Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds (1984)

Title: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Genre: Anime
Highs: Beautiful art directions and wonderful story.
Lows: None
RhynoBot Grade: A

I am pretty much a newcomer when it comes to Japanese anime, I have really only watched a handful of movies to date, but of those few movies I know what I like and can recognize greatness without much of a reference point. Nausicaa is one of those movies that exhibits greatness effortlessly and the credit goes to writer/director Hayao Miyazaki. This is the third movie I have seen of Miyazaki's, the two previous being "Princess Mononoke" and the award winning "Spirited Away". Both of these movies are masterfully scripted and designed creating an enchanted but yet familiar world in which the characters live. Nausicaa follows in step with both of his two previous works of art. Actually my previous statement is a bit of a misnomer since Nausicaa was released in Japan well before the commercial and critical success of Mononoke and Spirited Away here in the US, so really Nausicaa set the bar for all of Miyazaki's later work. For someone that has never watch one of Miyazaki's films, the best way to describe what you are in for is it's like watching a Pixar movie - great story, awesome animation, and always fun entertainment. But instead of being computer generated animation like Pixar, Miyazaki's movies are hand drawn but always a great story, awesome animation, with a meaningful purpose for telling the story (there are values and lessons to be learned from these movies).

Nausicaa is set in the future (2136 roughly, I think) where great wars have been waged against a giant insect invasion. Most land masses were left in ruin by the war and the spread of a toxic spore. Small patches of civilization still exist on the fringe of contaminated areas, under constant threat of insect invasion and spread of the toxic spores. Nausicaa is a teenaged girl (a princess actually) that has a special talent for communicating with the insects in a rudimentary fashion. The cause of the insect invasion and the contamination of the Earth with toxic spores is unknown. But due to bizarre circumstances Nausicaa discovers that the spores serve a useful purpose, they are cleansing the Earth of poisons we have polluted it with and the insects are protecting this cleansing process. The people in Nausicaa's homeland, the Valley of the Wind, are peaceful farmers, but an aggressive neighboring community overrun the valley after one of their military ships crashes carrying an ancient weapon designed to destroy the insects. Nausicaa and a friend she makes along the way on her adventure work tirelessly to stop the aggressors and the stampeding insects headed straight for her beloved valley and those she loves.

The story is a simple one but it's meaning is complex. Miyazaki describes a wide range of human emotion while concerning himself and his viewers with issues related to the environment, nature, friendship, and love; all of which are fragile in there own way, all of which require work to maintain the sanctity of there meaning; great lessons to be learned by our children. Some people would say how could you possibly get so much emotion out of a cartoon. I would say, the same way Michelangelo or Renoir can elicit emotion from the images they create. Art inspires us regardless of whether the media is oil to canvas, coal to paper, chisel to earth, or colorful ink in motion. Miyazaki is an artist and I look forward to sharing his work with my children just as much as I look forward to sharing art hanging in a museum.

This is a great movie, you should see it.