Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
File:Nausicaa2cover.jpg
風の谷のナウシカ (Kaze no Tani no Naushika)
Genre	Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Manga
Written by	Hayao Miyazaki
Published by	Tokuma Shoten
English publisher	Viz Media
Magazine	Animage
Original run	February 1982 – March 1994
Volumes	7 (other ed. 4, 5)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a post-apocalyptic manga written and illustrated by acclaimed anime director Hayao Miyazaki which serialised intermittently from 1982 to 1994. The first 16 chapters (approximately the first 2 volumes) of the comic served as the basis for his 1984 film of the same name.

History

Miyazaki's manga version of Nausicaä was written over a period of 12 years, with breaks taken to work on Studio Ghibli movies. Serialised in Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine, the first chapter was published in February 1982, and the last chapter in March 1994. The manga has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan alone.

According to the "Birth of Studio Ghibli" featurette, Miyazaki only wrote the manga because Studio Ghibli film producer Toshio Suzuki was unable to get funding for a film that was not based on a manga. However, other sources have it the other way around: Miyazaki started the manga on the condition that it would never be made into a film. He later agreed to do a fifteen-minute OAV, but Animage editors eventually convinced him to make an entire feature-length film.

Miyazaki loosely based Nausicaä's character on the Greek princess of the same name from The Odyssey, as portrayed in Bernard Evslin's Japanese translation of a small dictionary of Greek mythology. He was also inspired by the "Princess who loved insects", a Japanese story based in the Heian period. This story was about a young princess who loved to study insects and other creatures rather than wearing fine clothing and thinking of choosing a husband.

Differences from the film

The manga is far more complicated than the movie; the tale depicted in the movie roughly corresponds to the first two books of the manga, the point the story had reached when film production began. There are significant differences in plot, with more factions, locations and characters appearing in the manga version of the story. There is also much more background detail, and the environmentalist tone is more developed.

The manga includes a lot more philosophical content than the film. Nausicaä explores the concepts of fatalistic Nihilism and the Gaia philosophy and struggles with the militarism of major powers. The series contains views of utopia and religion studies as well.

Synopsis

The story is set in the future 1000 years after the “Seven Days of Fire”, a cataclysm brought on by the excessive industrialisation that mankind has undergone. It utterly destroyed industrial civilisation approximately a millennium after it began to flourish (probably sometime in the 2700s). Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth has become heavily polluted and the seas are poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the “Sea of Corruption”, a toxic forest of fungal plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large insects, including the huge Ohmu. Humanity clings on to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain.

The Dorok prophecy: "And that one shall come to you garbed in raiment of blue and descending upon a field of gold..."

Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a state on the periphery of what was once known as Eftal, a kingdom destroyed by the Sea of Corruption 300 years before the story begins. The leaders of the Periphery states are now vassals to the Torumekian Emperor and are obliged to send their forces to help when he decides to invade the neighboring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong conventional military, but the Doroks have developed a genetically modified version of a mould from the Sea of Corruption to overwhelm the invaders. But when the Doroks introduce this mould into battle, its multiplication and mutation result in a "daikaisho" which floods across the land and draws the insects into the battle, killing as many Doroks as it does Torumekians. In doing so, the Sea of Corruption spreads across most of the Dorok nation, uprooting or killing vast numbers of civilians and rendering most of the land uninhabitable.

The Ohmu and other forest insects respond to this development and sacrifice themselves to pacify the rampant mould. However, the fact that the fungus can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her trips into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and show Nausicaä a vision of the restored Earth at the centre of the forest. Making friends of her enemies, Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory to seek those responsible for manipulating the fungus, recruiting a God-Warrior found in Pejite to muscle past both the Torumekian and Dorok armies.

Despite the loss of some of her companions, she is eventually able to reach Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks, and enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire. Nausicaä learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilisation. They created the mould and the Sea of Corruption to clean the land, altered human genes to cope with the pollution, stored their own personalities inside the Crypt, and waited for the day when they could re-emerge. However, their continual manipulation of the population is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order and has led to the cycles of violence which have plagued the world for a thousand years. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, giving humanity the opportunity to live or die without the benefit of the old society's technology.

