Earlier in the year we had a look at several animated films from Studio Ghibli—and for the hell of it, we’ll have another retrospective of anime features well-known and not, starting with one that predates Ghibli even if it’s usually counted in its canon. It was definitely the one that solidified director Hayao Miyazaki’s place on the map, though his preceding major work Castle of Cagliostro is no less influential in its own right. Still, this is one that I’ve definitely been wanting to touch on—it remains a classic for many, it’s Nausicaa.
It’s funny to think that this film was supposedly made on a much more limited budget than one would assume—and yet, in terms of animation and direction, it blows away what Disney was floundering about with at the time (there’s some people who like Black Cauldron, I guess…in a very cult way…). Right away from the opening credits we get some iconic tapestry-like titles showcasing the background to the post-apocalyptic world that takes place in. It’s one ravaged in a distant past by titan war machines, and now being fought over not only between rival nations, but hordes of giant insects arising from the toxic lands created by the ancient war.
The sense of design is great—from the creatures to the painted backdrops of weird flora, to the blend of technology used by all that seems to combine both medieval and WW2. Nausicaa herself, our young heroine soon to be caught up in the aforementioned struggles, is arguably a template to be used for many a subsequent female character in east and west—introduced already as a free spirit exploring caustic wilds, to ultimately having to be the one to decide the fate of the whole world around her.
Miyazaki’s own styles in both animation and writing were codified here too—like his passion for aircraft and flying, with some truly great aerial sequences with some breathtaking senses of scale and motion. Overall really the film does have a rather timeless feel to it as his best pieces do—well, with the exception of some of the soundtrack and its very eighties synth beats.
But there’s the more important glue to bring together any work, that of theme—and while Nausicaa does of course have a very strong environmental message that Miyazaki likes, as he did with Princess Mononoke years later, there’s more to it than that. War and pride and all the things that come with it are topics not shied away from—the antagonists genuinely believe they’re doing what is best for their nation and the world, even if ultimately all they are misguidedly doing is propagating more destruction. That all comes together in the climax—which, especially for the time, is one of the most intense you’d see in an animated epic like this.
There’s no shying away from the sense of peril there, with some very effective shots of massive insect swarms and more—and then punctuated with imagery invoking the nuclear threat itself. Bearing in mind that this was the eighties, when the threat of a true war to end all wars was looming, and this was Japan, the one nation in the world to claim a very visceral relationship with the power of the atom. Past the topics of man’s existence with nature, it all serves alongside a pointed portrayal of pride and desperation only leading to more chaos.
The very last scene after that might be a bit on the nose, but it doesn’t change that for many including myself, Nausicaa holds up very well indeed, and though animation-wise doesn’t quite reach the sheer beauty of most of Miyazaki’s later works looks good enough there still. Its influence reaches far, from video games like Final Fantasy, to of course other anime—like a certain one you might of heard of, and a personal favorite of Robin Williams’ no less, Neon Genesis Evangelion. That one, we might just get to in some form soon enough…
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