Il castello nel cielo

Laputa, the flying island, was a setting in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726. Hayao Miyazaki says in interviews that he was unaware that "la puta" means "the whore" in Spanish. If he had known the translation, he would not have used it as a title. Swift, incidentally, is considered the inventor of "black comedy" and, as a well-educated man and satirist, very likely knew the meaning of the Spanish term (in the novel, the Gulliver character lists Spanish as one of the many languages he's fluent in).

In the punchout scene between Shalulu and Pazu's boss, there are instances where we don't hear any auditory reactions, much less punches, when the camera is showing long shots of the crowd in either the Japanese version or the Magnum-English dub. (Disney's version, predictably, adds in more walla and punching sounds for that scene.)

The end credits show the remains of the castle Laputa floating on Earth's orbit.

An English dub of this film was produced by the Walt Disney Company in 1999 (originally intended to be released that same year), but wasn't released on DVD until 2003. The English dub shortens the title to "Castle in the Sky," removing the word "Laputa," since it means "the whore" in Spanish. The voice cast includes James Van Der Beek, Anna Paquin, Mark Hamill, Cloris Leachman, Mandy Patinkin, Andy Dick, and Michael McShane.

Edited into Miyazaki Dreams of Flying (2017)