A common piece of fantastic technology constantly reappears in many Japanese anime and video games. That fantasy craft is the airship. Airships have been seen in many facets of Japanese entertainment. Their reaccurance symbolizes their popularity with creators and consumers alike. Now, the whole airship thing is not nearly as common as the giant robot thing, but overall they’re still quite popular.

Most likely, the first entertainment property that pops into your mind as having airships is the Final Fantasy video game series. Airships are a staple and a mainstay in Final Fantasy. They have been for much time and will continue to be. Final Fantasy’s airships are just as much a trademark as its Chocobos. Another personal favorite video game with airships is Skies of Archadia.

Airships appear in anime just as often as they do video games. The most notable anime with airships are some movies by Hayao Miyazaki. Particulary Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa rely heavily on airships as transportation and plot points. My favorite anime series, Last Exile deals exclusively with the people who pilot and fight on airships. There are may more too. To add, both Castle in the Sky and Last Exile are steampunk anime, but I’ll save that for another day.

We’re not done yet,

So why are these fanciful means of transports so common in Japanese animated entertainment. Well, for starters, the immensly add to the fantasy aspect of a world. Their are not many other concievable vehicles that us people on earth have not mastered. There were Zepplins and such in the early 20th century but the airships depicted in anime and games are much great and some don’t even use a blimp-type lift system. That fanciful/exotic aspect makes them particularly intruiging to pretty much anyone. Plus, the fact of their size is seemingly inconceivable in Earth atmosphere. Many airships are often small and fast, like fighter planes though. Actually, we could agree that the prevelence of airships in entertainment is simple…they’re cool!

Chronologically, some of the first places that airships were seen (by me at least) were in Miyazaki’s movies. As stated before, those films are Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa. They’re presence in those movies are a direct result of Miyazaki’s known fascination with the sky. Many of his movies’ themes deal in-part with human interaction with the skies above. The nature of his creation led him to formulate the giant, flying ships depicted in his animated movies.

This is written as I am a huge fan of airships. I’m sure that my enthusiam for my favorite anime series: Last Exile and anime movie: Castle in the Sky owes some credit to the airships in each. The sheer size and proportion make them very much intruiging. It’s kind of like liking and wanting something that could never be. To end, I do like giant robots but the single coolest reaccuring bit of unreal technology in Japanese entertainment is the airship.

Who would have though airships could be so geeky?