is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki. Taking place on a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by a toxic ecosystem, it tells the story of Nausicaä, the princess of the titular Valley of the Wind, who becomes embroiled in a war between kingdoms while an environmental disaster threatens humankind.
Prior to creating Nausicaä, Miyazaki had worked as an animator for Toei Animation, Nippon Animation and Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), the latter for whom he had directed his feature directorial debut, The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). After working on an aborted film adaptation of Richard Corben's comic book Rowlf for TMS, he agreed to create a manga series for Tokuma Shoten's monthly magazine Animage, initially on the condition that it would not be adapted into a film. The development of Nausicaä was influenced by the Japanese Heian period tale "The Lady who Loved Insects", a similarly named character from Homer's epic poem Odyssey, and the Minamata Bay mercury pollution incident. The setting and visual style of the manga was heavily influenced by the works of Mœbius, such as Arzach. It was serialized intermittently in Animage from February 1982 to March 1994 and the individual chapters were collected and published by Tokuma Shoten in seven volumes. It was serialized with an English translation in North America by Viz Media from 1988 to 1996 as a series of 27 comic book issues, and has been published in collected form multiple times.
Since its initial serialization, Nausicaä has received widespread acclaim for its characters, themes, and artwork. It achieved commercial success, particularly in Japan, where the series has more than 17 million copies in circulation. The manga received a film adaptation in 1984, written and directed by Miyazaki and released following the serialization of the manga's first sixteen chapters. It also garnered universal acclaim from critics and audiences. The manga and film are credited as the catalysts for the founding of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio for which Miyazaki created several of his most recognized works.
Synopsis
Setting
The story is set in the future at the closing of the ceramic era, 1,000 years after the Seven Days of Fire, a cataclysmic global war, in which industrial civilization self-destructed. Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth is still heavily polluted and the seas have become poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the Sea of Corruption, a toxic forest of fungal life and plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large mutant insects, including the massive Ohmu. Humanity clings to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain. The ability for space travel has been lost, but the earth-bound remnants of humanity can still use gliders and powered aircraft for exploration, transportation, and warfare. Powered land vehicles are entirely nonexistent though, with humanity regressed to dependence on riding animals and beasts-of-burden.
Plot
Nausicaä is the teenage 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, a poisonous forest, 300 years ago. An inquisitive young woman, she explores the territories surrounding the Valley on a jet-powered glider, and studies the Sea of Corruption.
When the Valley goes to war, she takes her ailing father's place as military chief. The leaders of the Periphery states are vassals to the Torumekian Emperor and are obliged to send their forces to help when he invades the neighboring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong military, but the Doroks, whose ancestors bioengineered the progenitors of the Sea of Corruption, have developed a genetically modified version of a mold from the Sea of Corruption. When the Doroks introduce this mold into battle, its rapid growth and mutation result in a daikaisho (roughly translated from Japanese as "great tidal wave"), which floods across the land and draws the insects into the battle, killing as many Doroks as 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 expansion of the mold, which is beyond human control. Nausicaä resigns herself to joining in their fate. However, one of the Ohmu encapsulates her inside itself in a protective serum, allowing her to survive the mold. She is recovered by her companions, people she met after leaving the Valley and who have joined her on her quest for a peaceful coexistence. The fact that the mold can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her treks into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People, humans who have learned to live in harmony with the Sea of Corruption, confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and one of them shows Nausicaä a vision of the restored Earth at the center of the forest. Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory, where her coming has long been prophesied, to seek those responsible for manipulating the mold. There, she encounters a dormant God Warrior who, upon activation, assumes she is his mother and places his destructive powers at her disposal. Faced with this power and its single-minded and childlike visions of the world, she engages the creature, names him and persuades him to travel with her to Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks.
Here she enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire. She learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilization. They created the Sea of Corruption to clean the land of pollution, altered human genes to cope with the changed ecology, stored their personalities inside the Crypt and waited for the day when they could re-emerge, leaving the world at the mercy of their artificially created caretaker. However, their continual manipulation of the population and the world's environment is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order. She argues that mankind's behavior has not been improved significantly by the activities of those inside the crypt, and the crypt itself is incapable of change. Strife and cycles of violence have continued to plague the world in the thousand years following their interference, as Nausicaä believes humanity has no need for the crypt any longer. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, forcing humanity to live or die without further influence from the old society's technology. Nausicaä exits the crypt in time to see its total collapse, and the death of the old king of Torumekia. Nausicaä commands the crowd that has been waiting outside the crypt that "...they must live."
