Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (EN) T.01

Hayao Miyazaki was a budding filmmaker in 1982 when he agreed to collaborate on a project with the popular Japanese anime magazine Animage. This was Nausicaa, which would make Miyazaki’s reputation as much as his 11 films and TV shows. Set in the far future, Nausicaa visualizes an Earth radically changed by ecological disaster. Strange human kingdoms survive at the edge of the Sea of Corruption, a poisonous fungal forest. Nausicaa, a gentle young princess, has a telepathic bond with the giant mutated insects of this dystopia. Her task is to negotiate peace between kingdoms battling over the last of the world’s precious natural resources. Nausicaa took Miyazaki 12 years to create, in part because he worked with few or no assistants, doing both the writing and drawing using a meticulously detailed style that critics have compared to the work of the French artist Moebius.

Library Journal

Nausicaa is the gifted teenaged princess of a small valley on a devastated far-future Earth, where a growing poisonous forest is threatening the last human settlements. As an excellent gunship pilot, she is drawn by an old alliance into a war between neighboring kingdoms. But the pacifistic Nausicaa is much more interested in exploring the secrets of the forest. This complex ecological adventure epic-a true comics classic-is the only extended manga work by renowned anime director Miyazaki (Spirited Away). His lush, detailed art, reproduced here in sepia ink, is more reminiscent of European artists such as Moebius than of most manga, but manga fans will be drawn into the story nonetheless. Viz’s first edition of Nausicaa was seven volumes; later these were recompiled into a four-volume set. This new edition reverts to the artwork’s original right-to-left orientation, the seven-volume breakdown, and the Japanese original’s larger (7″ x 10″) size-an improvement, as Miyazaki’s pages are dense with information. Highly recommended for teens and adults alike, this tremendous series belongs in every library. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.