Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (film)

This article is about the film. For the manga, see Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga).

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Directed by	Hayao Miyazaki
Written by	Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by	Isao Takahata
Cinematography	Hideshi Kyonen
Edited by	Naoki Kaneko Tomoko Kida Shiyoji Sakai
Music by	Joe Hisaishi
Release dates	March 4, 1984
Running time	116 min.
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a 1984 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his manga of the same name. The movie has environmentalist undertones and was presented by the World Wide Fund for Nature when it was released in 1984. Nausicaä is ranked as one of the 50 greatest science fiction films by the Internet Movie Database. While created before Studio Ghibli was founded, the film is considered to be the beginning of the studio. It is often included as part of the Studio's works, including the Studio Ghibli Collection of DVDs.

The movie won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1984.

Plot

The story takes place 1,000 years after the "Seven Days of Fire", an event which destroyed human civilization and most of the Earth's original ecosystem. Scattered human settlements survive, isolated from one another by the Sea of Decay (腐海, fukai). Literally translating as the Rotting Sea, Sea of Fungus, Sea of Corruption or Toxic jungle in the English version, the Sea of Decay is a jungle of giant plants and fungi swarming with giant insects, which seem to come together only to wage war. Everything in the Sea of Decay, including the air, is lethally toxic.

The main protagonist, Nausicaä, is a charismatic young princess of the peaceful Valley of the Wind. Although a skillful fighter, Miyazaki's Nausicaä is humane and peace-loving. She has an unusual gift for communicating with the giant insects (particularly with the Ohmu, the gigantic, armored, caterpillar- or isopod-like insects who are the most intelligent creatures in the Sea of Decay). She is also noted for her empathy toward animals, humans, and other beings. An intelligent girl, and inspired by the mentor figure Yupa, a wandering samurai type possessed of great wisdom, Nausicaä frequently explores the Sea of Decay and conducts scientific experiments in an attempt to define the true nature and origins of the toxic world in which she lives. Her explorations are facilitated by her skill at "windriding"; flying with an advanced jet assisted glider craft. Yupa is searching for the mythological man in blue who, according to the legend, will appear surrounded by a sea of gold and reunite the people and nature.

One day, an airship crashes onto the cliffs near the Valley of the Wind. Nausicaä tries to rescue a hand-cuffed girl of her age from the burning wreck, but she dies after revealing that she is Princess Lastelle from the kingdom Pejite and that the cargo of the airship must be destroyed. The airship is from Tolmekia and the cargo turns out to be a kyoshinhei embryo, (Giant Warrior in the English version), one of the lethal, giant, biological weapons used in the ancient war.

It is later revealed that the Warrior embryo was unearthed by Pejite, but it was stolen by the more powerful state of Tolmekia (Torumekia in the manga). While transporting the Warrior back to their realm, the Tolmekians were attacked by insects and later crash-land in the Valley. The next day, the Tolmekians, under the leadership of princess Kushana, invade the Valley to kill the Valley king and to secure and revive the Warrior. Kushana explains that the God Warrior will be used to burn the Sea of Decay, although Obaba, an elder Valley woman who is blind, warns that attempting so will only anger the Ohmu and lead to more deaths.

Kushana attempts to return to Tolmekia, with Nausicaä and several others as hostages. Before their departure, Nausicaä reveals to Yupa a hidden garden of jungle plants, that are not toxic because they are growing in sand and water from a deep well. Nausicaä explains that the jungle is only toxic due to the toxic soil that is everywhere on the surface of the earth. The airships are attacked by a Pejitan gunship and several of the ships are forced to make an emergency landing in the Sea of Decay. There, Nausicaä communicates with several ohmus and discovers that the pilot of the Pejitan gunship is still alive. With the help of her glider, Nausicaä rescues the pilot from a swarm of enraged insects. However, the planes crash and end up in a strange, non-toxic world that is below the Sea of Decay; the plants in the Sea of Decay purify the polluted soil, and in this way produce clean water and sand, which remains hidden in this underground world. The pilot turns out to be Asbel of Pejite, the twin brother of princess Lastelle.

Nausicaä and Asbel return to Pejite, which is devastated after the Pejite people lured the insects from the Sea of Decay into their town in order to kill the occupying Tolmekian forces. The Pejite people reveal that they will do the same thing to the Valley of the Winds to recapture the Warrior. To prevent Nausicaä from alerting the Tolmekians, they capture her, but she escapes with the help of Asbel and his mother. With a gunship, she returns to the Valley, but along the way they encounter an enormous herd of enraged Ohmus who are on their way towards an injured baby Ohmu, which is used by the Pejite people to lure the Ohmus to the Valley. Nausicaä releases the baby Ohmu and gains its trust.

Meanwhile, the Tolmekians attempt to stop the herd with their armored vehicles but fails, later Kushana arrives with the God Warrior to stop the Ohmu herd, but the Warrior, awaken too early, dies in the process. However, Nausicaä and the baby ohmu are finally able to stop the Ohmu herd, but she is killed in the process. In front of the Valley people and the Tolmekian forces, the Ohmus use their gold-colored tentacles to revive Nausicaä, whose dress has turned blue by the baby Ohmu's blood; thus Nausicaä turns out to be the mythological "man" in blue mentioned in the beginning. The film ends with fragments of a future where people and insects live in peace with each other.

The story holds deeper meaning than its depiction of war; there are both humanistic and ecological subtexts in Miyazaki's narrative. Even the insects seem to be working toward some secret harmony and the lethal fungal forest seems to have a vital role in Earth's new ecosystem.

Releases

The film was originally released in Japan on March 4, 1984, and sold almost a million tickets.

