Visualizing environmental costs of war in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä
43 comments
·June 20, 2025upghost
Do yourself a flava and read the Manga. The movie ends before where the first volume ends, but the story goes in a completely different and much more interesting direction.
kibwen
Worth mentioning that the manga is itself drawn by Miyazaki, and that he originally stipulated that it should never be made into a film. Fully agreed that the manga is far more beautiful and complete than the film.
KeepFlying
Don't forget how horribly the first English adaptation of the film went too.
upghost
Was the plot completely butchered...? Yes.
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.
InvisibleUp
It wasn’t that bad. It cut a few scenes but most of the movie is still there perfectly intact. It even won film festival awards. The movie mostly flopped in the US market on account it being distributed on a very low budget limited release against Rambo and The Goonies. SpaceHunterM on YouTube made a good video explaining a lot of misconceptions, if you want to check that out.
tuna74
Miyazaki was the director of the movie and probably drew a lot more than a traditional anime movie director.
Kapura
Glad to know that others agree; this is the elephant in the room that the original link doesn't mention. The manga was completed several years after the film's release, and the expanded freedom allows the story to be expanded in every direction. Many of the themes present in later Miyazaki works (stuff like redemption for certain villains) are absent from the film but have time to develop in the manga.
omnee
Like others I want to recommend the manga. It's a masterpiece and in my opinion Miyazaki's Magnum Opus.
echelon
It's certainly his biggest world, and the themes of climate change and environmentalism are directly relevant.
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.
HideousKojima
Also the secret truth about the world in Nausicaa (not going to spoil it here) has been copied by several other animes and video games since, it's been very influential. Notably the anime Ergo Proxy and the video game Nier seem to take some significant inspiration from it.
echelon
There is no work from Miyazaki that should be more relevant to us on HN than Shuna no Tabi (シュナの旅, Shuna's Journey).
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.)
frollogaston
I'm not into anime, but this is in my top 3 favorite movies. Aside from the sheer coolness, it's environmentalist but not in the typical annoying way like the blue people Avatar movie. It's more matter-of-fact, you won't win fighting against nature or against each other.
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.
N_Lens
> When analyzing Miyazaki’s films, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, often the messages regarding warfare’s effects on the natural world focus more on the direct impacts rather than the indirect ones. Additionally, many researchers look at the film from a spiritual lens with DeWeese-Boyd (2009) believing Nausicaä serves as a Christ-like figure, while both Morgan (2015) and Nunes (2021) believe that Nausicaä serves as an example of how to restore balance between humans and nature. Despite that, these authors see her role in restoring balance differently. Nunes believes that Nausicaä gave herself to nature, sacrificing her free will in order to heal the earth without personal bias. On the other hand, Morgan believes that she serves as an example of how the fragmentation between the mind, body, spirit and nature can be restored through respect and care for the natural world.
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.
frollogaston
I thought this was intentional, cause she sacrifices herself then gets resurrected, also visuals like https://www.mother-god.com/images/nausicaa.jpg and https://beneaththetangles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/507...
But she's definitely not the same throughout the movie, cause she kills 3 guys early on.
mmustapic
The visuals of her sacrifice and resurrection are very similar to Neo’s sacrifice in Matrix pt 3
brazzy
The messiah theme is much stronger in the manga. Not just the resurrection: she collects followers, at least one a converted enemy, by showing an all-encompassing love and helping those in need wherever she can.
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.
tmtvl
As the site is currently getting hugged I will say that Nausicaa didn't quite leave as much an impression on me as Grave of the Fireflies, but Miyazaki's environment design is always spot-on (the entirety of Farewell My Beloved Lupin, for example, improves on every rewatch as you notice more details).
randomNumber7
Grave of the Fireflies is the most emotionally disturbing movie I have ever watched (including non animes). It is a masterpiece but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.
pchristensen
It was definitely not a barrel of monkeys, but I think it is an important expression of the costs of war on the innocent, and the effects of societal inequality in general. It's powerful in a way that statistics cannot deliver. You'd also be hard pressed to find a better story of unconditional love, duty, sacrifice, and maturity.
iamwil
It's the only movie that I liked that I'd only want to watch once.
BriggyDwiggs42
Oh I couldn’t remember what this was called. I watched it for a film class. Utterly devastating.
h2zizzle
If you ever do, make sure to do so as a double feature with My Neighbor Totoro (as it was originally released in theaters).
everybodyknows
Ever seen "Threads"?
khimaros
tell me you haven't seen Old Boy without telling me you haven't seen Old Boy
tialaramex
Oldboy is fiction.
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).
flakiness
You should notice the shadow of the traumatic experience from atomic bombs that permeated into the Japanese society throughout the 20th century (vs. concerns around carbon emissions today.)
ge96
Memories was a good one too
https://blog.alltheanime.com/memories-cannon-fodder/
Blue Gender also good for humanity losing to something
FuriouslyAdrift
The bigger short in "Memories", "Magnetic Rose", is one of my all time favorite stories (It's Satoshi Kon, Koji Morimoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Yoko Kanno !!!)
https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-mag...
ge96
the level of detail in older anime is just crazy like Roujin Z
tokai
For a contemporary example of the effects of war on nature the area around Bilohorivka in Ukraine is quite the eye opener. At least it was for me.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bilohorivka,+Luhansk+oblas...
popol12
What do we see here ? Artillery impacts ?
monetus
Almost entirely.
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
randomNumber7
> The paper will show that the visuals in the film are not simply aesthetic decisions, but a crucial narrative device to convey the effects of war on both people and nature.
I don't need science to come to this conclusion.
lazide
Nothing about the paper is science hah. But it is a paper!
snickerbockers
ARE YOU DENYING THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL OF GEEK STUDIES?
Absolute masterpiece both the Anime and this blog entry.
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.