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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
Encyclopedia
is a post-apocalyptic
manga
written and illustrated by acclaimed anime
director Hayao Miyazaki
. It was serialised intermittently from 1982 to 1994 in Japan
. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is published by Viz Media
in North America.
It tells the story of Nausicaä
, a princess of small kingdom that is pulled into a war between mighty empires as a looming environmental apocalypse threatens the very survival of humankind. On her journey she seeks to find peaceful coexistence between the nations of men, as well as between man and nature.
The first 16 chapters (approximately the first two of the entire seven volumes) of the comic served as the basis for Miyazaki's 1984 film of the same name.
after it began to flourish (probably sometime in the 2700s). Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth has become heavily polluted and the seas are poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the “Sea of Corruption”, a toxic forest of fungal plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large insects, including the huge Ohmu. Humanity clings on to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain.
Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a state on the periphery of what was once known as Eftal, a kingdom destroyed by the Sea of Corruption 300 years before the story begins. The leaders of the Periphery states are now vassals to the Torumekian Emperor and are obliged to send their forces to help when he decides to invade the neighboring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong conventional military, but the Doroks have developed a genetically modified version of a mould from the Sea of Corruption to overwhelm the invaders. But when the Doroks introduce this mould into battle, its multiplication and mutation result in a "daikaisho" which floods across the land and draws the insects into the battle, killing as many Doroks as it does Torumekians. In doing so, the Sea of Corruption spreads across most of the Dorok nation, uprooting or killing vast numbers of civilians and rendering most of the land uninhabitable.
The Ohmu and other forest insects respond to this development and sacrifice themselves to pacify the rampant mould. However, the fact that the fungus
can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her trips into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People, humans who have learned to live in harmony with the Sea of Corruption, confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and show Nausicaä a vision of the restored Earth at the centre of the forest. Making friends of her enemies, Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory to seek those responsible for manipulating the fungus, recruiting a God Warrior found in Pejite to muscle past both the Torumekian and Dorok armies.
Despite the loss of some of her companions, she is eventually able to reach Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks, and enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire. Nausicaä learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilisation. They created the Sea of Corruption to clean the land, altered human gene
s to cope with the pollution
, stored their own personalities inside the Crypt, and waited for the day when they could re-emerge. However, their continual manipulation of the population is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order and has led to the cycles of violence which have plagued the world for a thousand years. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, giving humanity the opportunity to live or die without the benefit of the old society's technology.
movies. Serialised in Tokuma Shoten
's Animage
magazine, the first chapter was published in February 1982, and the last chapter in March 1994. The manga has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan alone.
According to the "Birth of Studio Ghibli" featurette, Miyazaki only wrote the manga because Studio Ghibli
film producer Toshio Suzuki
was unable to get funding for a film that was not based on a manga. However, other sources have it the other way around: Miyazaki started the manga on the condition that it would never be made into a film. He later agreed to do a fifteen-minute OVA, but Animage editors eventually convinced him to make an entire feature-length film.
Miyazaki drew the manga in an A4 size, which was "much larger" than other manga. He did not use inking, using pencil instead, and drew very detailed backgrounds. Frederik L Schodt describes the panel layouts as being reminiscent of French comics rather than manga.
Miyazaki loosely based Nausicaä's character on the Greek princess of the same name from the Odyssey
, as portrayed in Bernard Evslin
's small dictionary of Greek mythology, translated into Japanese by Yataka Kobayashi. He was also inspired by the "Princess who loved insects", a Japanese story based in the Heian period
. This story was about a young princess who loved to study insects and other creatures rather than wearing fine clothing and thinking of choosing a husband.
film, although it was released before the studio was established.
The manga is more complicated than the movie; the tale depicted in the movie roughly corresponds to the first two books of the manga, the point the story had reached when film production began. There are significant differences in plot, with more factions, locations and characters appearing in the manga version of the story. There is also much more background detail, and the environmentalist tone is more developed.
The manga includes a lot more philosophical content than the film. Nausicaä explores the concepts of fatalistic nihilism
and struggles with the militarism
of major powers. The series has been interpreted from the views of utopia and religion studies as well.