Warriors of the Wind

File:Wotwuscover.jpg

Boxart of the Warriors of the Wind dub.

A heavily edited and English dubbed version of the film was released theatrically in North America, shown on HBO and released on VHS by New World Pictures in the 1980s as Warriors of the Wind. According to Nausicaa.net, the voice actors and actresses were not even informed of the film's plotline and more than 30 minutes of the movie were cut from the film because New World felt that "the parts were slow moving". As a result, part of the film's narrative meaning was lost; some of the environmentalist themes were diluted as was the main subplot about the Ohmu, altered to turn them into aggressive enemies. Most of the characters were renamed (for example, Nausicaä became "Princess Zandra"). The cover for the VHS release featured a cadre of male characters, who are not part of the film, riding the resurrected God Warrior — including a still-living Warrior shown briefly in a flashback. It was released around the world under various different titles, such as Sternenkrieger (literally "Star Warriors") in Germany. It was rumored that June Foray provided the voice of Zandra, though this has been proven as untrue.

Many fans of Nausicaä, along with Miyazaki himself, dislike this version; Miyazaki suggested that people should put it "out of their minds." Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki have asked fans to forget its existence and later adopted a strict "no-edits" clause for future foreign releases of its films. On hearing that Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein would try to cut Princess Mononoke to make it more marketable, one of Studio Ghibli's producers sent an authentic katana with a simple message: "No cuts".

2005 English re-release

Template:Infobox movie certificates An uncut and re-dubbed version of Nausicaä was released on DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on February 22, 2005 for Region 1. This DVD also includes the Japanese audio track with English subtitles. Optimum Home Entertainment released the film in Region 2, and the Region 4 DVD is distributed by Madman Entertainment. The 2005 DVD version made it around the world uncut.

Production

Nausicaä was produced with animators hired for the one movie and paid per frame. One notable animator was Hideaki Anno, who later produced Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anno was assigned to draw the challenging God Warrior's attack sequence, which according to Toshio Suzuki is a "high point in the film".

Cast

The film stars the following voice actors in the 1984 Japanese and 2005 re-dubbed English versions:

Character	Japanese	English 2005 dub
Narrator	(none)	Tony Jay
Nausicaä	Sumi Shimamoto	Alison Lohman
Lord Yupa	Goro Naya	Patrick Stewart
Kushana	Yoshiko Sakakibara	Uma Thurman
Kurotowa	Iemasa Kayumi	Chris Sarandon
Mito	Ichirō Nagai	Edward James Olmos
Lastelle	Miina Tominaga	Emily Bauer
Asbel	Yōji Matsuda	Shia LaBeouf
Mayor of Pejite	Makoto Terada	Mark Hamill
Obaba	Hisako Kyōda	Tress MacNeille
King Jihl	Mahito Tsujimura	Mark Silverman
Muzu		James Arnold Taylor
Gikuri	Jōji Yanami	Jeff Bennett
Lastelle's Mother	Akiko Tsuboi	Jodi Benson
Gol	Kōhei Miyauchi	Frank Welker

• Children's Voices by Paul Butcher, Ashley Edner, Molly Keck, Richard Miro, Jordan Orr, Aimee Roldan, Grace Rolek
• Additional Voices by Newell Alexander, Rosemary Alexander, Tom Amundson, Stephen Apostolina, Mitch Carter, Robert Clotworthy, David Cowgill, Wendy Cutler, Ike Eisenmann, Jean Gilpin, Nicholas Guest, Bridget Hoffman, Sherry Hursey, Rif Hutton, Edie Mirman, Peter Renaday, Lynnanne Zager

Glider

Various gliders are seen in the film, and the protagonist, Nausicaä, uses a jet-assisted one-person glider-shaped machine. According to the accompanying film book released in Japan, the glider is called Möwe (メーヴェ, Mēve, or "mehve" in the English manga), the German word meaning seagull. An official scale model lists it as having an approximate wingspan of 5.8 meters (1/20 model measured to be 29cm), while the design notes indicate it weighs only 12 kg. In 2004, the Japanese-led OpenSky Aircraft Project began attempts to build a real-life, working personal jet glider based on the glider from the film. Two full size gliders with no power source carrying the code name M01 and M02, with a half sized jet powered remote controlled mock up called moewe 1/2 was built. The designer and tester of the project refused the official endorsement of the project by Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, noting that he did not want to cause trouble for them if an accident occurred.

Other media

Manga

Main article: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)

Miyazaki's manga version of Nausicaä was written over a period of 13 years, with breaks taken to work on Studio Ghibli films. Serialized in Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine, the first chapter was published in February 1982, and the last chapter in March 1994. As can be expected, the story of the manga is far more complex than that of the film. The tale depicted in the film roughly corresponds to only the first quarter of the manga (which is all that had been written at the time the film was produced), with significant differences in plot.

In addition to the plot, there are other significant differences in the story – the characters are more developed and the environmentalist tone is more sophisticated, echoed in the complex worldview of Princess Mononoke. Nausicaä herself is portrayed as being much more potent, with abilities that are not always explained.

The Nausicaä manga is published in English by VIZ Media. Earlier editions of the English manga and fan translations often used the title Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, omitting the definite article.

Video games

At least two video games were released based on the manga and the film.

• Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (video game)
• Nausicaä Kiki Ippatsu (video game)

Further reading

• Napier, Susan J. "Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts". In Martinez, Dolores P. (ed.). The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521631289.
• Anime and Academia: Interview with Marc Hairston on pedagogy and Nausicaa

External links

• Kaze no tani no Naushika at IMDb
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Info and review of Warriors of the Wind with audio clips
• Review of Warriors of the Wind
• "風の谷のナウシカ (Kaze no tani no Naushika)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-07-19.