Anime Archaeology
Podcast
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, part 1 of 4
Posted July 28, 2026
An in-depth analysis of the first half hour of Hayao Miyazaki's classic 1984 anime film "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind".
Transcript
(0:00:00) This is the Anime Archaeology Podcast, analyzing classic anime. Today, we'll begin our four-part analysis of Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.(0:00:17) The first three episodes will be our reactions and thoughts on the film as we watch it, while the fourth episode will be our overall thoughts. But before I get into that, or we get into that, I wanted to talk to you from my workshop here about the production circumstances of Nausicaa of The Valley of Wind. How did this movie even come about?
(0:00:44) So Miyazaki had had a bunch of ideas for movies as he was working in his early career. I'm actually going to talk about his early career in the next episode, so I'll go a little deeper into that. But he'd been working on various anime productions, primarily as an animator, but also doing some layout and planning for the series and animation direction, things along those lines. So a variety of roles.
(0:01:14) And he was evolving this idea for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, a big epic science fiction film with environmental themes. And by this point, he had met Toshio Suzuki. Now, Toshio Suzuki was working at Animage, arguably the premiere or one of the premiere otaku magazines of the day. You know, an expensive,
(0:01:41) high production quality--by the standards of the time--magazine devoted to anime primarily. Actually, Suzuki had come to see Miyazaki for an interview and had a kind of a rough time on his first interview but that kicked off a relationship between the two of them and they ended up talking basically every day from that time until today. Like, they have continued that relationship.
(0:02:06) So they were talking a lot, and Miyazaki would talk about his ideas, and they'd bounce things back and forth. Miyazaki kept talking about this idea for this Nausicaa movie. The problem was he had been asking around about potential ways of making the movie, and he knew there was no way to make the movie because there was no original product to base it off of. There was no manga, no novel. It was a completely original idea, and it was very difficult at the time to make anything original.
(0:02:35) You know, we see today how many things are based on manga or light novels or video games and how few original products there were. Back then, it was even more rare. You basically had to be someone like Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of the medium, to get away with that. So no one was going to be interested in an original film by somebody who didn't have that cachet. Although Miyazaki did have a following among otakus,
(0:03:05) But outside of that, not really much. So as Miyazaki was talking to Suzuki about this, Suzuki said, "Hey, I work at Animage. What if you drew a manga for this movie idea and then have us publish it in Animage?
(0:03:24) Then there will be a manga to adapt into the movie, so to speak." And to be clear, Miyazaki already had the ideas. He was just making a manga so that he would have material, so he would have an original work, so to speak, to point investors to, to say, "Hey, this is a proven idea." Now, it is a little odd and backwards, but on the other hand, you know, not a completely unreasonable thing.
(0:03:50) So that's what they did. Suzuki published Miyazaki's Nausica of the Valley of the Wind manga
(0:04:10) in Animage. Now, Miyazaki did not have an anime studio. He was working for animation studios, but he did not run one. He had not founded one at this point. Ghibli was years away at this point. They needed to make it. So one of the things they did, although they did end up finding an anime studio to help out,
(0:04:36) Animage actually published a call for animators. So as they were publishing the manga, they would put in little ads in there saying, "Hey, if you like this manga, we're planning on making a movie out of it. Go here, contact this person to see about being hired as an animator on this movie."
(0:04:58) And so they ended up hiring some people out of that. Famously, Hideaki Anno, the eventual creator of Evangelion, was hired here to work on Nausicaa, where he worked on the God Warriors. So it did work. They did get quite a few folks out of that to help kind of bootstrap
(0:05:15) the animation for Nausicaa of the valley of the Wind, and with all of that there, they had the materials, the financing, and so forth to move on and make the movie. So it was kind of an odd experience where, you know, unlike a typical movie or production where things are arranged ahead of time and you just kind of execute, this had to be bootstrapped more than other anime often. But
(0:05:43) clearly, it worked. So that's the production circumstances behind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Let's head off now into the beginning of our analysis. So today we're going to start digging into Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind. Steve, what was your initial exposure to Nausicaä? How did you first come across it?
(0:06:11) It was very much a long time ago. It was actually, I think, right outside of college. And just with friends. And it just happened to... I think someone had a VHS tape. I'm not sure. I think it was copied off of somewhere. But watching it and just kind of going...
(0:06:34) huh. And just being like, okay. And this was, it was not my first experience of Ghibli and Miyazaki and all that. But it was just definitely kind of like a divergence of what I was expecting, certainly. And, you know, and it's kind of funny. It wasn't until after rewatches,
(0:07:03) later on over the years that I really, you know, yes, you understand that there's an environmental theme throughout, you know, you kind of get hit with that two by four, but I didn't really latch onto it that strongly until rewatches later, because there's so many different things going on in there visually and, and, and unexpected as well. Yeah. John, how about you?
(0:07:35) I have to say it's probably around the same time that Steve ran into the knowledge of it. I'm trying to really remember whether it was when we watched it years ago. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
(0:07:50) Or whether I had, when Netflix did mail order, whether I had actually gotten through that and had seen it the first time, and then when we watched it, actually did some thinking about the subjects and themes going on, versus getting it and being like, ooh, Spirited Away, it's Ghibli. Neat. Oh, this is different. Yeah.