Characters

Eftal

Valley of the Wind

• Princess Nausicaä, Princess of the Valley of the Wind.
• King Jihl of the Valley of the Wind.
• Lord Yupa (Yupamiralda), explorer and the greatest swordsman in the Periphery. A mentor figure to Nausicaa who travels with Asbel and Ketcha in the early parts of the story. He dies protecting Kushana from the vengeful Mani Tribe.
• Mito, sergeant-at-arms and King Jihl's retainer. His primary role is piloting to the support gunship for Nausicaa's mehve.
• Tepa, a young wind rider who attempts to fill Nausicaa's role in the after she leaves.
• Gram/Matriarch, one of the wise women
• Teto, Nausicaä’s fox-squirrel. Initially hostile, he accepts and accompanies Nausicaa to her various destinations. Late in the series, he dies from exposure to the radiation Ohma generates.
• Kai and Kui, Lord Yupa’s horseclaws (giant striding birds)

Pejite

• Asbel, Prince of Pejite
• Lastelle (Rastel), Princess of Pejite and Asbel's twin sister

Torumekia

• Kushana, Princess of Torumekia. She cares deeply for the men under her command, but is portrayed as brutal and harsh to her enemies. Hideaki Anno, who worked on the film of Nausicaa, had planned to do a manga side story centered around Kushana's military exploits, but Miyazaki refused him permission, believing that Anno would only use her to "play war games".

• Kurotowa, Kushana’s aide and a spy for the emperor, at first. He switches allegiance to Kushana when he realizes the Emperor will probably kill him after he fulfills his usefulness. Kurotowa prides himself in being a cynical survivor, but he also feels irresistibly attracted to the idealism and purity of spirit of Nausicaa.
• The Emperor of Torumekia, He is fearless, ruthless, and would even assassinate his own children should he perceive them to be an actual threat to his power. Despite his actions, he later plays a key role in destroying the master of the crypt, and formally pronounces his daughter the heir of the remains of the Torumekia before he dies. It is implied in his last warning to Kushana, the dark side of killing family, that his paranoia transformed him into the murderous individual he once was.
• The three Princes of Torumekia - The first prince dies when his air ship is attacked by insects. The two other princes are shown to be similar to the first, but state that their behavior was an act to convince their father that they were stupid and, therefore, not a threat. The two are content to stay with the Master of the Garden, away from politics and safe from war.

Dorok

• Charuka, Priest and commander of the Dorok armies. At first Nausicaa's antagonist, he becomes her friend and ally.
• Namulith or Namulis, the Dorok Emperor, or "The Emperor the Elder" in some translations. The elder of two brothers, he is charismatic and a warrior, but has none of his younger brother's psychic abilities. Namulith is over a century old, surviving by having his brain periodically transplanted into cloned bodies. Namulith captures Kushana, hoping to marry her and thus unite the two empires. However, she escapes and decapitates him, kicking his still-living head off a troop carrier.
• Miralupa, the Emperor’s brother, also known as "The Emperor the Younger." Co-regent with Namulith, Miralupa's connection to the ruling Dorok theocracy and his psychic powers give him an edge in the early part of the series. Although he is the younger of the two, he appears much older than his brother because he still inhabits his original body, kept alive by painful life extension treatments. After a reversal of his and his brother's fortunes, Miralupa is assassinated by Namulith. His spirit is redeemed and saved by Nausicaa.
• Chikuku is a young boy with strong telepathy. Chikuku becomes loyal to Nausicaa and fiercely protective of her. His weapon of choice is a blow gun that he uses to fire sharp darts. He uses his highly-developed telepathy to help Nausicaa communicate with those with whom she does not share a common language. In volume 6, Chikuku rallies the Dorok people to disobey the Emperor and follow the path of Nausicaa instead. At this time he also reveals for the first time his true full name: Luwa Chikuku Kulubaluka.

Mani tribe

• Elder of the Mani tribe, who dies using his pyschic powers to save Nausicaa from Namulis.
• Ketcha (Sometimes spelled without the "t"), an interpreter from the Mani tribe. Befriends Nausicaa.

Forest People

• Selm, a man of the forest who helps Yupa, Asbel and Ketcha when they crash into the forest. He is with Nausicaa in spirit many times when she needs his guidance, including at the end when she confronts the Master of the Crypt.
• Ceraine, Selm's sister

Others

• Ohma, a God-Warrior that the scientists in the Crypt of Shuwa create with a fully intact and functional skeleton found under Pejite. At first it is childish and violent, taking great pleasure in pain and death, loving most the incredible powers it has. However when Nausicaa gives it his missing core component (along with naming him), his intelligence skyrockets and he begins to discourse about justice and how he was gifted with the power to judge mankind. He delivers the final blow to the Master of the Crypt before dying, perhaps of natural causes.
• Master of the Garden
• Kest, an Ibex, assistant to the Master of the Garden

Factions

• Periphery Kingdoms (formerly Eftal): A small cluster of city-states located in the Eftal Desert to the northwest of Torumekia. They are the remnant of the once mighty kingdom of Eftal, which was destroyed 300 years ago by a sudden spread of the Sea of Corruption. These small kingdoms are tributaries of Torumekia, who, in return for allowing them to remain autonomous, demand that they must aid Torumekia during war.

