5.0

Read it in Japanese, so it took me a while to get through the war/strategy dialog. But the art is fan-freaking-tastic, reminiscent of Moebius. Our heroine is feminine without being sexualized; just a strong character, that perhaps suffers a little bit from being overly wise and overly strong for her age? Not exactly sure how old she is, now that I think about it.

But it has great pacing and wonderful framing to show complex action scenes that are easy to follow. It literally comes across as a storyboard for a movie in many ways. Miyazaki's future director-ship is clear here.