(0:08:12) I would say my better memory is of us watching it. Okay. Then sort of like whenever I got it through Netflix. Yeah. I had seen other Ghibli films before Nausicaa and I had heard of Nausicaa as being this big deal,
(0:08:30) you know, and I ended up getting a very much bootleg release of a Studio Ghibli collection out of Hong Kong. This is before the Disney Miramax deal so you couldn't really get most of these movies uh legitimately and so that was my stopgap. I have since bought legitimate versions of all these you know and I distinctly remember sitting down and going, okay,
(0:08:57) I'm curious to see what I'm getting into here. And two and a half hours later being like, wow. That was a lot. Really blown away. I don't remember when I read the manga, whether I got into that before or after the movie. I think after the movie. And then went and read all the manga, which is only four volumes.
(0:09:24) And then I have since come back and kind of re-watched the movie again to kind of, you know, get all those little details. So, have either of you guys read the manga? No, I don't think I have. Okay, so for context, for those unfamiliar, when Miyazaki tried to get this off the ground he really couldn't because there was no other
(0:09:48) multimedia mix project out there to sell it with. He just had a movie idea. And he was not popular enough yet or successful enough yet to just kind of drive it forward. So Toshio Suzuki
(0:10:00) that he was working with at the time, this is pre-Ghibli, said, because he was an editor at Animage, I believe. And he said, "Well, if you draw a manga of it, we'll publish it in Animage. And then that can kind of get the interest going to bootstrap a movie."
(0:10:17) So he drew the manga just to make that happen. And then after the movie came out, he continued drawing the manga. So the manga is about a thousand pages long, all told, over all the volumes. The movie is just the first 200 pages.
(0:10:35) So for those interested, kind of like Akira, the story goes much beyond the events of the movie. And also because it took him years to finish the manga, he had other things happening in his life, other things he was doing. Go figure. Go figure. And so he ended up, I think over the course of 15 years or so, finishing up all that story. And his views on some of these things evolved.
(0:11:05) So you get a somewhat more nuanced view of some of these aspects and elements in the manga because he had more time to think about that and more time to kind of evolve his viewpoints. So it's an interesting counterpoint or contrast to the movie while also getting basically the movie in that first quarter to a fifth of it. Interesting. But now let's go ahead and get into Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind from 1984. Yeah.
(0:11:35) And, no movie concept of a Nausicaa 2 to cover the rest of the...? No. Now, to that point, I would argue Princess Mononoke is the revision of Nausicaa The Valley of the Wind. It contains many of the same themes and concepts in a...
(0:11:57) reimagined and highly coherent form. Not that Nausicaa is not coherent, but that he kind of reworked a lot of those things into Princess Mononoke. Your pirated copy that had a 50-minute segment of My Little Pony, that didn't bother you at all? Okay. Now have either of you seen Warriors of the Wind?
(0:12:22) Yes. No. You have. Okay. I have not. But Steve, Steve has. So Warriors of the Wind was the original American release of Nausicaa the Valley of Wind, which was, let's just say, highly edited.
(0:12:39) Lots of things rearranged and reworked to try to edit it down a little bit and make it a little easier to understand for the American audience. I've seen it. People refer to it as this horribly butchered version of Nausicaa.
(0:12:56) I think in context, I can understand where they were going for it. It's definitely significantly changed. Although they do rework one element, which I think makes a little more sense in their version. Or they explain something that Miyazaki doesn't explain in his version of kind of a motivation of why a character is going somewhere, which I did appreciate. But Miyazaki,
(0:13:20) overall, it was definitely a heavy change to the point where that was, that release was what made Miyazaki say, "I am not releasing this ever to anyone outside of Japan." Like this was, this was, you know, "I don't trust American releases anymore." And it was, it was Disney coming to him and saying, "We will not edit a frame. We will do this exactly this way," that finally convinced him and the whole Lasseter situation with all that.
(0:13:46) Wow. But yeah, that was something he was not very pleased with at the time. Wow. Yeah. So I think we can stop at the very beginning. Yeah. And mention this opening shot where you get the hazy sky, this lone figure coming at you and this parched earth. So a kind of Mad Max feel.
(0:14:15) Certainly apocalyptic. But also the ground has these strange egg-shaped rocks and this almost coral-like plant vegetation. So to me, it's a little bit off-putting. It looks a little alien. But then certainly the figure approaching us through the fog and the mist, I think certainly evokes samurai movies.
(0:14:44) You know what first popped into my mind? (Ralph Bakshi's movie) Wizards. Oh, yeah. Good call. Yeah. 100%. We'll also call out lack of music. It is a very stark thing, just a blowing wind. And again, think of anime of the early 80s. Very light, adventure-y. Macross is very much in the public consciousness at this point. So this is setting a tone.
(0:15:11) When I initially saw this, I thought it was... I saw the coloration of the fog and thought, okay, is it desert? Because to me, I'm looking at the scene, I thought it was like winter. Oh, yeah. Because it looks to me like it's frozen landscape. So when I first saw this and we were watching it, I'm like...
(0:15:33) So we, I mean, I mean, they say literally that like Antarctica is a desert. True. Yeah. Just because it's frozen doesn't mean it's not low humidity and, you know, very difficult for plant life. Like, yeah. Okay. And I sort of cast that back with this, be like, are we trying to evoke that? Yeah.
(0:15:52) That we've got this sort of sandy desert with a frozen desert? I think so. I think we're also... He's also trying to be unsettling of giving you multiple signals that kind of conflict in certain ways to make you go, "Wait, where are we? What's going on? Is it cold? Is it hot? What is it?" Yeah. The costume, desert-like, but you have extremes of those. And then we get the...
