Welcome to my review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki’s second film. Nausicaä is an excellent meditation on…well, a lot of stuff. We’ll get to that later. What you should know now is that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind remains a superb science-fiction film on the merits of its story alone, with the animation taking it to an even higher level.

Nausicaä has had a major impact on the overall anime industry, as well as various other creators both in Japan and abroad. One of my favorite facts about the film is that the Giant Warrior sequence was headed up by one Hideaki Anno, who would go on to make a little something called Neon Genesis Evangelion. That’s an obvious and well-known connection. Personally, I suspect it’s influenced everything from Breath of the Wild to The Force Awakens to Dark Souls, but I’m not going to hunt down every creator interview to fact-check that suspicion.

Regardless, going into this retrospective, Nausicaä is one of my personal favorite Miyazaki films. It’s just as good as I remember. We’ll see how the other films stack up when all is said and done. Regardless, it’s very easy to see why this is a groundbreaking achievement in Japanese cinema, and I’m excited to talk about it.

But first, I’m going to take some time to break down the history of this film, and how it fits into a broader context regarding Miyazaki’s work.

A Brief History of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a bit of an odd duck. Like Castle of Cagliostro, he made it before the foundation of Studio Ghibli. However, Nausicaä has far more hallmarks of the Studio a Ghibli style than Castle of Cagliostro. Here can be found the beginnings of many common themes and tropes of Miyazaki’s work, including moral ambiguity, anti-war sentiments, feminist inclinations, female leads, and explorations of the natural world.

However, that’s not all that sets Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind apart. Nausicaä actually adapted a manga, also named Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. What’s unique is that Miyazaki himself wrote the manga. He was approached to make an adaptation of the manga, and agreed on the condition he could direct. While Miyazaki himself adapted other works into scripts, it’s the only case I’m personally aware of where an author scripted AND directed the film adaptation of their own work. I’m not sure if there’s a deeper takeaway there, but it’s certainly any interesting factoid.

Regardless, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was a critical and financial success. Ultimately, it had a massive impact on the animation industry, both in Japan and internationally. It’s been a direct inspiration to numerous creatives. However, it also allowed Hayao Miyazaki to create Studio Ghibli, leading to an exponentially greater impact on the art-form.

The Story of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä takes place in the post-apocalypse. A thousand years ago an event known as the Seven Days of Fire destroyed civilization and created the Toxic Jungle, a vast expanse of dangerous plants and animals.

One night, a massive airship from the militarized Tolmekian nation crashes into the Valley of the Wind. It carries a deadly weapon from the old world, stolen by the Tolmekians from the nation of Pejite. The Valley, led by their Princess (Nausicaä) is drawn into this conflict when the Tolmekians arrive to reclaim their stolen weapon.

Ultimately, Nausicaä is a story of conflicting nations and ideologies thrown against each other under the threat of a seemingly hostile world. To understand the story, you must understand the major characters.

Characters of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

I’m not going to break down every character in the film. I just want to explore the really important ones that have substantial impact on the broader themes and story. Therefore, I’m going to discuss three characters, each of which represents a people group and, by proxy, a philosophy.

Nausicaä

Nausicaä, the princess of the Valley of the Wind, is an exceptional young woman. She’s physically capable, tactically brilliant, and an expert with her glider. However, her most distinctive trait is her desire to find a way for humanity and nature to coexist. She has a borderline mystical empathic bond with living creatures, but it’s complemented by a principled moral center.

Nausicaä’s principles develop throughout the film. Though she’s dedicated to peace with the natural world, her opposition to war is not perfect at first. While her reaction is reasonable, she’s all too willing to embrace violence when her father dies.

Nausicaä isn’t perfect. While she’s an exceptional person, she struggles with rage and fear just like everybody else. Her defining character traits aren’t functions of some inherent moral sense she was born with. They’re built by choices she makes to behave in certain ways. She chooses to preserve life wherever possible, even though she may not want to, and even when it makes her life harder.

Kushana

Kushana, the Tolmekian Princess, acts as a foil to Nausicaä. She carries many similarities to the other Princess, but she lacks Nausicaä’s empathy. Instead, she carries an intense drive for success and respect. She seems to actively admire Nausicaä, but believes her to be naive. Kushana wants to change the world, but she can’t see past the flawed systems of the past.

Kushana is the closest thing to a main human antagonist in the film. However, her motivations are not purely villainous. While ultimately VERY misguided and wrong on both a practical and philosophical level, her desire to turn back the spread of the Toxic Forest is certainly sympathetic. Even so, her more imperial ambitions render her the de facto “bad guy” of the narrative.

Asbel

Asbel represents the third part of the trifecta of human characters. He hails from Pejite. He provides a counterpoint to both Nausicaä and Kushana. He’s also by far the least developed of the three.Asbel has been victimized by the Tolmekians just as Nausicaä has. He has also lost family. The difference is how he handles it.

Asbel and his people elect to pursue the oath of vengeance. They become so fixated on hurting the Tolmekians that they place the people of The Valley in mortal danger. This illustrates a fundamental truth of war; no matter how righteous your grievance, pursuing vengeance usually results in harm to innocents.

Ultimately, Asbel does try to make things right. He sees the flaw in his reasoning and risks his life so Nausicaä might prevent his mistake.

Themes of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a thematically rich film. In the interest of brevity, I’m just going to hit the really big stuff.

Anti-War Themes

Nausicaä introduces the sense of moral ambiguity that becomes common in Miyazaki’s later works. It’s not that there’s no such thing as good or bad, it’s that relatively few characters fit neatly into a single moral category. There are no traditional villains in this film. Instead, there are people driven by fear and ignorance. They fear the Toxic Jungle and they fear each other.

