Typically jaw-dropping visuals from Miyazaki, and all the usual concerns are here, in his first feature for Ghibli: strong heroine (perhaps too strong; she evinces no faults), environmental issues, no real villains (although he comes close here), and flying, flying, flying! Also here is the somewhat-lax storytelling we've come to expect; while it's admirable, for the first hour or so, that nothing of this strange post-apocalyptic world is really explained, by the second half, the twists and turns concerning phenomena I don't really understand dampens the enjoyment. (Doesn't help that, because of the toxic air, characters tend to wear funky gas masks, making some of the secondary characters hard to tell apart.) Finally, the end is so Hero's Journey that it almost seems like a parody. Luckily, Miyazaki-san (as John Lasseter likes to call him) figured out by Totoro that small and subtle works much, much better.
Where we saw it: tv | We deign to rate it: 73 outta 100