These are ISBNs for the current "Editor's Choice" edition of the English translation from VIZ Media
, the first to be printed with the right-to-left order and dark brown (rather than black) ink of the original Japanese tankōbon
. This version also retains the original Japanese onomatopoeia, and supplies an index with readings and translations in the back.
Older, now out of print English editions include a 7 volume "Graphic Novel" series and a 4 volume "Perfect Collection" (both printed in 'flopped' left-to-right format).
Setre, writing for Japanator, said "Nasuicaa is an amazing manga. And no matter what you may think of Miyazaki this story deserves to be read. It has great characters (some of which could star in their own series), a great sense of adventure and scale, and an awesome story."
Jason Thompson
says that "Nausicaa is as grim as Grave of the Fireflies
".
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
written and illustrated by acclaimed anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
director Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
. It was serialised intermittently from 1982 to 1994 in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is published by Viz Media
VIZ Media
VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and...
in North America.
It tells the story of Nausicaä
Nausicaä (character)
is a fictional character from the science fiction manga series Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, created by Hayao Miyazaki, and the anime film by the same name, which was directed by Miyazaki...
, a princess of small kingdom that is pulled into a war between mighty empires as a looming environmental apocalypse threatens the very survival of humankind. On her journey she seeks to find peaceful coexistence between the nations of men, as well as between man and nature.
The first 16 chapters (approximately the first two of the entire seven volumes) of the comic served as the basis for Miyazaki's 1984 film of the same name.
Synopsis
The story is set in the future 1000 years after the “Seven Days of Fire”, a cataclysm brought on by the excessive industrialisation that mankind had undergone. It utterly destroyed industrial civilisation approximately a millenniumMillennium
A millennium is a period of time equal to one thousand years —from the Latin phrase , thousand, and , year—often but not necessarily related numerically to a particular dating system....
after it began to flourish (probably sometime in the 2700s). Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth has become heavily polluted and the seas are poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the “Sea of Corruption”, a toxic forest of fungal plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large insects, including the huge Ohmu. Humanity clings on to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain.
The Ohmu and other forest insects respond to this development and sacrifice themselves to pacify the rampant mould. However, the fact that the fungus
Fungus
A fungus is a member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds , as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, and bacteria...
can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her trips into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People, humans who have learned to live in harmony with the Sea of Corruption, confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and show Nausicaä a vision of the restored Earth at the centre of the forest. Making friends of her enemies, Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory to seek those responsible for manipulating the fungus, recruiting a God Warrior found in Pejite to muscle past both the Torumekian and Dorok armies.
Despite the loss of some of her companions, she is eventually able to reach Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks, and enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire. Nausicaä learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilisation. They created the Sea of Corruption to clean the land, altered human gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s to cope with the pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, stored their own personalities inside the Crypt, and waited for the day when they could re-emerge. However, their continual manipulation of the population is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order and has led to the cycles of violence which have plagued the world for a thousand years. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, giving humanity the opportunity to live or die without the benefit of the old society's technology.
Production
Miyazaki's manga version of Nausicaä was written over a period of 12 years, with breaks taken to work on Studio GhibliStudio Ghibli
is a Japanese animation and film studio founded in June 1985. The company's logo features the character Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro...
movies. Serialised in Tokuma Shoten
Tokuma Shoten
is a publisher in Japan, that was established in 1954.The company was also the parent company for the film studio Daiei Motion Pictures, bought in 1974, and the record label Tokuma Japan Communications, bought in 1972, until both were sold off when Yasuyoshi Tokuma, who established this company,...
's Animage
Animage
is a Japanese anime and entertainment magazine which Tokuma Shoten began publishing in July 1978. Hayao Miyazaki's internationally renowned manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, was serialized in Animage from 1982 through 1994...
magazine, the first chapter was published in February 1982, and the last chapter in March 1994. The manga has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan alone.
