been included encompassing the different scores. Subtitling work is also an improvement. This upgraded edition is presently $10 cheaper than factory-sealed copies of the OOP Disney combo so I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you pick up this more complete package.