Why Does Castle in the Sky Have Two Official Soundtracks?
Behind most great Hayao Miyazaki films is a soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi has been Miyazaki’s go-to composer ever since he scored Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind. He has since created some of the most memorableStudio Ghibli compositions in the company’s history. His follow-up score would be for Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and many Ghibli fans consider this score to be one of the composers most memorable compositions.
Yet Laputa: Castle in the Sky has a unique distinction from most of Hisaishi’s other scores: There are TWO different versions! What’s more, this isn’t a situation where America has it’s own score while Japan has the original. No, in this case Joe Hisaishi composed BOTH scores and both can be considered 'official.' The story behind why he did this is interesting, humorous, and ultimately a bit disappointing when all was said and done. It involves big plans, a desire to improve on what came before, and a company that got cold feet about the project at the last minute.
The History of Nausicaa's Infamous First Dub
In 1996 Studio Ghibli made a surprising deal with the Walt Disney Company: They would sell the American distribution rights of their entire catalog to Disney, who would go on to produce English dubs of the films and release them in America. The anime fandom was worried that Disney wouldn’t respect the source material, but they would have little to worry about; one of the stipulations was that Disney wouldn’t cut the films or make any changes to them. Except for the dubbing themselves, they would remain intact.
It appears that slight music changes weren’t part of the original agreement though. The first film Disney released was Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was released straight-to-video on
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