I just watched... Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

 And I’m writing this after a long, drawn-out battle with a cockroach… which the cockroach won.

                Like a high school girl at her prom I have a confession to make: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which I don’t have a proper short-form for since just calling it ‘Nausicaa’ is going to lead to all kinds of confusion that isn’t going to end well for you, is the second Ghibli and Miyazaki movie I have watched, with the other one being Princess Mononoke. And if I were to summarise my opinion of Princess Mononoke in a single frenzied word it’d be ‘wowzers’. Yes, I enjoyed the movie that much that I had to go beyond the reach of English language and draw out a word from the shadowy nether-reaches to summarise how much I loved it. Needless to say that my expectations rose as quickly as a man leaping to his death from atop the Eiffel tower, in reverse, and sped up 5x times. And thus I went to see the studio and Miyazaki’s first movie with lofty expectations: and spoiler-alert, I now have a man-crush on two Miyazakis.

Nausicaa's ability to love all life regardless of grotesque-ness is rather admirable. 

                My first impression after watching NotVotW (holy fucking god) is one of confusion, and no I’m not talking about the few minutes I spent mistakenly wondering why Nausicaa was not wearing any pants (considering I was not the only one, I think the choice of pants-colour can be criticised), but the fact that in many ways Princess Mononoke is the same movie because it approaches the same topics and themes in a very similar manner. I’m sure if you stripped both movies far enough you’d find that they both possess the same base skeleton, since they certainly have the same subject at heart.

                But after getting past the initial confusion and looking at both in retrospect I can truly understand why Miyazaki, in a sense, chose to make the same movie ‘twice’. If I were to compare Nausicaa (movie) to Mononoke, I’d say that the former is definitely more ‘idealistic’ with Nausicaa as a far more idyllic character who sometimes felt like a borderline Mary Sue owing to her messianic stature. Mononoke was, comparatively, a far more grey, gritty and neutral look at the subject matter, while Nausicaa had what you could call a far more ‘biased’ look at it, having a strong tilt favouring a certain side. While Nausicaa looked at humanity’s insistence to live at odds with nature and the harm such behaviour can wrought as well as man's self-destructive nature, Mononoke looks at why humanity might live at odds with nature and gives reason to why man might pillage and raze. As a story Nausicaa seems to ‘damn’ one side of the argument, while Mononoke takes the time to give a voice to all sides without outright ‘damning’ it. ‘Humanity is humanity’s own greatest weakness and strength’ is a theme central to both though.

Trudging through the infested areas is lethal without a mask. So, everyone gets to wear badass masks. 

                Another front on which Nausicaa differs is that, while Mononoke was a fantasy story set in Japan, Nausicaa is a Sci-Fi story set in a somewhat European setting. Nausicaa is based in a post-apocalyptic Earth, most of which has been run over by forests that spread toxic blight lethal for humanity, but not for the gigantic insects that infest it. So, not only is humanity being rounded up by these forests but they also live at the mercy of gigantic insects, should they stray near the forests; including the colossal Ohmu, which are better left undescribed for the benefit of your titillation.

                The movie has a lot of strengths, but the greatest one is arguably the world and the sheer creativity gone into it. It’s quite the unique world and even though all we see is just a snippet of it, it’s still enough to get your mind roving and intoxicated by it. It’s setting is not unique, but the denizens, the background and their interactions are all enough to get someone like me drooling. Much like Mononoke I enjoyed watching further just to see what more the world had to offer, and it definitely one-upped Mononoke in this department for having its own unique setting as opposed to a historical base (feudal Japan in Mononoke's case).

                Excluding those generated by time, Mononoke does win the overall strengths battle, and Nausicaa definitely isn’t as dramatic or sharply written, though comparing them in this order seems a tad redundant considering that Nausicaa came first, and both are by the same studio. The movie was also Joe Hisaishi’s debut work, and his work here is definitely interesting, if incredibly odd in many spots. The music does its fair share of genre-hopping and I’d have to admit I found it a tad startling when it suddenly broke into pure techno (of that time) during a chase sequence, while we were previously regaled with lush compositions, the kind that Hisaishi is now revered for, and later showered with some definitely odd and haunting tunes (you’ll know which ones I’m talking about once you hear them).

Nausicaa is a very kind and loving person. Almost a 'mother' figure. 

And you don't want to piss off mama bears. 

                Characters-wise it definitely felt very weak for me because I couldn’t stop comparing the movie to Mononoke and in retrospect I suppose you could consider Mononoke’s characters to be far more nuanced and in-depth looks at some of Nausicaa’s characters; which falls in line with my theory that Mononoke was Miyazaki’s wish to take a more mature and in-depth look at Nausicaa’s subject matter. On a side note, Nausicaa does make some use of deus ex machina in spots, and as I said Nausicaa is a bit of a Mary Sue in many ways, though one could argue it fits in with her ‘mother goddess’ nature.

The bugs come in a grand variety of sizes and means of locomotion. 

                Since I’m going to start trying to limit my writings to rough word limits, so that I can start trying to balance out what logic I might try to squeeze into my ramblings and keep my logic to ramble ratio a bit more consistent and thus my writings more concise and less vaporous, I am going to actually be ending this now. Yes, I’d normally ramble on for double the length under prior circumstances but I feel I’ve said what needed to be said.

Nausicaa is rather beloved, compared to Mononoke's more 'lone-wolf' main character(s). 

                Go watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, just do it and then watch Princess Mononoke. Just do it. Just do it. No, I’m not endorsing Nike.

And yes, even though I have obviously wet the page with my adoration for Princess Mononke I am definitely going to write on it as well once I take my cynical looking glass and watch it again.