Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Read the original on Letterbox'd

I knew going in that this was a film about environmentalism, but so much of it is also about being caught between warring powers who don't seem to actually care about undoing environmental devastation, and that's kind of really resonant with me right now, considering so much of the powers that be are intent on doing war instead of working together to build a better world.

Nausicaä herself is a Disney Princess, except actually competent and capable and with agency in her own story. We're introduced to her exploring the Toxic Jungle/Sea of Decay, where she's practicing amateur botany in the most dangerous place in her world. She saves her old mentor figure by communing with nature and calming one of the Ohm, the magnificent and almost deific "insects" that rule the Sea of Decay. She then manages to tame a fox-squirrel by showing it that she isn't afraid even as it bites her. I joked to Roomie that she clearly has druid levels. But more than that, when her father is murdered she actually attacks the soldiers that did it, and fights them off, outright killing a handful of them. It's an act that hangs heavy over the rest of the film, and she seems determined to never kill again. Characters don't need a motivation to not kill or anything, but so often, especially in fantasy fiction, you'll get heroes who have no trouble dispatching nameless mooks without a second thought. But when Nausicaä kills the men who took her father from her, she doesn't just feel remorse, she tells Yupa that she's afraid of her rage, and she doesn't want to kill anyone else. Even when other people, even her enemies, are being killed, she tries to interpose herself to stop them from being harmed, just like Yupa did when she was fighting with a soldier. In a world of Marvel movies where the only major character who doesn't kill is Spider-Man (except when they're aliens, in which case it's okay to activate Kill Mode). I will say it's actually kind of interesting when Miyazaki's other notable environmentalist princess has zero qualms with killing, but I guess that's what happens when you're raised by wolves.

I don't know if I agree with everything in the movie (the old caretaker of the king is kind of a downer, who talks about inevitability and fate, even if everyone dies), and there is a bit of a Gaia Hypothesis sort of thing going on that feels a bit more hopeful than I'm willing to get, but overall the message is about living in harmony with nature. The world was destroyed, but Nature is Healing™. The world will be purified by the trees, but the trees need to be protected from humanity by the Ohm and the other insects. When the humans try to push the forest back, burning more than just to keep the spores from infecting their homes, the Ohm react and destroy the villages and then die of hunger and finally their bodies release spores. But the spores are only toxic because the land itself is toxic, which is why even when the villages live outside of the forest, they often succumb to illness brought on by the toxins. Ultimately it's the desire to control nature rather than live in harmony with it that leads to a cataclysmic backlash. The giant superweapon that serves as a threat hanging over the story, and the impetus for the nations of Pejite and Tolmekia to have strife that spills over into the Valley of the Wind, the weapon that was one of the things that destroyed the world in seven days, is useless to stop the Ohm. Brought to life too early, it falls apart under it's own weight despite being "the most evil thing ever created". But the Ohm are also deific beings. It's Nausicaa's sacrifice at the end, the willingness to endanger herself to save the baby Ohm, that leads them to see her—and by extension humanity—as worthy.

There's a prophecy about how a hero clad in blue robes will come on fields of gold to bring the people into the Land of Purity, and I didn't notice *when* the change of the red Pejite robes to blue ones happened, but in going back to check just now it clicked for me. Her robes changed color when they were stained with the baby Ohm's blood. She held it back from going into the lake of acid and it stained her robes until they became a bright blue. And when she died, the Ohm brought her back to life and held her up on their filaments in a shining golden field.

If I had one real complaint about this, it's that whatever the original story was like, it was 16 chapters across 7 volumes of manga. This is a breezy two hours. I would have liked to see this breathe a bit more. I would like to have gotten to know the world better. But it's still really good. And having been recommended it by a friend, I can see the influences this has had on Roomie's roleplaying game characters, who are often weird bug loving pacifists. Then again, so is Xe.

The ending shows the people rebuilding. The Tolmekians leave. The Sea of Decay no longer seems to be filled with toxic clouds. Deep in the underground sands, a sprout blooms in Nausicaä's left behind cap. It's a hopeful ending, and a magical one. Even if there is a magical solution, there will still be work to rebuild, though. But if we came together, maybe we could.