HAYAO MIYAZAKI has spent his career conjuring up fantastical worlds full of outlandish creatures. "Spirited Away" (2001), which won an Oscar for best animated film, is set in a magical realm ruled by a bejewelled witch and populated by talking frogs, gremlins made of soot and a vaporous creature who emits gold nuggets from his fingertips. Amid today's pandemic, one feature of Mr Miyazaki's escapist movies is particularly intoxicating: his obsession with flying. Flight is in Mr Miyazaki's blood. He was born in 1941 in Tokyo, where his father ran a firm that manufactured parts for Japanese fighter planes during the second world war. He whiled away boyhood hours in-venting his own aircraft; at| night he dreamed of gliding above the city. Most imaginations become more earthbound with age, but as an adult Mr Miyazaki thought up a squadron of wondrous flying machines with designs that embody their pilots' personalities. "Castle in the Sky" (1986) features a rag-tag family of pirates who buzz around in "flaptors", contraptions with transparent, flapping wings that resemble giant mosquitoes.
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