According to the "Birth of Studio Ghibli" featurette, Miyazaki only wrote the manga because Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli
is a Japanese animation and film studio founded in June 1985. The company's logo features the character Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro...
film producer Toshio Suzuki
Toshio Suzuki (producer)
is a film producer of anime and a long-time colleague of Hayao Miyazaki, as well as the current CEO of Studio Ghibli. Suzuki is renowned as one of Japan's most successful producers after the enormous box office success of many Ghibli films. According to Miyazaki, "If it were not for Mr...
was unable to get funding for a film that was not based on a manga. However, other sources have it the other way around: Miyazaki started the manga on the condition that it would never be made into a film. He later agreed to do a fifteen-minute OVA, but Animage editors eventually convinced him to make an entire feature-length film.
Miyazaki drew the manga in an A4 size, which was "much larger" than other manga. He did not use inking, using pencil instead, and drew very detailed backgrounds. Frederik L Schodt describes the panel layouts as being reminiscent of French comics rather than manga.
Miyazaki loosely based Nausicaä's character on the Greek princess of the same name from the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
, as portrayed in Bernard Evslin
Bernard Evslin
Bernard Evslin is an author best known for his adaptations of Greek mythology. With over seventy titles, which include both novel-length retellings and short stories, Evslin is one of the most widely published authors of classical mythology in the world...
's small dictionary of Greek mythology, translated into Japanese by Yataka Kobayashi. He was also inspired by the "Princess who loved insects", a Japanese story based in the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
. This story was about a young princess who loved to study insects and other creatures rather than wearing fine clothing and thinking of choosing a husband.
Film
The film of the same name as the manga was released in 1984 and is considered a Studio GhibliStudio Ghibli
is a Japanese animation and film studio founded in June 1985. The company's logo features the character Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro...
film, although it was released before the studio was established.
The manga is more complicated than the movie; the tale depicted in the movie roughly corresponds to the first two books of the manga, the point the story had reached when film production began. There are significant differences in plot, with more factions, locations and characters appearing in the manga version of the story. There is also much more background detail, and the environmentalist tone is more developed.
The manga includes a lot more philosophical content than the film. Nausicaä explores the concepts of fatalistic nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
and struggles with the militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
of major powers. The series has been interpreted from the views of utopia and religion studies as well.
Publications
VIZ Media
VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and...
, the first to be printed with the right-to-left order and dark brown (rather than black) ink of the original Japanese tankōbon
Tankobon
, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
. This version also retains the original Japanese onomatopoeia, and supplies an index with readings and translations in the back.
- Volume 1, ISBN 1-59116-408-7 (136 pages)
- Volume 2, ISBN 1-59116-350-1 (136 pages)
- Volume 3, ISBN 1-59116-410-9 (156 pages)
- Volume 4, ISBN 1-59116-352-8 (138 pages)
- Volume 5, ISBN 1-59116-412-5 (160 pages)
- Volume 6, ISBN 1-59116-487-7 (168 pages)
- Volume 7, ISBN 1-59116-355-2 (232 pages)
Older, now out of print English editions include a 7 volume "Graphic Novel" series and a 4 volume "Perfect Collection" (both printed in 'flopped' left-to-right format).
Reception
After the release of the film adaptation, sales for the manga dramatically increased, despite the plot differences between the two works.Setre, writing for Japanator, said "Nasuicaa is an amazing manga. And no matter what you may think of Miyazaki this story deserves to be read. It has great characters (some of which could star in their own series), a great sense of adventure and scale, and an awesome story."
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson (writer)
Jason Thompson is a manga critic, journalist, writer and comics artist.-Life and career:...
says that "Nausicaa is as grim as Grave of the Fireflies
Grave of the Fireflies
is a 1988 Japanese animated war tragedy film written and directed by Isao Takahata. This is the first film produced by Shinchosha, who hired Studio Ghibli to do the animation production work...
".
External links
- VIZ Media: The English manga's North American publisher.
- Nausicaa.net
- I Understand NAUSICAÄ a Bit More than I Did a Little While Ago: a long interview of Hayao MiyazakiHayao Miyazakiis a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
by Ryo Saitani, from the January 1995 issue of the Comic Box fanzine.