Miyazaki purposely misinterpreted the lyrics to present his vision of a world where the surface becomes inhospitable and humans live in an underground city.

The music video follows two policemen who raid and massacre a religious cult and find an angelic being, only to have her taken away and confined to a secure laboratory.

The video begins with shots of a vacant village, overgrown with weeds, and the concrete sarcophagus of a covered-over nuclear reactor in the background.

Futuristic flying troop transports crash through the windows of a tower topped by gigantic neon-lit eyes and occupied by armed defenders.

As the victorious police begin to sort through the bodies of the cultists, two policemen find what appears to be a girl, lying unconscious, with large feathered wings on her back.

After their escape, the three are riding an old Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider passo corto through a dark tunnel underneath signs which bear radiation symbols and read (in kanji) "Beware Of Sunlight" and "Survival Not Guaranteed".

As they emerge into daylight, they drive past nuclear cooling towers and a sign which reads "Extreme Danger" and continue down the road.

The production of the music video began because Miyazaki was suffering from writer's block on Princess Mononoke and needed another project to distract him.

[1] Miyazaki wrote and directed the music video for "On Your Mark", although the song was previously released in 1994 as part of the single "Heart".

[1] Despite the popularity of the work, Toshio Suzuki told Helen McCarthy, the British author of numerous anime reference books, that Studio Ghibli had not given "100 percent" focus to the music video.

[1] In the production of the music video, Miyazaki experimented with using computer animation to supplement traditional hand drawn cel-animation.

[2] At the time Studio Ghibli did not have its own computer department and the work was outsourced to CG Production Company Links, under supervision of Hideki Nakano, Silicon Graphics, Softimage 3D, and Alias Research.

[citation needed] Miyazaki said that in the music video's setting, humans live in an underground city after the surface of the Earth has been contaminated with radiation, creating a sanctuary for nature.

[citation needed] During their April 1999 lecture series on manga, anime and the works of Miyazaki at the University of Dallas, Pamela Gossin, Professor of Arts and Humanities, and guest instructor Marc Hairston, research scientist in the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences, discussed On Your Mark in their lecture, "In the Coda On Your Mark and Nausicaa, and drew parallels to the Nausicaä story, its titular character and its conclusion.

[3] McCarthy highlighted similarities to different works and real life found throughout the film, remarking that the opening city sequence could be an homage to Akira or Blade Runner and the attack on the religious cult could be a reflection of the Aum Shinrikyo movement.

[6] McCarthy also noted that the film's scientists' decontamination gear look like the hero of Porco Rosso and the rescue scene is reminiscent of Princess Leia in Star Wars.

[3] Featuring the same melody but different lyrics than "On Your Mark", "Castles in the Air" was included on the English-language album One Voice: The Songs of Chage & Aska.