Over the course of his lengthy career, Hayao Miyazaki has become one of the most beloved and praised directors, not just in animated filmmaking, but in the cinematic medium as a whole. Miyazaki, along with Studio Ghibli, the anime company he co-founded, has produced a myriad of animated classics such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. He has become one of Japan’s most internationally-renowned filmmakers; he’s a multiple Academy Award nominee (winning in 2003 for Spirited Away) and he was presented with an Honorary Oscar for his esteemed filmography in 2015. Miyzaki loves making his films, and he has even come out of retirement for one more film, How Do You Live?.
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Miyazaki has been working in the animation industry for nearly 60 years, and he got his start working as an animator on a variety of different films and television series throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. The first feature film he directed, The Castle of Cagliostro, was released in 1979. However, it was Miyazaki’s second film that put him on the map. Released in 1984, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was the true start of the director’s legendary run of films. Across Miyazaki’s incredibly consistent and celebrated career, Nausicaä still holds up as one of his best and the first true masterpiece to come from the director’s endlessly creative mind.
The Origins of Ghibli
Toei Company
The success of Nausicaä is directly responsible for the founding of Studio Ghibli. The film is based on a manga of the same name, which was also created and written by Miyazaki. With the film, Miyazaki worked with several people who would become long-time creative partners, specifically Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki. Following the release of Nausicaä, the trio decided to continue working together, and in 1985 they founded Studio Ghibli in order to produce their future creative endeavors.
Although 1986’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, was technically the first film created by the team at Studio Ghibli, Nausicaä has been sort of retroactively given the title of the first Ghibli film. Even though the film was originally distributed by the Toei Company, Ghibli has long since gained the rights to the film and distributed it under the company’s name and banner. Many of the films produced by Miyazaki and Ghibli over the years have followed directly in Nausicaä’s footsteps, with intense themes of environmentalism and industrialization, a specific focus on flight, a female lead protagonist, fantastical worlds and magical people that inhabit them. Many of those concepts have become defining aspects of Miyazaki and Ghibli’s overall style and approach to filmmaking, Nausicaä is the blueprint that established those ideas for the company.
Nausicaä also marks the first collaboration between Miyazaki and composer Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi has since conducted the musical score for every film Miyazaki has directed, in addition to other Ghibli productions such as The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Hisaishi’s work on Nausicaä incorporated a mix of electronic and classical instrumentation. He used various synthesizer soundscapes (that sound very 1980s in the best way) throughout many of the film’s action sequences, but when it comes to the central themes of Nausicaä and the natural world, Hisaishi chose to utilize soft piano and string ballads instead.
Epic Fantasy Filmmaking
Watching through Miyazaki’s filmography, it’s clear that the director has an affinity and talent for telling very fantastical stories. A vast majority of Miyazaki’s films are set in high fantasy worlds, and they tell epic stories of magic and war within these worlds. Considering his talent for developing, designing, and bringing these environments to life, it’s tempting to consider what a Miyazaki-directed adaptation of The Lord of the Rings or Dune would look like. Well, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind certainly scratches that contemplative itch, as the film is basically Miyazaki’s equivalent to those kinds of high fantasy stories.
The world that Nausicaä depicts is basically everything a fantasy fan could want. It’s a strange world with a lengthy history, all sorts of odd giant creatures, warring civilizations, and plenty of reflections of humanity’s folly. The different civilizations each have their own distinct cultures and visual looks, clearly establishing their societies and separating them from one another. There is a masterful elder warrior named Lord Yupa (voiced by Patrick Stewart in the US dub) who is searching for a prophesied leader who will appear and save the world from its second destruction. And the titular character of Nausicaä is a natural hero who is forced to confront her own beliefs and flaws, and she ultimately becomes the hero of legend. It’s about as high fantasy as you can get, and it’s certainly one of the most epic and mythological stories Miyazaki has ever told.
The design and animation of Nausicaä’s world is beautiful and intricate, just as Studio Ghibli’s films would become famous for in the following decades. Nausicaä’s home, the Valley of the Wind, is a gorgeous place with a simple but effectively quaint atmosphere to it. Meanwhile, the Toxic Jungle is a very detailed and mysterious place, full of strangely arranged vegetation and populated with scary but oddly regal giant bugs that can be both adorable and the stuff of nightmares. The Ohm (or Ohmu) are the best example of this, as their sheer enormity and innumerable eyes are disturbing to look at, but when Nausicaä is able to calm their rage, they are actually very gentle creatures.
Environmental Messaging
Miyazaki’s films have always come with some form of heavy messaging or thematic material, with the treatment of the natural world consistently being one of them. Nausicaä is certainly no exception. The film depicts life on a post-apocalyptic Earth, in which the planet had been ravaged thousands of years prior by bio-engineered Giant Warriors that enacted a week-long nuclear decimation of the world and its societies. In this bleak future world in which Nausicaä resides, the natural environment of the planet is relentlessly poisonous, giant bugs and insects roam the world and threaten the surviving sects of humanity, and the people that remain are secluded in their different kingdoms which are constantly at war with one another.
Needless to say, Nausicaä doesn’t paint a positive image of the result of nuclear fallout. However, the overall message of the film remains surprisingly optimistic, as amidst all these depressing circumstances the focus of Nausicaä remains on understanding the natural world and treating it with respect. While the warring nations of Pejite and Tolmekia fight over an unearthed embryo of a Giant Warrior, with each kingdom wanting to use the warrior’s power to destroy the other and the Toxic Jungle that they reside near, the character of Nausicaä remains focused on connecting with and healing the natural world rather than further destroying it. She wants to avoid further death and destruction. She consistently risks her life to save others and spares her enemies even when they wouldn’t do the same.
Thematically, Nausicaä is about the constant war humanity is waging on the natural world, which is an idea that would be further explored in Princess Mononoke. While the different nations of humanity are constantly fighting each other, they all view the giant bugs of the Toxic Jungle as their primary enemy. They dream of destroying the jungle and restoring humanity to the massively industrious state it used to be. Meanwhile, the plants and creatures of the jungle are just progressing along their natural path. This idea that nature is just trying to heal is further established when Nausicaä discovers the clean air and environments that exist beneath the Toxic Jungle. The film shows that nature is just trying to clean up the mess that humanity made of the world, and mankind’s constant need for dominance threatens to submerge the world into nuclear chaos once again.
