IMDb #196 Review: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Source: Wikpiedia

Miyazaki's first original movie establishes the blueprint for all the others to follow. Kickass heroine? Top-notch animation, music, storytelling? Heavy-handed environmentalist subtext? Gratuitous flight sequences? All that and more.

As the clunky opening narration informs us, the evil industrialist society was razed by fire-puking Evangelion prototypes. In the resultant wasteland, agrarians eke out a meek existence in the Valley of the Wind, where the sea breeze wafts away poisonous spores.

The dominant species on this hellish world is the gigantic psychic trilobites who've never heard of the Square Cube Law.

The titular heroine loves these freakish physical anomalies. She's so self-sacrificial, so all-embracing, her Messiah complex could engulf planets. Though her name stems from a minor character in Homer's Odyssey, her odyssey is quite different: save every insect, every human. She talks to herself a lot, and to animals. She's no Gandhi, as her kill list attests. But her weepiness shows she at least feels bad about it.

Chocobo-riding Gandalf brings bad news to the idyllic village. The evil morally ambiguous empire is spreading, and so is the toxic jungle. Coincidentally, a foreign airship crashes in their valley, leaving an embryonic humanoid bio-weapon. The evil empire wants this thing. So the messianic princess Nausicaä goes with the morally ambiguous empire princess on adventures. Like getting involved in stratospheric airship battles, picking up an unnecessary totally-not-a-love-interest (voiced by Shia LaBoeuf?!), and incrementally advancing the plot.

Meanwhile the village in the valley rankles against their imperial overlords, especially the princess's assistant, a deliciously cynical coward. Via politically complex shenanigans, they end up in the path of a rampaging herd of pissed-off giant psychic trilobites. It happens.

The animation isn't as polished as Spirited Away, but for the eighties, it's magnificent. The music isn't my favorite of Joe Hisaishi's, but it's still splendid. And the spotty, stuffy English script is wonky but workable. (Go Disney dubs!)

The only real surprise in store is how astonished the characters are that our messianic archetype protagonist fulfills the requisite ancient prophecy.

117 minutes.