Comic Thoughts: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Today I finished reading the final volume of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the manga written and illustrated by Papa Ghibli himself: Hayao Miyazaki.
It was only recently that I'd learned this Manga existed. Despite Princess Mononoke being my favourite film since I was 12 (and it still holds up!), I'd only consider myself a mid-tier Ghibli fan. I've seen all the major films and am super hyped for the new one that recently released, but I've passed up 3 separate chances to go to the Ghibli museum, don't like Totoro, and own no more than 10 pieces of Ghibli paraphernalia (DVDs excluded).
While the movie version of Nausicaa (I'm dropping the umlaut henceforth) was already fairly high up on my Ghibli list, what really interested me about the manga version was learning it was way longer. 7 volumes, to be exact, with a story that takes us many more places amongst many more factions than the film.
If you liked what the film had to offer you should absolutely pick this one up and give it a read. Between Nausicaa the film, Princess Mononoke, and this manga, I feel like Miyazaki felt a strong need to express his views on humanity's destruction of the earth through greed and war. Despite this scathing criticism of humanity, however, he leaves hope through the actions of the main protagonists.
It's definitely not as clean and tidy as the movie version -- with so many factions and characters it can get a little confusing, and at times it definitely gets a little lost in the weeds. The message is loud and clear throughout, however, and punctuated by a version of Nausicaa that gets her hands much more dirty and openly questions her own actions and intentions throughout the story.