This is what makes Nausicaä herself such a radical. She believes in the value of all life, including life that is not human. Living in harmony with other humans AND the natural world is depicted as both aspirational AND necessary.

We get an excellent microcosm of this theme very early in the film. When Nausicaä first meets Teto, her fox-squirrel, it’s highly agitated. She attempts to calm it down with her soothing words and gentle nature.

And then it bites her, drawing blood from her finger.

But Nausicaä doesn’t overreact. She keeps trying to calm Teto down, recognizing that he lashes out in fear. She refuses to feed into a cycle of violence just because she has been hurt.

I do want to clarify something, however. Nausicaä is anti-war, but it is not purely pacifist in its message. It does still demonstrate that violence may be necessary when trying to do the right thing. The important thing is to not give into the feelings of vengeance and vindictiveness that encourage lashing out fruitlessly.

Feminist Themes

As a corollary of the anti-war themes, the film contains some feminist themes as well. It would be easy to point to the lead being a woman, but that’s almost beside the point. Something isn’t feminist just because it centers a woman. While Nausicaä’s personal femininity certainly does play a role in the film (e.g. when she fulfills a prophecy as the chosen one mistakenly believed to be a man), it’s her broader opposition to the flawed authorities that govern her world that back up this theme most strongly.

Kushana stands as a counterpoint to Nausicaä. She is also a powerful woman and a leader to her people, but her willingness to fall back on the systems that destroyed the world negates any sort of true progress.

While never said in as many words, the point is that victory cannot he achieved through the established patriarchal systems. The default is to fall back on war as a way to solve problems, and only by moving past this inclination can true change occur.

The gender of the person in charge is not particularly relevant compared to the need for systemic change (hence Kushana). That holds true across all human sides of the conflict. The establishment repeats actions that are doomed to fail, and which could have horrific consequences even if they succeed. This can easily be seen in the decision to rely on the tanks and the Giant Warrior in the film’s climax. It’s only by defying these traditional power structures that Nausicaä is able to find a way forward. That brings us to the other major theme of the film.

Humanity, Technology, and Nature

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind kicks off a long tradition of environmental themes in Miyazaki’s works. Even so, this is still one of his most direct explorations of the topic.

Nausicaä initially appears to inhabit a world under constant threat from hostile and horrifying natural forces. The flora and fauna are dangerous and alien. This world’s core conflict would appear to be Man vs. Nature. But that’s not actually true.

The twist comes when Nausicaä discovers the truth about the Toxic Jungle. The plants are not inherently dangerous. The root cause of the hostile environment is the soil, polluted by the excesses of humankind. In fact, even the “toxic” plants have a purpose, as they filter the soil and water into clean versions that can produce normal flora.

It’s interesting that Nausicaä can be read as an allegory for climate change despite being made in a time before the idea had fully pervaded the public consciousness. In Nausicaä, the entire conflict the characters face is rooted in humankind’s own mistreatment of the natural world, with the consequences being felt by generations upon generations long after those initially responsible died out.

Visuals of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Before we even discuss the actual animation, I’d like to call out the backgrounds. They’re hand-painted and they are absolutely beautiful. They capture the alien landscapes of the Toxic Jungle perfectly.

The animation itself is, of course, excellent. It’s frankly astounding just how good it looks by modern standards. The animation already demonstrates a substantial jump in quality from Castle of Cagliostro. It’s absurdly smooth.

One of the more interesting effects in the film is the decision to make the Ohm shells resemble the hand-painted backgrounds even when in motion. This serves three purposes. First, it gives the insects an appropriate sense of scale. Second, it ties them more closely to the natural world by making them resemble pieces of the environment. Third, it just looks cool. It’s not the only time such an effect has been tried, but it works really well here.

Music of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä marks the first collaboration between Miyazaki and composer Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi would go on to compose the music for every subsequent film on my list. He is almost as responsible for the distinct feel of Miyazaki’s work as the man himself.

Hisaishi’s score is minimalist and meditative, with a big focus on piano and strings. His compositions sublimely accentuate the vast wilderness of Nausicaa’s world.

English Adaptation of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

For the purposes of this review, I’m focusing on the 2005 re-dub done by Disney. Moving forward, all of these films have generally good dubs done by Disney.

Look, it’s Disney. They know good English voice acting. Unless given particular reason to comment (either it’s bad or exceptionally good), I’m not going to discuss the quality of the acting. What I will discuss, however, is the script adaptation. This English adaptation is eminently watchable. Don’t worry about that. However, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there do seem to have been some alterations to the script for the dub.

The big change I see is that the dub eliminates some of the animism of the original in favor of a more Western human-centric view. The one place that seems to have a substantial change to the meaning of a scene is when Nausicaä is talking to the baby Ohm. In English she asks the Ohm for forgiveness, while in Japanese she outright rejects the possibility. This subtly colors the scene of her sacrifice, as it centers a Messianic redemption narrative with Nausicaä sacrificing herself for humans, to account for the sins of humankind. In the Japanese version, that context isn’t really present.

The dub is still good, and it still captures the vast majority of the original intent as best I can tell. I just felt that distinction was worth noting. If you’re interested in knowing more on the topic, look up the scholarly work of Eriko Ogihara-Schuck.

Conclusion

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a seminal work in the field of animation, no matter how you slice it. It possesses a strong narrative steeped in rich and nuanced thematic development. The animation is positively gorgeous, and the hand-painted backgrounds are even better. The performances are solid in both the original Japanese and English dubs. It’s a stellar film.

As a result, it’s going straight to the top of the nascent Miyazaki Film Rankings.

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