• Torumekia: A feudal, militaristic empire north-east of the Periphery, ruled by an Imperial family and aristocracy; the capital city is Tolas.

• Dorok: A theocratic empire ruled by a Holy Emperor and a council of priests; composed of a loose union of 51 tribal principalities. The capital city is Shuwa, which is where the Crypt is located. The scientists of the Crypt have given the Doroks many lost technologies, especially those concerning the manipulation of life.

• Wormhandlers: Tribes of scavenger/hunter people living on the fringes of the Sea of Corruption. They survive by taming slug-worms, which they use like scent-dogs, and hiring themselves out as mercenaries to both warring sides. The Wormhandlers are almost universally reviled, considered "untouchables" by all others. In a comical scene, Nausicaa befriends elite Wormhandler warriors, who would later assist in her in their assault on the Master of the Crypt.

• Forest People: A small band of nomadic people who have abandoned all uses of fire, metal, and ceramics. They dwell entirely within the Sea of Corruption, and they are at peace with the creatures in it. They are held in great respect by the Wormhandlers, and the two cultures appear to have common roots.

Fictional species

• Fox-squirrels: small, catlike animals, generally found feral and considered impossible to domesticate. Nausicaä, however, manages to tame one, and the little omnivore is a valuable companion to her on her journey. These creatures also make a brief cameo appearance in Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
• God Warriors: gargantuan biomechanical beings considered largely responsible for the Seven Days of Fire. While the metal/ceramic skeletons of God Warriors are a common sight across the landscape, the creatures are believed extinct at the beginning of the story. They have the ability to fly by "twisting space", and can fire devastating energy beams. These abilities are fueled by atomic energy, and contact with them is known to cause radiation poisoning, which suggests that the Seven Days of Fire may have been at least partially a Nuclear holocaust. The characters of the manga refer to the radiation emitted by the God Warriors as "Poisonous Light".
• Hamushi
• Hebikera
• Heedra: powerful, biologically-engineered warriors (possibly with mechanical additions) from before the Seven Days of Fire. While not capable of destruction on as vast a scale as the God Warriors, they are far more numerous and easier to maintain. Heedra are extremely strong and difficult to kill; they can only be killed by destroying their "core", apparently located in the head just behind the uppermost of their three eyes, or blasting a Heedra into pieces. The cloned bodies of the Dorok Holy Emperor and the Master of the Garden are also referred to as Heedra, suggesting the name may in fact be a catch-all term for genetically engineered humanoids.
• Horseclaws: large, flightless birds genetically-engineered as replacements for horses, which are now entirely extinct. They are commonly used as beasts-of-burden and as riding animals. Kai and Kui, a mated pair, are the story's most prominent horseclaws.
• Ohmu
• Pipe Worms
• Royal Yanma
• Slug Worms: slugs the size of small dogs, adept at tracking by scent. The Wormhandler people derive their name from their practice of domesticating and using these creatures. While they appear harmless, they are considered unclean creatures by many non-Wormhandlers.
• Wing Worms

Publications

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Seven volume graphic novel

These are ISBNs for the current "Editor's Choice" edition of the English translation from VIZ Media, the first to be printed with the right-to-left order and dark brown (rather than black) ink of the original Japanese tankōbon.

• Volume 1, ISBN 1-59116-408-7 (136 pages)
• Volume 2, ISBN 1-59116-350-1 (136 pages)
• Volume 3, ISBN 1-59116-410-9 (156 pages)
• Volume 4, ISBN 1-59116-352-8 (138 pages)
• Volume 5, ISBN 1-59116-412-5 (160 pages)
• Volume 6, ISBN 1-59116-487-7 (168 pages)
• Volume 7, ISBN 1-59116-355-2 (232 pages)

Older, now out of print English editions include a 7 volume "Graphic Novel" series and a 4 volume Perfect Collection (both printed in 'flopped' left-to-right format).

External links

• VIZ Media: The English manga's North American publisher.
• Nausicaa.net
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ({{{type}}}) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• I Understand NAUSICAÄ a Bit More than I Did a Little While Ago: a long interview of Hayao Miyazaki by Ryo Saitani, from the January 1995 issue of the Comic Box fanzine.