(0:16:24) feet of the uh the pack animals here which tells us, well, definitely not contemporary Earth. Yeah, but also we start to see these spore-like objects on the side of the road, very fungi-evoking with this snow coming down so it's definitely definitely odd.
(0:16:45) And as they go, you see all of this fungi growing all over everything, you know, clinging on. And then a sack sort of explodes gas out. And I do think that is also giving us a hint that, "Huh, I wonder where the fog is coming from. Maybe that's it." And I do appreciate this contrast where you get that shot a little earlier of the windmill in the distance. And then as you approach, you see everything's covered with all this fungus.
(0:17:15) And I know when I was watching, I was like, "Is that normal? Like, is this okay?" Because this feels like a frozen over, you know, encased environment. And I'll also call out, I don't know if this is intentional or not, but this village does make me think of the village they find in Macross: Do You Remember Love.
(0:17:35) You know, the abandoned alien city, which just feels empty, but also like all this stuff like weirdly preserved from the past. So Miyazaki does this interesting thing where we pan across this sort of wide shot of the interior and then rapidly zooms in to this detail shot of these skulls with
(0:18:05) headdresses on them and like crowns. You can't really see that detail from the wide shot but he's directing your attention to say, you know, this is here realistically we can't get/fit all of it into that that shot. And I think you'd be forgiven for assuming he's kind of zooming in on that drawing but no it's two separate drawings that he's focusing in on.
(0:18:32) Also interesting how this implies what the so far unnamed traveler is experiencing. But he's coming into this village. Everything's been overrun. And then he sees these skeletons. Presumably he hasn't been here for a while. But maybe he has. Maybe this is some weird degenerative disease or something. It opens up interesting questions in the head.
(0:18:57) And I think this is an important moment here when he picks up the doll and it disintegrates. Yeah. Because that tells you this is not natural. You know, dolls wouldn't do that. Also gives you a sense of a passage of time that is like, maybe this has been a while between visits to this place. Yeah.
(0:19:17) And that the doll would have normally under normal circumstances have lasted an X number of years, but now it's just disintegrated. Yeah. And we get this wonderful pacing here of "Another village is dead." And I do appreciate the choice for the English voice acting where in Japanese it's some version of "the village is destroyed." But calling it "dead" has this finality to it.
(0:19:45) Especially having seen the skulls, which I think brings a tone that is more gives you more dread than just the idea of being destroyed. And then like immediately cutting to these wild insects
(0:20:00) flying over top of things, clearly being massive, tells you more about the world. And we learn a bit more. He says, soon this place will also be consumed by the toxic jungle. Looks pretty consumed to me. Which means that's a whole other level of consumption. Yeah.
(0:20:20) Well, the other point of this for the viewer is, you know, we're building dread upon dread upon dread. So we go through this arid landscape that is consumed by all of this mold and spores and fungi. And we see a village destroyed. And of course, you know, we see these insect things. So we know that there is...
(0:20:47) things not good happening. And then when he says, well, the Sea of Decay, and, you know, we joke that, oh, well, it looks pretty decayed already. But you get a sense that there's something following. And it's almost kind of like....
(0:21:03) Is that thing that's following, is it inherently evil? Is it...is it Void, you know, like if you watch The Neverending Story is it the Void that's following you, you know, something of that nature? And he's just like well, let's...let's keep going, and there's nothing hopeful in these first few minutes of Nausicaa and it's just kind of like going, "Hi, welcome to your world, it kind of sucks right now."
(0:21:28) Well, and even further to your point, Steve, I think you see that too in his body language where he's like leaning forward to get out of here. You know, he's switched from curious exploratory mode to time to vamoose. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's interesting that Miyazaki chooses to give us
(0:21:48) a literal voiceover narrator saying, "Here's your premise." I do....That feels to me like maybe something that Suzuki whispered in his ear to say, "You're expecting an awful lot of your audience. Like just, you know, throw them a bone. They think this is about desert nomads. No, no, no. You tell them more." Yeah.
(0:22:12) Yep. And you get the beginning of that Hisaishi soundtrack, which again, full of dread, full of just foreboding. Now, calling out here what we get visually, we're getting these tapestries, which tells us a couple of things. It tells us that we are living in a world of where information is hard to pass on.
(0:22:41) And so it's being passed on through like tapestries and things. And we have this very gentle music playing in the background, very melancholic, which plays into those themes of loss, this idea that humanity is kind of on the run from whatever this thing is. And then we cut in the middle of all this to this horrifying image of the god warriors trampling over civilization. And this now, we haven't known until this point that we're post-apocalyptic.
(0:23:10) But this is our first realization that, oh, there was a civilization before this, and we're now doing what we can in the aftermath. Go ahead, please. This very much reminds me of Big O. Yeah. Big O, where it's just kind of like...
(0:23:32) You know, the premise, of course, everyone lost their memories 40 years ago. And there's all these, by the end of it, you start getting these kinds of things and this kind of imaging of, you know, like destruction and things like this. But this is almost like, you know, you get this tapestry of this story of, you know, here was mankind's downfall as we
(0:23:53) "remember it," in heavy quotations, and then we get this hint from Miyazaki just going, "Oh no, it was worse." right yeah um and by the way Steve knows Big O came out later we're not saying...yes...we get that. Right. um before anything more on that. Well, and there's also, to your point Steve, there's also a mythic quality to this image as well.
