Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

I LOVE Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away and Howls Moving Castle are some of my favorite movies from childhood. I had never seen this one before. I really liked this film. At the beginning of the movie I was a little confused. It took me awhile to understand the premise of the movie. I got that it was post apocalyptic. People ruined all the soil and water and so the land was rebelling against them by creating the Ohm and the Toxic Jungle. Nausicaa was a young girl and princess with the body of an adult who connected to the jungle and apparently was the only person who understood that if you don’t hurt it it won’t hurt you back. The only thing in the plot that was confusing was why everyone was fighting over the stupid giant human who didn’t even help anything. All the people were killing each other over this giant weapon.

I really like the main character Nausicaa. She had an obvious curiosity for nature right from the beginning. She was able to communicate with the Ohm in a way that no other human was able to. She even surprised the other lord. The reason the Ohm listened to her was because she was kind when she was a child she wanted to save a baby and in the end that is what saved her and her people. The connection between her any nature was beautifully shown.

The way the movie portrays nature is very interesting. The Toxic Forest is shown with trees super high and thick with growth. There are also funguses everywhere. The movie shows how nature is reclaiming the planet because of our disgusting practices. It continues to grow and capture those who dare to disturb it.

Overall I think this film did a great job of showing how our environment can naturally clean itself if humans were out of the way. I think where it was lacking was the ending where the princess saved everything all by herself. I don’t think that is realistic for saving our planet. Itis going to take a lot of us working together to fix what we’ve done.