I remember as a skinny 80s kid, walking barefoot into a videostore near the beach in Spain where I lived. No internet, TV only had 4 channels, and aside from the gift of Dragon Ball on TV nothing else that interested or inspired me.
Then out of hundreds of videos I saw this, I had no idea who Ghibli, anime, even was and had few friends as I was autistic.
Yet I could tell from a couple of pictures on the cover it had themes of flying and war beautifully painted.
I ended up watching that, in the late 80s on a crt , in my swim trunks, and although we had next to no money, and plastic furniture in the house ( ironically we lived in the spanish "malibu")... just my family were common workers... I ended up spending a couple of dollars to rent it out a number of times.
Thank you Miyazaki and Studio Ghlibli for your work, it elevated souls in far reaches.
But I had remembered liking it. The glider, the giant bugs, etc.
I spent several years casually trying to find it. But “big ass bug anime” is kind of vague. Eventually I just started looking through catalogs of the timeframe from various distributors and studios.
I don’t know how or when, but eventually I was doing a deep dive on Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and read the description of Naussica. Looked up screenshots. And there it was, that one bit from my childhood.
I found it again when mail order Netflix first came out in my early 20s. It was like rediscovering my childhood and completing a character arc.
Some of that is explainable but the pegasus, dude on the pegasus, and Dr Doom ... makes absolutely zero sense. I guess this is the rock opera version we never got. Maybe Dr Doom somehow sorta kinda was supposed to be Princess Kushana..?? I think the squid guy is a firewarrior, but so is the "sandworm" -- some kind of fever dream Ohm/Gorgon/Firewarrior mix. But why is a tiny adult fire warrior riding a baby giant fire warrior? lololol
I can only imagine the requirements gathering session that lead to this debacle.
Legendary.
[1]: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/00/fe/12/00fe121ffa3600cfb14bbbe1c...
Edit: Dear haters, I <3 <3 <3 Warriors of the Wind and all things Nausicaa, incl. the quirky cover. I even love your downvotes, it means you read this and cared enough to click the button, which hopefully means you are defending the cover. So I love you too!
I'm... appalled by that cover. I wasn't familiar with it. It's bizarre how all the elements of Nausicaa are technically there, yet it looks completely different (in a bad way). Nothing at all like the actual artwork of the movie!
It was published during Nausicaa's run and has similar themes to Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke. It's certainly more brutal.
It reads like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and the themes are incredibly prescient for the world we're about to be living in [1]. It has direct relevance to everyone on HN.
https://archive.org/details/shuna-no-tabi-complete-translate...
It's a hidden gem and often overlooked.
Spoiler: [1]
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[1] rot13(Vg'f onfrq ba n Gvorgna sbyxgnyr, ohg Zvlnmnxv'f nqncgngvba zvtug qrcvpg yvsr nsgre NV. Nsgre gur ebobgf gnxr bire naq jr'er yrsg nf n sreny fcrpvrf. Gur oehgnyvgl bs pvivyvmngvbany pbyyncfr nf gur ebobgf pbagvahr gb uneirfg hf naq bhe jbeyq. Ubj jr'er yrsg gb fpencr ol naq qrny jvgu gur pehrygl bs bhefryirf.)
Were there gaping narrative discontinuities...? Certainly.
But that 80s voice acting in the English dub... chef's kiss. The guy who voiced Milo("Asbel" in the movie) was the voice of Leonardo from Ninja Turtles and Kaneda from original dub of Akira!! (Cam Clark)
If I watch any version, I watch Warriors of the Wind. It really is the "Hollywood version" of Nausicaa.
Yeah, the newer one is better, but it doesn't hold a candle to the manga so give me that 80s synth and big hair voice acting any day.
Also I was like 5 when I saw it so nostalgia goggles.
I still am not sure which between Nausicaa the manga, Nausicaa the film, Princess Mononoke, or Spirited Away are his magnum opus. They are all spectacular.
I posted below about his manga, "Shuna's Journey". It's also exceedingly relevant.
And the main character has the right amount of flaws. Even though Nausicaa is totally against war by the second half, the movie shows that this is easier said than done. She has to reach that conclusion after taking part in the fighting herself, and even then she has to use warning shots from a machine gun. She's not invincible until the last scene.
The other 3 books from the manga go into much more depth politically and spiritually, with a lot more philosophy about ecology and even what it means to be human.
The two children in Grave of the Fireflies are fictional, but they're standing in for a tremendous number of real Japanese civilians killed by these events - in some cases literally starved to death. The Americans really did drop incendiary devices on those cities to burn homes to the ground, in our real world. You can certainly make an argument that it was somehow "justified" but it's a terrible thing to have done even if you're quite sure that it wasn't a war crime (which I am not).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies_(short_...
I never thought of the parallel with Christ in the numerous times I watched this film but I can understand why someone would make that connection given the final scenes.
On at least one occasion someone explicitly addresses her as "you, who would be a messiah". And no, that's not a translation artifact; the word is 救世主.
Of course, it is also subverted in some ways, most explicitly in the end, where Nausicaä destroys a plan for a new, better world, in favor of an escape from prophecies and grand plans.
But she's definitely not the same throughout the movie, cause she kills 3 guys early on.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bilohorivka,+Luhansk+oblas...
On 20 September 2022, Luhansk Oblast governor Serhiy Haidai reported that Russian troops had "razed [Bilohorivka] to the ground" during their failed attempts to recapture it, stating that Ukrainian forces had full control of the town.[78]
On 18 October, Russia attempted an assault with artillery support on Bilohorivka, but the attack was repulsed. Russian troops continued to shell liberated settlements.
The armored vehicle assaults and drones destroy trenches and buildings, make craters too, but the sheer extent and size of those craters is from artillery. The tank battles weren't too destructive relatively IIRC
https://blog.alltheanime.com/memories-cannon-fodder/
Blue Gender also good for humanity losing to something
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-mag...
I don't need science to come to this conclusion.
Huh. I never noticed this before but that scene is very much like
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the Rumbling in Attack on Titan, when the Colossal Titans are sent to destroy the world by Eren.
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Also see Figure 4, "Giant warrior falling apart while charging up to fire".
Possible inspiration, maybe?
Apropos for current times.
