This title sounds SUPER clickbait-y I know... but I promise there's actual truth to it.
While researching some information on another piece of lost media, I found this twitter thread of what OP claims to be images from an alternate ending to Castle in the Sky. Keep in mind the image quality is so poor because these were taken with a flip phone back in the late 2000's. Thanks to a friends who can translate Japanese, we discovered that this twitter account is offering a 50,000 Yen reward to anyone who can find the ending, and a 70,000 reward to those who can find the ending WITH commercials included. They're also providing a small reward to anyone who can prove that there is no lost ending, however they didn't specify how much money they would give.
Castle in the Sky airs annually on TV in Japan, with the first airing being in 1988.
The first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth annual broadcasts for the film have not been found. The third, seventh, and eighth broadcast were donated to the OP of the original twitter thread. So far, an alternate ending has not been found, so its existence is uncertain.
Post by TheGodzillerMcW on Aug 8, 2020 22:58:13 GMT
Congrats! You got featured in a video: youtube.com/watch?v=naUBN6owEkY&t=0s There's a comment about one of the stills found on the twitter thread that you should check out. Let's hope this gives more traction to the search. cheers!
Congrats! You got featured in a video: youtube.com/watch?v=naUBN6owEkY&t=0s There's a comment about one of the stills found on the twitter thread that you should check out. Let's hope this gives more traction to the search. cheers!
WOW this is crazy!!! It's funny, I've been wanting to write an article about the "lost ending" for awhile now, but I was at a loss for sources besides the original twitter thread. Thanks to the search, I've come to the conclusion that the ending is most likely a slimmed down version of the original that had been cut down for time, as Ghibli themselves have outright denied the existence of any alternate or extended scenes. Still, it's quite interesting how so many people claim that they've seen an extended version of the film... it's become somewhat of an urban legend.
You can find my article here if you want to read more about it, or if you're interested in researching some of the sources that I've provided. Cheers!
I have 2 links with more information as evidence on this alternate ending. the second link might have more screenshots of the alternate ending not sure because i never seen the movie.
Hey. So I looked long & hard at the photos you sent, and I have deduced that these are in fact not a lost alternate ending to the movie. My guess is these are animation cels for what could have been a different ending, but was scrapped during development. That is not a tv with some old airing of the movie, but is in fact a stand for drawing on. But that's just my theory, it could always be wrong, y'never know. Signed, Rbrocchini24
If this search is still active then I like to say that I don't think this was from an alternate ending or pilot for Castle in the Sky. However this is from an ending specifically end credits. These images are showing end credits because you can clearly see the staff names who worked for the movie:
The above names are some of the ones I'm confident on reading them correctly. The images are just too low quality but I'm sure of the names above.
In my opinion, this may be from a documentary on the movie. If we could just have some clearer shots and higher resolution then maybe there could be some information we could gather. I haven't seen the movie so i don't what the ending is. In my honest opinion i don't think these animation stills are connected enough to be related. I think they are from scrapped concept arts or still for different scenes in the movie.
Edit: I did some proper searching and I think this guy actually solve it back in 2007
The conclusion is that it is the ending of a broadcast cut, perhaps the network didn't have time to air the movie with the ending so they used illustrations or concept art from ending scenes to make a shorter version of the ending with the staff credits imposed on the illustrations. To correct them this is impossible to be from trailers since one of the images clearly says おわりmeaning end.