Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)



Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a manga by Hayao Miyazaki. It was later adapted into an anime film by Miyazaki, with animation work from Topcraft. It was first published in 1982. This is Miyazaki's most prominent and famous manga work.

The story starts off pretty similar to the anime adaption. A thousand years after the "Seven Days of Fire"--a catalytic event which changed the world forever--there is a small village called the Valley of the Wind. The Valley of the Wind isn't the most glamorous place to live, though. It's bordered by a vast desert and the Sea of Decay, a toxic jungle formed from the aftermath of the Seven Days of Fire. Here, our protagonist Nausicaä lives her day to day life. It's a big step down from the world we know, but at least they're living.

That was, until their status as living is interrupted by a Cool Airship who crash landed into the Valley. This leads to a massive conflict where Nausicaä journeys away from the Valley, in preparation for a war. Thus, the our heroine's story begins.

The manga is a massive expansion of the film's story. The film covers one and a half volumes from the seven volume manga. The entire Dorok race was excluded from the film, and many characters like Chikuku and Ohma never make it into the film. The film is quite different from the manga. In fact, it's safe to say the manga is closer to Neon Genesis Evangelion than Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 


 * The Chessmaster:, who dispenses ancient knowledge to its subjects (and Unwitting Pawns) to keep its plans moving according to schedule.
 * Doorstopper: The two volume deluxe edition. With hard covers containing five hundred pages each, the two volumes in their container can bring any door, no matter how big, to its knees. You know regular doorstoppers? They run like crazy when the two Nausicaä volumes show up.
 * Gambit Roulette: And it was several millennia in the making.
 * Garden of Evil: The Sea of Corruption,  In the manga, though, Nausicaä considers  to be uncomfortably close to this.
 * A God Am I: The Holy Emperor, as well as the.
 * Heroic RROD:.
 * Immortality: The is immortal inasmuch as his head can be cut off and he's still as jolly a fellow as ever.
 * Intimate Healing: In the manga, Nausicaä saves a Torumekian soldier who was poisoned by the miasma by taking the poisoned blood from his lungs into her mouth via his mouth.
 * Inferred Holocaust: The defeat of marks a subtle endgame scenario. Selm tells Nausicaä that the center of the forest,   The forest will survive, but   The final confrontation reveals   plans to restore the world to it's pre-Days of Fire state using its , which are destroyed by Ohma. Without the advanced engineering   possesses, humanity is doomed to slow extinction. This fulfills Nausicaä's role as
 * And yet, Nausicaä assures him that In fact, her own experiments about the Sea of Corruption, as well as the Dream of the Ohmu, point to . It is only the
 * Light Is Not Good: In the manga, . It's even worse when it tries to fly, because its light-wings are blinding-white.
 * Mordor: The Holy City Of Shuwa. Tolas has a bit of this going on, too.
 * No OSHA Compliance: Justified in that the OSHA died out along with Industrialized Civilization. The Pejiti excavation is really not safe and has a lot of accidents, including one of Kurotowa's soldiers falling a hundred or so feet to his death in front of him.
 * Not So Harmless: Rather spectacularly, Kurotowa manages to pull this off in the space of his first appearance, going from a seemingly buffoonish lackey to proving himself dangerously competent. If he pulled the switch any faster, he wouldn't count at all.
 * Path of Inspiration: The religion founded around the . All "holiness" that radiates from it is actually a plot.
 * Rule of Symbolism: The Holy Temple of Shuwa uses crosses and Eyes of God as its primary icons.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the very end of the manga, it's revealed that.
 * The Holy Emperor also started out like this, thinking he could fix the world's problems and bring peace to everyone. Sadly, he was only and quickly slipped into authoritarian (and genocidal) rule.
 * Zip Me Up: Kushana asks Nausicaä to fasten her armor at one point in the manga. Les Yay? Of course.