(0:24:16) Right. This also feels almost unreal. So you also get to wonder, like, is this somebody's nightmare version of what happened? Or is this what actually happened? It's kind of cool. We also call out a couple of things here. (A) is the...
(0:24:34) fantastical element of these creatures. They're not robots. They're not angels or demons. They are these giant humanoid creatures with these light staffs. Also, little Evangelion. And the reason is that Hideaki Anno worked on Nausicaa and was responsible for the God Warrior animation in general. So I think this was a bit of an inspiration for him when he moved on to Evangelion. Yeah.
(0:25:04) God warriors, Angels, sure. Exactly. Now, again, you think about how much Miyazaki compresses into things where we see this shot of all of these. In the middle, we see people falling. We see what seems to be like a tree bowing down under the pressure. But we also see birds and animals falling down as well. So this general idea of apocalypse. And then we see even the people beneath the earth who are buried as well. Now, I wonder if that also isn't a hint
(0:25:33) that civilization is so advanced that there is an underground civilization as well, that these are all of the bunkers, basically, that got wiped out during the apocalypse as well. This is something that...that was actually a great shot. Yeah. That...the....
(0:25:54) I'm thinking of, okay, this is going to be a little bit weird. I'm thinking of Fantasia. Okay. Disney's Fantasia, right? And how people kind of make this thought of, "I'll bring my four-year-old kid to watch Fantasia."
(0:26:09) Right. And it's just an extraordinarily bad idea because it's not what you think it is. Now, when you see something like this, I can totally see that parent with the four year old kid. "Oh, this might be. Oh, it's about environmentalism. And this will be a good message. It's a cartoon film. It's a cartoon." Yeah. And I can just imagine four year old me going,
(0:26:32) Yeah. "Where's Goofy? Where's Goofy?" When I think, you know, in the next few shots, it might be where the parent goes, "We're going now." Yes. "Do you want ice cream? I think ice cream would be great right now. Let's have ice cream for the next two hours."
(0:26:51) So, yeah, now we have the shot of the God Warriors walking through civilization. And we get communicated something important here as well. First, we see a bit more detail of the weird lights and colors on them telling us, again, this is some weird biological thing. But also, they don't care.
(0:27:14) In the earlier shot, we just see them advancing, so we don't know what's going on. They are just marching through burning civilization like it's just nothing. So a further nuance to what was going on back in the apocalypse. Now, I've got to call out something that Miyazaki does here that's fairly subtle.
(0:27:35) We get all of these images of the toxic jungle spreading and people interacting with things and such. We see people in the tapestry inside buildings and then coming out and supplicating this brown-haired angel in a blue dress with wings. And we fade off of that as it comes in to the shot. And then we get blue sky,
(0:28:03) and white clouds, and multiple shots of blue sky and white clouds. And then we see Nausicaa riding on her, on her, on her glider. We'll call it a glider. Yeah. So we see her on the glider. This immediately evokes that angel. If you're remembering the angel, he gives you the blue sky to keep that image in your head for a little longer. So then when you see this, you think, "Ooh, is that the angel?"
(0:28:33) And then as the shot continues, you realize it's not exactly that. But he's using specifically the attributes of anime, where because we're so pulled out, we can't see the detail. So we don't know if that's an angel or not. We're just seeing this kind of white wing shape. So very interesting. And now we see it is indeed a girl in blue, apparently a girl with brown hair,
(0:29:01) But not exactly what we saw in the image. So curious, the Mehve, that's what it's called. So it's also worth pointing out what the Maeve represents, that it is high technology that is also acting like low technology.
(0:29:18) It functions like a glider, basically, but it has the power that allows her to fly around and go wherever she wants to. So we're seeing a marriage of the two here, in a way, in how Nausicaa is able to get around and do things. And certainly the imagery is more flowing and natural than Miyazaki often does with high-tech machines that are belching smoke and that kind of stuff. But then the first thing he shows us on the Mehve is her taking out a gun,
(0:29:47) with a lot of detail. So this is clearly an important thing, is to be armed, which he gave us that sort of heads up from the beginning, yeah, that you don't go through this land
(0:30:00) without some weapon. I should also call out that the Mehve also has an organic shape, right? It doesn't look like a industrial piece of machinery. So we're also getting that element as well. And then we have this lovely shot of Nausicaa. And I think this is kind of an important conceptual shot as we see Nausicaa next to the Mehve as she's walking into the toxic jungle, Sea of Corruption, whatever you want to call it. She is so small
(0:30:28) compared to that. And that is what humanity is right now. They are small in the face of this toxic corrosion that they just, you know, can't really do anything about. Now, to your point, John, we see Nausicaa doing exactly what we said was dangerous. Going in and exploring. Why would she do this? So immediately,
(0:30:54) using information he gave us a few moments prior, to raise questions about what's going on now. And she seems remarkably unconcerned by all the giant insects and things going around here. So a couple of things here. First off, we see the almost unmistakable accoutrement of a scientist,
(0:31:17) pulling out a test tube. So this kind of tells us what's going on with Nausicaa. But then there's also a little flex here, animation flex. When Miyazaki holds up the test tube to her face, we see a distortion in the glass of her face and the change of the color. It's all hand animated. Someone had to figure out where all those lines would go.
