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1979 • The Castle of Cagliostro

Kariosutoro no Shiro

— John Rodriguez —

My introduction to Hayao Miyazaki—to anime in general, in fact—didn’t come at the movies. It didn’t come via home theater, nor even through a local club. My introduction came, rather, in the bowels of a dingy video arcade, before a cabinet whose marquee read CLIFF HANGER in garish pink.

This was one of those newfangled laserdisc games. If you remember any of those games … well, first, congratulations, you’re old, here’s a Geritol. But if you remember any of those games, it’s surely Dragon’s Lair. Yes, the one where you guide Dirk the Daring through the castle by moving the joystick in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time.

Cliff Hanger played like Dragon’s Lair, but the similarities ended there. Whereas Dragon’s Lair reflected the sensibilities of its creator, ex-Disney animator Don Bluth (he of The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail), Cliff Hanger looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. Its palette was more muted, its characters more stylized. It was also utterly incoherent in a way that Dragon’s Lair—which featured a script written specifically for the game—wasn’t. An escape from a casino! A runaway princess! Ninjas! Sword battles on a clock tower! This game had everything … everything, that is, except story transitions that might explain what in the Sam Hill was going on. I remember walking away confused and frustrated, certain that the gorgeously animated scenes I’d witnessed held some deeper story I just wasn’t grasping.

Arcades eventually faded from relevance here in America, and with them my memories of Cliff Hanger. But childhood memories don’t die easy, as I discovered one night nearly ten years later.

“Hey, I know this!” I exclaimed to my friend just seconds after the film we’d rented—some old anime called The Castle of Cagliostro—began to play. And I did! There was that casino escape scene, the very one I’d witnessed in that dingy arcade. Only now we had something new: context! Sweet, blessed context! Here, at last, was the full feature I’d glimpsed only in snippets, viewable from start to finish!

Freed from the demands of dexterous joystick handling, I dug into the story with eager curiosity. Quickly, I learned that the pair of crooks who’d made off with the cash were Arséne Lupin III, mastermind thief extraordinaire, and his crack-shot partner Jigen Daisuke. What princess Lupin was chasing after was Clarisse de Cagliotros—heir to the Cagliostro family fortune and soon to be unwillingly wed to the vile Count Cagliostro—the very villain our hero Lupin would ultimately confront on that clock tower. At long last, everything was making sense!

And the ninjas? Well, they’re just ninjas. But seriously … ninjas! This film had everything!

My (re)discovery of The Castle of Cagliostro delighted me beyond my ability to express. It wasn’t just the scratching of an old itch, the filling in of long guessed-at details. This was a legitimately excellent film, excellent in a way I wasn’t yet accustomed to expect from anime. Until now, my experience with anime had mostly fallen into three categories: the heady “real” films (as best exemplified by Akira); the space epic melodramas (hello, Star Blazers and Robotech); and the titillating “super sexies save the world” fare (I’m looking at you, Project A-ko and Devil Hunter Yohko).

But Cagliostro was different from any of these. It wasn’t science fiction, for one thing, and that alone came as a shock: I don’t think I’d ever watched anime to this point in my life that wasn’t sci-fi. Its characters were also engaging in a way that characters from other anime I’d seen weren’t. Maybe it’s how they were written or maybe it was just an artifact of stripping away the laser swords and mobile Gundam suits, but I genuinely liked Lupin and his pals, genuinely cared if Princess Clarisse would escape Count Cagliostro’s clutches. Akira taught me that anime could be intellectually stimulating. The Castle of Cagliostro taught me that anime could be emotionally affecting.

There was something else, too: Cagliostro was beautiful. Not beautiful in the same way as Don Bluth’s work, but distinctive like that, the kind of look that sticks with you. Indeed, there are details from that very first full viewing of Cagliostro that stick with me to this day.

One of those details comes during the midst of an early car chase scene (and if you haven’t seen that scene, brother, put this book down now and go check it out … it’s fabulous). With a sheer drop on their left, a cliff wall on their right, and the lead car in the chase tossing grenades out the back window, Lupin decides to drive up the cliff wall (!) and into a densely wooded area. As we watch the car hurtle through trees from a backseat perspective, this colorful bird suddenly flies through the car’s shattered windshield. It hovers there a moment with this “what in the hell?” look on its face before fluttering indignantly off. Did that little detail need to be included in this chase? Of course not. But it was, and it’s stuck with me for years since.

After reconnecting with The Castle of Cagliostro, I began seeking out more tales of Lupin III’s derring-do. First up was The Mystery of Mamo, the first Lupin III feature film (and the source of the only Cliff Hanger arcade sequence not lifted from Cagliostro). The Gold of Babylon and The Fuma Conspiracy followed. Each of these was fun in their own way, yet none quite resonated with me the way Cagliostro had. Something was missing.

In many ways, my true follow-up to The Castle of Cagliostro came months later when I discovered Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. Miyazaki had by this time cemented his reputation with classics like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Kiki’s Delivery Service, but I knew nothing of that. I didn’t even know that Cagliostro and Totoro shared a director … not, that is, until Totoro began to play. Then, the similarities struck me at once.

That might seem an odd statement to anyone who’s watched these two wildly different films, but it goes back to something I mentioned earlier. Cagliostro was the only Lupin film that made me care for Lupin as a person. It had “heart,” as they say, and “heart” is the common thread that ties Miyazaki’s works together. You can douse us in whimsy. You can drown us in bullets. But if you don’t make us love your characters as people, you’ve got nothing. Miyazaki instinctively understands that, and it’s the way he’s imbued his films—Cagliostro included—with such love that makes them such timeless classics.

Maybe you’re a Studio Ghibli fan. Maybe you know Miyazaki’s classics up and down. But maybe, just maybe, you missed the film that kicked off his career. Filling that gap in your knowledge has never been easier. You can pick up The Castle of Cagliostro on Netflix, iTunes, or even on Blu-ray. But if you’re planning a visit to your local arcade in search of a functioning Cliff Hanger cabinet, take my advice and save your quarters. Cagliostro deserves better.

John Rodriguez is a personal trainer whose devotion to physical fitness is exceeded only by his fervor for all things film and literature. John is currently finishing his first novel—a fantasy that’s sparked fantasies of a challenging new career.