Review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

7.5/10 Miyazaki kicks of his career with a very solid entry with Nausicaa. After the world has been destroyed by what is known as the "seven Days of Fire," the Earth is now a wasteland almost completely uninhabitable to humanity. A toxic forest constantly spreads over the land, destroying any civilizations standing in its way. The toxic forest is also home to giant insects known as Ohmu. The Ohmu protect the forest and only leave it once enraged and rampage until they die from exhaustion. The story follows a young girl named Nausicaa, who is the princess of a human settlement who lives in the "Valleyof the Wind." Nausicaa has this innate ability to connect with all living beings and treats all with the same respect she does as humans, even the toxic forest itself and the creatures residing in it. Throughout the story, Nausicaa runs into other groups of humans with their own ideologies. Some peaceful, others very violent. Nausicaa's village is eventually overtaken by a warmongering nation that plans to destroy the Toxic Forest by using a sleeping God Warrior, one of the beings that caused the "Seven Days of Fire." Eventually, this conflict leads to many different issues such as humanity's impact on the planet, the right to live and die, environmentalism, and many more. There is also an overarching religious and holy theme that surrounds the movie that really shines at the end, as this movie does have an open, but somewhat hopeful ending. This movie really seems like the groundwork for some of Miyazaki's later movies, such as Princess Mononoke. Where I find Nausicaa falling behind in his later works would be characters. As much as Nausicaa is a very good character I personally don't find much reason to be attached to her, yes she is a girl boss, which is pretty epic and fights for a noble cause, but outside of that, she doesn't develop at all. I feel as though she never takes time to learn from her actions and stays reckless throughout the whole movie as seen in the end with her death. A lot of the side characters also seem pretty dimensional and outside of one, it seems like they don't have a major impact on the story. Nausicaa is a good movie, but comparing it to other Ghibli's it seems more like a stepping stone or experiment to try out ideas at times because it seems like so much of Miyazaki's later works handle the themes in Nausicaa either more in-depth or better.