(0:31:38) So Miyazaki is showing, he's, you know, this is not Doraemon, you know, nothing like Doraemon, but, like, there's a lot of care being put into this. Yeah, Yeah. One of the things I always wondered about having seen this the little thing with the weird wings that flies by in the beginning of the screen, the little three wing or six wing total.
(0:32:02) There was a period of time where they talked about the visual anomalies flying through pictures in like the Amazon where it looked like a multi-wing something corkscrewing through the air and how it was like evidence of some kind of cryptid. Okay. Yeah.
(0:32:19) And then it proved to literally be moths. And that, just depending on the frame rate of the camera, it looked like this weird kind of thing. I always thought of seeing these where it's like, I wonder, because that was about the time period, people were like, "Oh my gosh, it's such a weird cryptid," whether Miyazaki was somehow influenced by that discussion. It wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. That's a cool note. I hadn't known of that. I also appreciate a detail that I didn't notice until my second or third rewatch,
(0:32:49) was she comes out and says "An Ohmu's tracks," and you don't know what she's referring to. And then we come out and we see this massive tunnel and that's the track of an Ohmu. It's not like some little footprint next to her. So again, Miyazaki, assuming his audience will understand the clues he's laying down. Now it should be called out, a little bit of Miyazaki theme here. She's using the gun to harvest.
(0:33:20) So the first time Nausicaa ever uses her gun, it's to pop out a resource that she can take back to her tribe. So indicating just kind of her violent nature or lack thereof. Actually, I also want to call out one of the things they do consistently with Nausicaa's animation is when she puts her sword back, there's a pause there,
(0:33:44) as she's finding the hilt, if you will. So she puts it into the hilt, kind of adjusts, and then slides it into place. And it's just one of those little natural bits of acting animation that you don't really notice, but feels right. And I think it's also important we have this moment where Nausicaa pauses underneath the shell, because this tells us more about what kind of person she is. She appreciates beauty. She lives in the moment. She is aware of her surroundings to a
(0:34:13) very strong extent. So, again, it would be a throwaway moment for another director, but I think here it's important that we now know more of who she is. And so we get this shot of her half buried in the spores, which we know are deadly, which again tells us she is used to this. She is living on this kind of edge of death, and this is normal for her. Now he does something important here. Nausicaa goes, "What's that?"
(0:34:42) He does not give us the sound. We don't know what the sound is because Nausicaa's hearing is that good. So that's telling us something about Nausicaa.
(0:34:52) Thinking about who Nausicaa is, and we're going through this, and we see, experience, and we see what kind of person she is, and this is not a "shoot first ask questions later" person. Yeah. She has already been doing this, this is something she did that she does. We got a little bit of science but really she seems to be more of a
(0:35:12) sort of a forager, an experienced forager who goes down and goes "Oh no, these are the things that are going to help my village, and I need to find these things," so she'll mark this location and then other people will come out and do that thing. But she's sort of like that point person of just going, "Okay, well, you want to go down here, here, watch out for the spores," da da da da.
(0:35:32) But you see that when she comes out and she sees the Ohmu and you go, and she loads a cartridge, your thought is like, "Oh, she's going to try and shoot this giant thing." Well, no. So she's because, you know, that little bullet is going to be, probably, it probably wouldn't even feel it. Right. Right. It'd be like a bing. It's like, "Oh, it wasn't." Yeah.
(0:35:52) But really what she's doing is that she's doing a signal to another person, which says that there is a sort of standard among people. Great point. Of communication, where if you are somewhere in the world, it's gotten to the point where it's kind of rote where you go, "Hey, if you're in trouble and you see a flare, a signal flare, go in that direction because somebody is aware that you're in some type of trouble." Yep.
(0:36:19) And so she does that and her, and, when they do the response. Mm hmm.
(0:36:24) Then she goes, "Okay, good. They're coming this way." So it doesn't have to be like, you know, "Let me send up the smoke signal again." No, it's, it's more along the lines of just like going, "Please see the smoke. Please see. Okay, good, great. You're coming this way." And then she can prep for it. And, and it's just like this level of communication that they might be strangers and not know each other. There seems to be this basic level of going, "You do this. Therefore I respond this way, if I'm in trouble." And we see that his shot goes up,
(0:36:54) which is not anywhere near any creature that he'd be trying to attack, which communicates it's probably more of a signal shot than anything else. Yeah.
(0:37:03) Yeah. Now, again, we're getting some flex from the animators here of this long shot that we're animating basically the entire foreground, every single thing, every frame. We're getting new shots in this to give us that sense of dynamism and also that sense of a little bit of chaos that things are moving faster, a little faster than we can process.
(0:37:26) And then we get this massive shot of the Ohmu breaking out with all of the pieces flying across it. Very complicated, very difficult to animate. So very impressive. Now, to your point, Steve, what is her first reaction?
(0:37:45) It's not, "I should kill this thing." And, "Oh, the guy's about to be eaten or whatever." It's just like, "Oh, wow, look at this. This is kind of cool. I need to catalog this." No, save the guy. Yeah, that dude's toast. But it's an amazing monster. I forgot about that. Yeah. That is so cool. Yeah. They're animating each segment. Mm-hmm.
(0:38:13) I forgot about that. So cool. Now to that point also, one of the things we see here is that Nausicaa is not afraid to go right in front of those mandibles, which they are animating with great vigor as they're just chewing up the sand, so we get a strong sense of courage from her certainly.
