Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
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This article is about a manga. For the film of the same name, see Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
| Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind | |
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| 風の谷のナウシカ (Kaze no Tani no Naushika) |
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| Genre | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction |
| Manga | |
| Authored by | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Publisher |  Tokuma Shoten  VIZ Media Conrad Editora |
| Serialized in | Animage |
| Original run | Feb 1982 – Mar 1994 |
| No. of volumes | 7 (other ed. 4, 5) |
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ Kaze no Tani no Naushika?) is a manga by acclaimed Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, which served as the basis for his 1984 film of the same name.
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[edit] History
Miyazaki's manga version of Nausicaä was written over a period of 12 years, with breaks taken to work on Studio Ghibli movies. Serialized 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[1]. 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 OAV, but Animage editors eventually convinced him to make an entire feature-length film[2].
[edit] Differences from the film
The manga is far 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 the Gaia philosophy and struggles with the militarism of major powers.
Miyazaki loosely based Nausicaä's character on the Greek princess of the same name from The Odyssey, as portrayed in Bernard Evslin's Japanese translation of a small dictionary of Greek mythology. He was also inspired by the "Princess who loved insects", a Japanese story based in the Heian period. [3]
[edit] Synopsis
The story is set in the future 1000 years after the “Seven Days of Fire”, a cataclysm brought on by the excessive industrialization that mankind has undergone. It utterly destroyed industrial civilisation approximately a millennium after it began to flourish. 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 neighbouring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong conventional military, but the Doroks have developed a genetically modified version of the 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 supposedly benign fungus can be manipulated and used as a weapon confuses Nausicaä. Her trips into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The forest people 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, where a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days of Fire still stands. Nausicaä learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilisation. They created the mould to clean the land, altered human genes 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.
[edit] Characters
Valley of the Wind
- Nausicaä, Princess of the Valley of the Wind
- King Jhil of the Valley of the Wind
- Lord Yupa, explorer and the greatest swordsman in the Periphery
- Mito, sergeant-at-arms and Nausicaa's retainer
- Tepa, a child of the wind, who was chosen to replace Nausicaa as the village's wind-rider after she left
- Gram/Matriarch, one of the wise women
- Teto, Nausicaä’s fox-squirrel
- Kai and Kui, Lord Yupa’s horseclaws (giant striding birds)
Pejite
- Asbel, Prince of Pejite
- Lastelle (Rastel), Princess of Pejite and Asbel's twin sister
Torumekia
- Kushana, Princess of Torumekia
- Kurotowa, Kushana’s aide and a spy for the emperor
- The Emperor of Torumekia
- The three princes of Torumekia
Dorok
- Charuka, Priest and commander of the Dorok armies
- Namulith or Namulis, the Dorok Emperor
- Miralupa, the Emperor’s brother
- Elder of the Mani tribe
- Ketcha, a girl from the Mani tribe
Others
- Chikuku
- Selm, one of the forest people
- Ceraine, Selm's sister
- Ohma
- Master of the Garden
- Kest, an Ibex, assistant to the Master of the Garden
[edit] Factions
- Periphery states (formerly Eftal): A small cluster of city-states located in the Eftal Desert to the northwest of Torumekia. They are the remenant of the once mighty kingdom of Eftal, which was destroyed 300 years ago by a sudden spread of the Sea of Corruption. These states are tributaries of Torumekia, who, in return for allowing the states to remain autonomous, demanded that they must aid Torumekia during war.
- Torumekia: A militarilistic kingdom south of the periphery, the capital city is Tolas.
- Dorok: A theocratic empire ruled by a Holy Emperor and a council of priests, the capital city is Shuwa.
- Wormhandlers: a group of scavenger people living in the Sea of Decomposition. They live by taming slug-worms, which they use like scent-dogs, and hiring themselves out as mercenaries. The Wormhandlers are almost universally hated, considered "untouchables" by many.
- Forest People: A small band of people who have abandoned fire. They live inside the Sea of Decomposition, and they are at peace with the creatures in it.
[edit] Fictional creatures
- God Warriors
- Hamushi
- Hebikera
- Heedra
- Horseclaws
- Ohmu
- Pipe Worms
- Royal Yanma
- Slug worms
- Fox-squirrels
- Wing Worms
- The Nothingness
[edit] Publications
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.
- 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 (200 pages)
- Volume 4, ISBN 1-59116-352-8 (200 pages)
- Volume 5, ISBN 1-59116-412-5 (160 pages)
- Volume 6, ISBN 1-59116-487-7 (200 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).
[edit] References
- ^ The Birth of Studio Ghibli (Documentary), Studio Ghibli Collection: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (UK DVD Release), Optimum Releasing Asia, 2005
- ^ (July 1993) "First of Two-part Miyazaki Feature". Animerica 1 (5): 4.
- ^ Hayao Miyazaki's essay on Nausicaä, 1995 Viz Grapic Novel, Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, Perfect Collection volume 1.
[edit] External links
- VIZ Media: The English manga's North American publisher.
- Nausicaa.net
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
- I Understand NAUSICAA a Bit More than I Did a Little While Ago : a long interview of Hayao Miyazaki by Ryo Saitani, from the January 1995 issue of the Comic Box fanzine.
