Miyazaki Madness, Part 2: "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" Changes Anime History

Miyazaki's epochal classic is also one of his darkest films

On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with Miyazaki’s second feature - though the first based on his own original creation - 1984’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Enjoy…

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

1984, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Originally written August 1^st, 2013, first published in 200 Reviews

It is impossible to overstate the importance on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, not only as a film, but as one of the single biggest influences on modern anime (and international perceptions of anime and contemporary Japanese cinema). It is a behemoth, a film whose legacy and reputation casts such a large, overwhelming shadow that it can actually be difficult to strip away the layers of fame and hype to remember that this is, simply put, one of the single greatest films ever made, animation or no.

While Nausicaä is not Hayao Miyazaki’s first film, as it is often erroneously said (that would be Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro), this was his first feature that stemmed entirely from his own imagination (it is based on his seminal manga series of the same name), and what an imagination it is! Nausicaä simply bursts with invention, ingenuity, and detail at every turn, and with its distinctive, singular art style, the film may be one of the all-time great cinematic examples of world building. What makes the film a masterpiece, though, is that all this incredible design work operates in service of a powerfully emotional environmental thematic undercurrent, one that seems increasingly prescient (and hauntingly prophetic) as time passes by.