(0:38:34) Now, important visual symbolism here, because Nausicaa's flying around. We see her fly across the Ohmu's eyes, and then it wakes up. Almost like she is directly charming it with her presence, right? For that big a thing to respond to flashbangs and insect charm, that's pretty impressive, actually. Yeah, exactly.
(0:39:00) Incidentally, I have to say that also in 1984, Patrick Stewart did Gurney Halleck. That's true. Yeah. So we have a little connection there. Yeah. Obviously, he dubbed this much later, but it connects nicely. Now, we see these...
(0:39:19) twirling things in the...in the sky here and we'll soon come to the Valley of the Wind. What I think this is telling us is that this is because, this is the edge of civilization, this is how they keep insects out is with, you know, loud clacking things that, you know, drives the insects away. We should also call out they're taking off their masks.
(0:39:48) So this tells us we are now some distance from the Toxic Jungle. Now again, telling us more about Nausicaä's personality, her willingness to
(0:40:00) be hurt if it will repair a friendship or, you know, mend a relationship in that way. And her knowledge of the kind of animal psychology being proven both with the Ohmu and the fox squirrel here. Mankind should live in cooperation with nature. Exactly. Not in hostility towards it. Now, I also need to point out she's acting very moe here.
(0:40:28) Right. Like she's very cute. She's embracing this guy. She is being very, you know, princess-y with the animal. So there is a certain amount here of Miyazaki wanting us to, you know, feel those moe feelings for Nausicaa at this point. You know, understanding she has all the strength and so forth and so on. But so here we're establishing just if we,
(0:40:59) as long as folks are paying attention, that even being far enough away, you don't need a mask, is not enough. So again, here we're seeing more of these flapping things to possibly harness the wind in addition to hopefully keep the insects out. Now we also see, importantly, windmills and water flowing through. Ancient windmills and stuff. Like those, that water has...
(0:41:28) has carved a channel in that stone wall there. So it's doubtful the people here actually, like, built this; they're making use of this old technology that was there a long time ago, but also we see the scale of it, which tells us how much humans have needed to, like, work and make effort to actually make these places work.
(0:41:55) And to your point, John, now we have trees. Now we have vegetation. We have a little frog in the water. So we moved on from the desert, definitely. So we learned something important here as well as Lord Yupa enters the village and Nausicaa is waiting to get him. She has chores to do,
(0:42:14) even though we've just established she is the princess of the village. So clearly there's, you know, she's not sitting around eating bonbons, you know, wearing a long dress. Well, in a communist social society, you wouldn't have somebody stratified. I mean, to that point, Miyazaki was uncomfortable making Nausicaa a princess.
(0:42:40) He said he didn't like the fact that she was a royal, basically. That she was above other people. So he makes her do regular chores like other people. So she's amongst the ruled. Exactly. It also tells us a few things about the village. Nausicaa is a young adult with strong arms and legs. So she's put to work. And as you see these crowd shots,
(0:43:11) most everyone you see here is, you know, 40 or above. So you also get the sense of maybe there's something going on too with like how many strong hands they have available.
(0:43:26) Almost as if it's a society that's aging and is declining birth rates. Ah, almost. Where would Miyazaki have gotten that idea from? Ah? Yeah, exactly. And she proudly tells us, we had a baby this year.
(0:43:46) One. One. And in a presumably pre-industrialized society like that, probably, you know, healthcare for infants is not fantastic, you know, and especially given the toxic jungle nearby, the infant mortality rate is probably fairly high. So yeah, you do see some kids running around. You don't see any teenagers and like a handful of young adults. So...
(0:44:16) they're all off at, uh, at school right? Yes! During the day, yeah, it's the cultural festival it's coming up soon, very maid cafe. Yeah, yeah, sure. And then again we...we go to see this castle with the windmill going we get this sense that kind of everything runs off the windmills but also this is a very old castle.
(0:44:39) And Miyazaki is this long shot pulling back from the valley. And I think this is meant to remind us how fragile the Valley of the Wind is. It's this tiny oasis of civilization amidst everything else going on. It is fragile. Now, Miyazaki is a little coy here because he shows us the man with the bird on his shoulder and we cut to a shot of
(0:45:08) Nausicaä aiming in the same direction with Teto on her shoulder. So, little hint there. Of course, the guy in tapestry looks like Vlad the Impaler. Gotta break a few eggs. Now, Miyazaki really holds on this. He's drawing this out. And he's doing it for a couple of reasons, I think. First is to build tension.
(0:45:33) The second is to show us that the people of the Valley of the Wind are not simply victims. They have acquired new powers in a way. They can like literally smell and read the wind. So it
(0:45:54) adds a little bit of mystery and wonder to what's going on that they can kind of detect things that we couldn't possibly detect. And you wonder if there's a little bit of evolution going on there. You know, that multiple generations have picked up these abilities because that's what allows them to survive. Also, I got a call out. Gall there, the lookout, is none other than Frank Welker.
(0:46:20) Yeah, the voice of everyone in animation, basically. He shows up somewhere all the time. Yeah, exactly. I love this shot because of what Miyazaki is kind of doing artistically. You start out with this image of this, what looks like the moon, through the clouds. Yeah. And again, kind of a natural-ish view.
(0:46:48) And then basically a city lights up! Right. You get all of these lights appearing all of a sudden, you know, with the idea of you're looking down on Phoenix, Arizona. Then it starts coming at you! Feels almost like the SDF-1 coming out of shadow!
