Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Warrior and pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet.
While I enjoy animated movies, I don’t really like cartoons. With ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ made four decades ago, the animation is dated and looks more like a cartoon than an animated feature film – by today’s standards, off course. As a result I couldn’t really get into the movie. It felt like I was watching the film by accident in the presences of kids (although I wasn’t).
Nausicaa is a princess who lives in the Valley of the Wind. It has been a thousand years since the Seven Days of Fire, a destructive war. The Sea of Decay is a forest full of toxins and dangerous giant insects, and is getting larger and swallowing villages and countries.
The film follows the adventures of Nausicaa as her people fight Tolmekian soldiers, and giant insects. Yes, there’s plenty of action and adventure here, but no thanks to the animation it just felt too cartoonish for my liking. I also found it a bit difficult at times to follow the story.
‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ is a film with a message, but alas, this was not my cup of tea, despite it receiving worldwide acclaim. Maybe I would have viewed it differently had I seen it back in 1984…
In Japanese.
Would I watch it again? No.
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