1. The Lore
Once upon a time, in those dim days before Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki had worldwide fame and acclaim, Miyazaki wanted to make an anime film about a girl who flew through a poison land on a small vehicle and consorted with giant intelligent arthropods. However, the lofty ones who held the money would not provide him any unless the film were based on a successful manga. Therefore, Miyazaki set to work creating Nausicaa in print.
It was enough; before long, those people who sat on their piles of gold offered him some, and the film was made, and audiences were stunned and delighted.
Yet the manga did not end, and Miyazaki continued on, crafting his non-animated story in long, steady detail and bringing it to another conclusion with rich depth and broad reach.
And those who know the manga are still grateful he did so.
2. The Reading Experience
Miyazaki took the story in different directions in film and manga. The manga isn’t just the movie with extra background filled in; there are significant divergences in the basic plot, though a lot is recognizable from one version to the other.
Color plays an important role in the story (dressed in blue, blue eyes vs. red eyes, even miasma that’s said to be a different color). That’s strange for something published in black and white, with the result that characters must constantly tell us what color something is, but of course it comes from Nausicaa’s origin as an anime proposal.
When it comes to one particular entity, readers may need to be reminded that Nausicaa appeared well before Gainax’s Evangelion. On the other hand, the manga had a long publication run, so I’m not sure whether the chapters with the villains in eyeball masks predate Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–91), and I don’t remember if they’re in the Nausicaa film.
The most recent publication of Nausicaa in the U.S. is a large-size 2-volume set of hardbacks encased in a sturdy box. One downside to this presentation is that there aren’t many chapter breaks or other clearly defined stopping points, so it’s easy to get sucked in and just keep reading and reading and reading, instead of making time to digest what you’ve already devoured. And there’s a lot that deserves to be thought about along the way.
3. Some Points to Ponder
Nausicaa is pure of heart, but that purity can erupt in ruthless violence when she sees someone threatening others or in recklessness when she thinks someone needs saving; singleness of mind can lead to action without thought of consequences.
Nausicaa inspires fierce love and devotion in the people following her . . . and so does Kushana, one of the main antagonists.
When Nausicaa fights hand-to-hand she has no great upper-body strength, so instead she uses her lightness, throwing aside conventional combat and relying on nimble, agile grace to flash past an opponent’s defenses. There’s an early scene where she uses a sword almost as long as she is tall; instead of wielding it the ordinary way, she swings it like a scythe, then uses it to vault herself in the air. Her body is flexible and so are her methods.
Nature will find a balance. However, that may take centuries, and there is no reason to expect that human beings will survive in the meantime. In the wake of global near-annihilation, nature is not bent on rescuing a particular species, whether that’s a triceratops or us.
Nausicaa presents war as senseless, brutal, horrible, and tragic. War creates suffering for soldiers and noncombatants and the natural world, and sometimes for the rulers who made the decision to fight.
In the war neither side is right. One side invaded, but the other had already prepared catastrophic biological weapons and was eager to use them, even where that endangered its own people.
Saving one or two lives in the middle of a war where thousands die might seem pointless or futile. But it does matter.
Over and over in Nausicaa someone who seems plainly a villain does something unvillainous, whether it’s a single good deed, being surprisingly brave and willing to listen, or changing completely to follow a different path. (And yet not every villain will change.)
When people tell you you’re going overboard with your idealism, sometimes you should ignore them and march forward on your principles; other times you should listen because you really are going too far. Just because Nausicaa is right to ignore advice sometimes doesn’t mean she’s right every time, and as readers we don’t have to believe that all of her choices are the right ones or even the best available.
Nausicaa is told of another idealist who started out determined to make life better for everyone, but “When the peasants proved to be incorrigibly stupid, he grew to hate them” and went on to do monstrous things. She also learns of a group of people who believed humans would one day be mature enough to act without hatred and cruelty, and so left powerful technology open to abuse by later generations, generations that saw only weaponry and victory over enemies.
Nausicaa avoids becoming like either example. First because people warn her of the danger (or mock her with it), and she doesn’t delude herself that she’s somehow better or purer than those previous people so it won’t happen to her. She remains able to doubt her own perfection. Second because in all of her idealism and faith in the value of humanity and other creatures, in all her burning desire to save everyone and make life good, she won’t hide from the truth that people do horrible things to each other, whether they’re rulers, soldiers, peasants, or priests. She knows this, and wants to save them anyway, not because they’re good and just but simply because they live.
Finding the good in someone does not mean ignoring the bad in that person.
The story, in fact, depicts Nausicaa slowly coming to grips with her own taint of evil. For much of the journey she mentally pictures herself as a child although her body is grown. It takes several times being confronted in one way or another before she can wrestle with the fact that she is not innocent and she too has killed and she too has taken part in destruction.
There’s a scene where someone asks Nausicaa, “Was I a good person?” It’s significant that she doesn’t answer this question directly. Instead she says, “I’m proud of you and you were brave and pure of heart.” Which isn’t quite the same.
It’s a good question whether Nausicaa has the right to take actions that affect the future of all humanity. And yet she’s opposing people who are already taking actions that affect the future of humanity. What right do they have? She’s aware, finally, that she might be wrong and her actions might have bad consequences. She realizes that what she’s doing might be a mistake, and yet allowing things to go on as they have been going is unacceptable.
She calls one of her previous choices a gamble. The action she takes at the end is also a gamble, but she’s not betting on an improvement in human nature, she’s betting on the power of life, the ability of living things to adapt and continue when the world around them changes. Life is determined to live and will find a way no one might foresee.