(0:47:12) Well, first, I got the (Close) Encounters (theme). Oh, yeah. But what I wanted to note was that we had mentioned earlier of having high-tech but low-tech application.
(0:47:28) And one of the things that that i hope viewers note is that even though we have this, this entire beginning of this tapestry of, of things that have happened and, you know, the God Warriors and the, the old crone, you know, telling the story of "Oh, one day, our, our savior will show up," and it kind of leads you to the point of like going, "Okay, are these superstitious people?"
(0:47:52) No, they're not. Like for example, when they see the light in the sky, it's not....None of them are like going, "Oh it's the Lord God Gorham and he's gonna come down," and you know no it's more along the lines of just going, "Hey, it could be ABC, now and she picks it up for what it is and then we're seeing this technology that that that's coming down, and so you know it's kind of
(0:48:15) you know, one of those happy things that I like in stories like this where we don't have to have the fight of
(0:48:23) is it Lord Gorham coming down from the sky or is it just, you know, the next kingdom over coming over and just going, "Hey, things are really bad." Yeah. You know, kind of thing. "May we borrow a cup of sugar?" (laughing) Yeah. Yeah. It's more...for as fantastical as the story, obviously it's, it's, it's grounded. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I think one of the...mistakes a lot of folks make when they do post-apocalyptic or whatever is they make their characters stupid. Yeah.
(0:48:52) Or like overly superstitious or whatever. And it's like, well, no, these are people who live in this environment with these things going on. They're obviously mysteries, (and) they probably have religion and so forth, but like they live with these dangers every day. They know what those dangers are. They're going to be very pragmatic about it. Yeah. Because we've seen what we've seen before when Nausicaa launches and sees the ship covered with bugs, we already have a sense of what that means.
(0:49:22) You know, if he'd started the, he could have started the movie here, but we wouldn't have the context to know when insects swarm, it's bad, and you really can't control it. Yeah. Unless you're Nausicaa and you have exactly the right, like, talent and such. There's also just kind of that horrific image, in a sense, of the soldiers shooting at the bugs.
(0:49:46) You know, when you know there are hundreds of those bugs on the ship, like there's just no way, you know, but they're just kind of desperate to do something. Now Miyazaki does something here that's kind of interesting. We see an image of...
(0:50:00) somebody in the ship as Nausicaa's flying away (a) obviously if you've seen this--bless you--if you've seen this before you know she will become important later, but also it humanizes that ship, right? There are innocent people potentially on board that are about to go open flames.
(0:50:19) There's also an important editing thing here where we have this very almost siren alarm music going on as it's going down. And then it goes silent right before the explosion to really pull our attention to it. And what does Nausicaa do? she runs towards the flames. To see if she can help at all.
(0:50:45) And Miyazaki's careful here, like he shows you the claw of a hand. You know it's bad, but he's being fairly subtle about it. I shouldn't say subtle, but he's not being grotesque, I guess. Not hiding it, but he's not slapping you in the face with it. Yeah, exactly. Steve's two by four. Here's death! And death!
(0:51:11) And the next statement would be, "God, it smells like barbecue. I don't know why." "Smells like people." It's not Grave of the Fireflies. We'll just put it that way. But she keeps looking. Right? Because she hopes that there may be somebody somewhere. And she's right. She was chained into her seat. Well, to that point, there's a hint here, potentially,
(0:51:40) about why she might have survived. We saw her sort of amidships and we saw the soldiers up front. So depending on how kind of ridiculous the (people in the) ship was being, it could be that all the soldiers there were up front that took the brunt of the explosion, they're all gone. She was the only other one in there. So she was far enough away to have survived. So speaking of not being grotesque,
(0:52:07) we have Nausicaä start to pull open the girl's tunic to try to hurt her, er, to see how badly hurt she is. We...focus on this grimace from Nausicaä. And then she closes it back up. You don't have to see it,
(0:52:30) but we see her expression. Also notice the asymmetry of her face here, how like one eye is down a little bit, the other eye is open. It's a very human expression. Let's also call out a few other reactions here. The fact that Lastel's only concern is the destruction of the cargo. That's communicative. But also when Uncle Mito runs up and sees the princess, he immediately goes quiet.
(0:53:01) You know, because he realizes what's happening here, right? That, that Nausicaa is basically mourning the death of this person. So he's very keyed in to, and also like, you know, speaking of like what the culture and civilization is, that is a tragedy, right? Life is not cheap here. Yeah. Now we see the panic of the villagers. So this is telling us that Nausicaa's views on things are not shared by everybody.
(0:53:29) She does not live in a beautiful communist utopia where everyone shares the same ideals, not yet, but yeah like, they can they can panic, but also, you know, they're panicking for understandable reasons that this is...this is The Plague at their front door. Yeah, yeah. Now us watching this and especially with the benefit of the perspective of having watched a few times,
(0:53:56) we see the insect come out and it's chattering the whole time. And then as she talks to it and as she uses the flute thing, it stops chattering. And then it kind of raises that thing on its side. And to me, I realize it's scared, right? It's freaking out at this point. And what Nausicaa is trying to do successfully is calm it down and direct it.
(0:54:27) So it doesn't call its friends in. Yeah. Important moment: We get this upswell of music, as Nausicaa leads the but away in this celebratory moment but Lord Yupa is not celebrating why not
(0:54:51) Well, here he has seen, there's this huge airship technology covered in bugs. This thing apparently was probably the thing that was in the hold that the other princess was like, yeah, you need to destroy everything. Burn everything.
