Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind 
kaze no tani no Nausicaa

A film by Hayao Miyazaki (1984)

In just about every poll done about Japanese animation, Nausicaa rates either first or in the top five animes of all time. Miyazaki began the story in 1982 as a manga (comics) serial in the Japanese magazine Animage. The story proved so popular that he was approached about making a movie version of it. The movie follows (with a few variations) the story of the first two volumes of the manga. Miyazaki continued the story in the manga after the film was done, and is only now (1994) bringing it to a conclusion after six or seven volumes.

The story is set thousands of years in the future after an ecological holocaust has destroyed  most of the Earth and almost wiped out all of humanity. The destruction occurred during the now-legendary Seven Days of Fire when genetically designed monsters called God Warriors destroyed the world in a nuclear war. Thousands of years later there are only small kingdoms and fiefdoms that remain along the edge of the Sea of Corruption, a vast forest of fungus that gives off poisonous gases and covers most of the Earth. The people of these kingdoms must fight a continual battle to keep the f fungi from contaminating their meager farmlands. Most of the knowledge of earlier technology has been long lost. There are still airplanes and airships, but they are kludged together from ancient pieces of other machines dug up from the ruins of ancient cities.

Nausicaa is the princess of the kingdom of the Valley of Wind, a coastal kingdom where the continual winds from the sea provide power (via windmills) and keep the fungi spores ores from the Sea of Corruption at bay. Nausicaa is an expert pilot who flies about on her jet-powered glider (called a mehve which means seagull). She explores the forests (wearing a gas mask) in order to study the plants and insects there in an effort to discover the secrets of their ecology. When treaty obligations force the Kingdom into joining a larger war, Nausicaa is forced to become a warrior woman and lead her Valley's troops into a pointless bat battle. Torn between following her duty as her people's leader and her obsession to prevent the war from spilling into her Valley, she stumbles onto the true secret of the ecology of the poisonous forests and the insects.

Miyazaki named his character after a Phoenician princess in The Odyssey. In an interview, Miyazaki said he first read about this character in dictionary of Greek mythology by Bernard Esvlin. In this boo k, Esvlin described Nausicaa as "a beautiful and fanciful girl, quick on her feet...She took delight in nature and had an especially receptive personality. It was she who, unafraid, saved Odysseus when he drifted ashore covered with blood and then nursed his wounds. Nausicaa soothed his spirit by improvising a song for him." Miyazaki continues "Nausicaa reminded me of a Japanese heroine-I think I read about her in The Tales of the Past and Present. She was the daughter of an aristocratic family a nd was called the 'princess that loved insects'. She was regarded as an eccentric because even after reaching a marriageable age, she still loved to play in the fields and would be enchanted by the transformation of a pupa into a butterfly. This princes s was not daunted by social restrictions; she ran among the mountains and fields as she pleased, moved by the plants and trees, the floating clouds. I've always wondered how the princess survived as an adult. Today she would be able to find someone who could understand and love her. What was her fate then in the Heian period [794-1195], with its conventions and taboos?...Unconsciously, Nausicaa and this Japanese princess became one person in my mind." (from an interview with Miyazaki at the end of vol ume 1 of the Viz comics compilation of Nausicaa.)

Nausicaa was dubbed into English several years ago and released on videotape as Warriors of the Wind. This dub is universally regarded as a travesty by all anime fans and should be avoided like the plague. About a third of the movie was cut out, the plot butchered, and the voice actors obviously had no idea what the original movie was about. Rumor has it tha t Miyazaki is unhappy about this dub and when the copyright for Warriors of the Wind expires in 1995 it will be redubbed by a different company and the new and uncut version will be released in the US. We can only hope.