Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
| Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind | |
|---|---|
 Environmentalism is metal. | |
| Original Manga | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Director/Artist | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Format | Anime (Movie), Manga |
| Made By | Tokuma Shoten (Manga) Studio Ghibli (Movie) |
| Episode Length | 116 minutes |
| # of Volumes | 7 vol. manga |
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a manga by Hayao Miyazaki, which he also adapted into a full-length movie.
Contents
Genre
Sum it up in a Sentence:
In a post-apocalyptic world, one young girl must bring peace between warring nations of man and giant fuck-off monster bugs.
Main Description
Mankind's technology lead to its destruction, and 1000 years after a cataclysmic event, bugs dominate the surface of the earth and poisonous spores make large hunks of land uninhabitable. Nausicaä and her people live in peace in one of the calmer portions of the world, until nearby countries' lust for ancient power drags them into a brutal conflict. Nausicaä, being one of the few people trying to understand the bugs and daring enough to explore the poison wastes, is the only person who can bring an end to the senseless destruction.
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Personal Opinions
OldTimeyProspector
So Nausicaä, the movie, is a thing. It's not a bad movie, but it's one of the weakest Miyazaki movies. A lot of people hate on it for not being faithful to the manga, which is a fair point, but my main problems wit hit are like this: the music is terrible. Like, really, jarringly bad. Any time there's something exciting going on, the most awful, synth-heavy generic 80's anime music starts playing. It's really bad. Plus the current Disney DVD print isn't very high quality, so the trademark beautiful scenery and such suffers.
The movie's still worth seeing, though, and if you do enjoy the movie, know that the manga completely blows it out of the water. Oh, yes, and this is one of Miyazaki's more openly "message" driven works, so if you're big into deforestation and whatnot, you may not enjoy Nausicaä so much. Fair warning.
a kitten
Although Miyazaki is rightfully mostly known as an animator the manga he wrote and drew for Nausicaä deserves all the praise I can heap upon it. Powerfully written and gorgeously drawn, it contains some of the most well realized and nuanced characters in any of his works. The only things I can compare it to are things like Dune or other works that are well known for having fully fleshed out, living, breathing worlds. I might be gushing over this a little, possibly due to the fact that this was my first exposure to Miyazaki, in any case this is fantastic series and should be read by anyone who likes his works or even non-anime fans who like excellent science fiction.
The film is worth a look, it's by no means bad, it just pales in comparison to the manga and their stories diverge dramatically pretty early on. It also contains one of the first animation scenes that Hideaki Anno worked on, his animation of the God Warrior is one of the things that got him noticed.