(0:55:08) And, you know, so his thought is along these lines of why do they have that in there? And the bugs that probably knew it was in there, you know, to your point, you were saying it's scared. And so these other bugs are trying to rescue it and it goes down in flames. And, you know, he's probably happy that this is successful. Sure. Right. Yeah.
(0:55:28) But at the same time, he's going, why the heck are other kingdoms? First of all, why was this person from one kingdom chained and on this particular ship from another kingdom? And why did they have a bug in their hold? What is going on? There's something very not right. He's coming up. He's going two plus two in this scenario is equal to pi. And this is just not making sense. Exactly. Right.
(0:55:53) And so he's trying to figure it out. But one of the other things I wanted to mention about this was that even though the villagers were scared and the one guy was just like, look, I could just shoot the thing. And it's just like, you know, it's just the young guy as opposed to all the old guys. Stupid boy, shut up. Exactly. And because that's their experience talking and they reasoned out why they shouldn't do that very quickly. And then Nausicaa comes up with a solution. He's doing it and they're happy about that solution.
(0:56:23) Which means is that there is not ignorance here. It was just being scared. How do we solve this problem? And she comes up with the solution. And everyone's just like, oh, good, the screaming bug horrors is not going to be coming down. All right. There's a little bit of the hired hand in Anne in the young man here. Now, it's interesting to note, she's flying over the ocean.
(0:56:52) We know where the toxic jungle is. We just came out of it. So she's going the whole other way. So she's trying to get it the F out of here by the most, you know, undirect route as possible back to its kind. So there's going to be nowhere near the Valley of the Wind.
(0:57:15) And it's also important to note here, you know, Nausicaa's taking it along. We see how beat up its wings are. Its eyes are still red. So it hasn't truly come down yet, which is another clue to how bad whatever it is they did on that Torumekian ship was.
(0:57:36) Also, for the condition of its wings, it is. And I think at one point when it comes out of the wreckage, it's missing one of its legs. So it's probably not calm because it's hurt. Great point. It just survived a giant plane crash. Fair point. Probably a lot of trauma going on there. Yeah, I would imagine. There's this moment here where Nausicaa lands and she sees this single Ohmu out in the distance, just kind of staring at her.
(0:58:07) I think this is important because up until this point, Ohmu have been dangerous forest creatures. As we know from later on in the story, there are a lot more than that. And Miyazaki needs to establish something here. There's something a little bit of the...
(0:58:31) Lord of the Forest and Princess Mononoke in this shot. That this is an avatar of the natural world staring back at Nausicaa in this moment. I'll be honest, it feels a little out of place when I first watch it. I'm like, why are we getting this odd little moment with this Ohmu? But I think it is to establish that the Ohmu are not just...
(0:58:58) potentially savage beasts, but that there's something almost spiritual about them. I also got kind of the sense that it was going to continue moving forward if its companion did not come home.
(0:59:16) Great call. So that this is waiting. If its little buddy came back after the chattering sent whatever signal, if its buddy came back, it would do exactly what it did. It was not disturbed. It turned and started to retreat. Yeah. If that had not happened, it would have continued moving forward and presumably called other Ohmu, and things would have gone poorly. Yeah. Good call. Now to that point, we...
(0:59:45) cut from the Ohmu to all of these flying airships and flying airplanes. And there's certainly a contrast there of nature versus technology, but also threat to your point, John, of
(1:00:00) the Ohmu as this kind of silent threat. And now we're seeing not one, not two, but three of those Torumekian ships in the air. Uh-oh, what's happening now? It's like the China Clipper; they're just on a vacation cruise. Exactly. They're just going to stop by and say hello. Yes, exactly. Totally. Forcibly, hello. So we get this interesting little bit of Morse code between the ships and then we see them all banking to fly off,
(1:00:30) which tells us something, again, about technology. We're not using radio. You know, this is relatively primitive by aircraft standards, so we don't expect lasers on these ships, if you will, right? But they're still definitely menacing. And interesting contrast between the Ohmu shell and these vaguely organic shapes.
(1:00:57) I think it's also interesting is that it very clearly indicates that there is...there are rules operating in this world where you don't make the insects angry. True.
(1:01:09) And if they're using Morse code with flashlights or signaling lights, is there something about long-distance mass communication that makes the insects flip out? Yeah, maybe. Good call. You know, you've got something to do with the little sound pieces as they're coming into the Valley of the Winds that make a certain frequency.
(1:01:30) You know, Nausicaa with her little flute whistle thing that she spins. There are certain frequencies. So is this, they learned the hard way, that if you use a radio, the things are like, "Hey, look, that's the frequency we love!" Yeah. A lot of them can fly. Yeah. I was going to say, John, to your point, it's like they probably learned the hard way, so that's why they put so many guns on the turrets and all that. Mm-hmm.
(1:01:59) And then we also saw how well that worked last time. So, interesting. Well, they "landed. So to your point, you know, there's definitely protocols for dealing with the creatures and with the spores. But also we find out if you can get to them fast enough before they release spores, you can at least kill it and it's not going to wipe anything out. Yeah.
(1:02:25) And we will stop there for this episode. We will continue, pick right up where we left off with the next episode, and continue analyzing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. So thank you for joining us, and until next time, watch more anime.
