Review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

I'm only writing this review since there's so few mixed or negative ones, if I had enjoyed the film I wouldn't have bothered since that would just be heaping praise on the huge pile of prior praise, but more negative viewpoints might be more important to showcase. The film started out strongly by setting up an interesting post-apocalyptic world. But as the story progressed things just happened willy-nilly with zero to no explanation, and by the end the whole story and world just felt shallow and basic. At the start you might wonder: Wow, why is the world ruined like this? Why are there giantinsects roaming about and why do they have a spreading eco-system that kills the world? Why does Nausicaä seem to be able to communicate with insects? What's all that stuff about a prophecy? The answers given were: WAR BAD. POLLUTION BAD. INSECTS CLEAN POLLUTION SOMEHOW. SHE JUST CAN SOMEHOW. LOL I DON'T KNOW, MAGIC I GUESS. Not satisfactory answers in the slightest, so at the end I just felt like I'd watched a two hour long children's fable or an overly convoluted and long Captain Planet-episode.

The positives are the good (not great) animation, the fact that the violence depicted in the film actually has realistic effect (not like in Porco Rosso where the guns don't seem to actually do anything and I don't even understand why people are afraid of them), and the music is quite pleasant as well. If the runtime had been ~90 minutes and if they had explained the stuff that happened a bit better then the movie would have been a 7 or 8, but as it stands I can't give it more than a 6, slightly above a passing grade.