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A review by billyjepma
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Deluxe Edition 1 by Hayao Miyazaki
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
As a lover of the movie adaptation and Miyazaki's storytelling, I've been excited and daunted to dive into the original manga for Nausicaä. I tore through the first few chapters, which cover the events from the film, and then deliberately took my time with the latter ones so I could fully absorb the dense, always-growing world-building and characterizations. It can be overwhelming, admittedly, and I can't help but feel that Miyazaki might've benefited from scaling the cast down ever so slightly since the number of characters is hard to keep track of. However, the sheer creativity and lush, decadent imagination on display in every panel and page is just dizzying—a true feat of narrative and artwork that I got thoroughly lost in.
The story is so big, so mythic, and deals with lofty topics around religion, war, environmentalism, fanaticism, and many more. As dizzying as it can feel, Miyazaki's integration of theme into the story feels wholly organic. You can see his vision pulsing as he gets further into the saga he's telling, and the orchestrated chaos he wields in the enormous war sequences is second to none. I love how his artwork is so fluid, too, constantly evolving to match the scale of the scene he's drawing. His action is fast, frantic, and shocking in its bloodshed—seriously, the violence is brutal in ways I was not expecting—but he balances it out with meditative moments of reflection that allow his characters to wrestle with their role(s) in the world around them. Some of the busier panels are hard to decipher, yet even those seem intentional in how they blur the line between the figures on the page and the ensuing effects of their violence—smoke, blood, and bodies pressed so close together you can't tell where one starts and the other ends.
And, of course, there are gorgeous images aplenty, especially with all the aerial combat and flight that Miyazaki is so fond of. I lost track of how often I called my spouse over to show her a panel of an airship disappearing into the cloud or the wind effects flying off of Nausicaä's glider as she whirls through the open air. This is my first real experience with manga, which seems like the equivalent of having Lawrence of Arabia be the first movie you ever watch. It is a true stunner that I feel very lucky to have another 500+ pages to look forward to.
The story is so big, so mythic, and deals with lofty topics around religion, war, environmentalism, fanaticism, and many more. As dizzying as it can feel, Miyazaki's integration of theme into the story feels wholly organic. You can see his vision pulsing as he gets further into the saga he's telling, and the orchestrated chaos he wields in the enormous war sequences is second to none. I love how his artwork is so fluid, too, constantly evolving to match the scale of the scene he's drawing. His action is fast, frantic, and shocking in its bloodshed—seriously, the violence is brutal in ways I was not expecting—but he balances it out with meditative moments of reflection that allow his characters to wrestle with their role(s) in the world around them. Some of the busier panels are hard to decipher, yet even those seem intentional in how they blur the line between the figures on the page and the ensuing effects of their violence—smoke, blood, and bodies pressed so close together you can't tell where one starts and the other ends.
And, of course, there are gorgeous images aplenty, especially with all the aerial combat and flight that Miyazaki is so fond of. I lost track of how often I called my spouse over to show her a panel of an airship disappearing into the cloud or the wind effects flying off of Nausicaä's glider as she whirls through the open air. This is my first real experience with manga, which seems like the equivalent of having Lawrence of Arabia be the first movie you ever watch. It is a true stunner that I feel very lucky to have another 500+ pages to look forward to.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, and War
Moderate: Violence, Blood, and Colonisation
Minor: Child death