Development
Precursors and early development Miyazaki began his professional career in the animation industry as an inbetweener at Toei in 1963 but soon had additional responsibilities in the creation processes. While working primarily on animation projects for television and cinema, he also pursued his dream of creating manga. In conjunction with his work as a key animator on the film The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots (1969), his manga adaptation of the same title was published in 1969. That same year, a pseudonymous serialization started of his manga People of the Desert. His manga adaptation of the film Animal Treasure Island (1971) was serialized in 1971.
After the release of Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Miyazaki, now at the Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), began working on his ideas for an animated film adaptation of Richard Corben's comic book Rowlf and pitched the idea to Yutaka Fujioka at TMS. In November 1980, a proposal was drawn up to acquire the film rights. Around that time, Miyazaki was also approached for a series of magazine articles by the editorial staff of Tokuma Shoten's Animage. During subsequent conversations, he showed his sketchbooks and discussed basic outlines for envisioned animation projects with Toshio Suzuki and Osamu Kameyama, at the time working as editors for Animage. They saw the potential for collaboration on Tokuma's development into animation. Initially, two projects were proposed to Tokuma Shoten, significant for the eventual creation of Nausicaä: (which was to be set in the Sengoku period) and the adaptation of Corben's Rowlf, but they were rejected on July 9, 1981, due to the company being unwilling to fund anime projects not based on existing manga and because the rights for the adaptation of Rowlf could not be secured.
An agreement was reached that Miyazaki could start developing his sketches and ideas into a manga for the magazine with the proviso that it would never be made into a film. Miyazaki stated in an interview, "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind only really began to take shape once I agreed to serialize it." In the December 1981 issue of Animage, it was announced that a new manga series would start in the February 1982 issue of the magazine, even though Miyazaki had not completed the first chapter. The illustrated notice introduced the new series' main character, title, and concept. The first chapter, spanning 18 pages, was published in the February 1982 issue. Miyazaki would continue developing the story for another 12 years, with frequent interruptions along the way due to his career in filmmaking.
Influences
Miyazaki proposed various names for the main character during development, eventually settling on "Nausicaä", named of the Greek princess from the Odyssey, and as portrayed in Bernard Evslin's Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology (translated into Japanese by Minoru Kobayashi). In his essay , printed in volume one of the manga, Miyazaki wrote that he was also inspired by The Lady who Loved Insects, a Japanese tale from the Heian period about a young court lady who preferred studying insects rather than wearing fine clothes or choosing a husband. Helen McCarthy considers Shuna from Shuna's Journey, another work by Miyazaki, to be prototypical to Nausicaä. The story's fantasy and science fiction elements were influenced by various works from Western authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, Brian Aldiss' Hothouse, Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The setting and visual style of the manga often reference Jean Giraud (Mœbius), whose wordless 1975 comic Arzach had deeply impressed and inspired Miyazaki.
Among the inspirations for the environmental themes, Miyazaki mentioned the Minamata Bay mercury pollution. The Sea of Corruption is based on the forests on the Japanese island of Yakushima and the marshes of the Sivash, or Rotten Sea, in Ukraine. The works of botanist were among Miyazaki's inspirations for the environment of the story. Miyazaki mentions Nakao in the context of a question he was asked about the place Nausicaä takes in the ecology boom, explaining his shift from a desert to a forest setting. Nakao's influence on his work has been noted by Shiro Yoshioka. Miyazaki has also cited Tetsuji Fukushima's , a story he first read while still in primary school, as one of his earliest influences. Kentaro Takekuma observed this continuity in Miyazaki's work and places it within the tradition of illustrated stories, known as , and manga Miyazaki read while growing up, pointing out the influence of Fukushima on Miyazaki's People of the Desert, which he in turn identifies as a precursor for both Shuna's Journey, created in watercolour and printed in colour, and Nausicaä.
Creation