Nausicaä from the Valley of the Winds (Anime)

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Anime movie
title Nausicaä from the Valley of the Winds
Original title 風 の 谷 の ナ ウ シ カ
transcription Kaze no Tani no Naushika
Nausicaa Logo.svg
Country of production JapanJapan Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1984
Studio Topcraft
length 116 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 10Template: Infobox film / maintenance / JMK without JMKID
Rod
Director Hayao Miyazaki
script Hayao Miyazaki
production Isao Takahata
Tōru Hara
Michio Kondō
Yasuyoshi Tokuma
synchronization

Nausicaä from the Valley of the Wind ( Japanese 風 の 谷 の ナ ウ シ カ , Kaze no Tani no Naushika ; also English Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ; alternative title: Nausicaä - Princess from the Valley of the Wind ) is an anime film from the Year 1984 by Hayao Miyazaki . It is based on the manga Nausicaä from the Valley of the Winds , which was also created by Hayao Miyazaki. Manga and Anime have been very successful; Even years after the film, Nausicaä is still one of the most popular anime characters in Japan.

The film is often referred to as the first from the Ghibli studio , even though it was not made in that studio. Rather, it was not until the economic success of Nausicaä director Hayao Miyazaki that the animation studio was founded in 1985, and many of those involved in the film later also worked for Ghibli.

action

Cosplayer as Nausicaä with her glider

In a post-apocalyptic future, much of the earth will be covered by the “sea of ​​putrefaction”, a huge, poisonous mushroom forest that is constantly expanding and threatens to overgrow the last of the land inhabited by the few living people. The forest came into being after the "Seven Days of Fire", a great war in which giant artificial warriors, the titans, were used. Since then, the forest has been expanding and humanity is shrinking. Some inventions, such as aviation, have survived, but many of the technologies of earlier times have been forgotten and people live in simple circumstances. Many consider the forest and the huge insects that live in it and the house-sized isopod- like Ohmu as mortal enemies.

Nausicaä is the princess of the “valley of the winds”, which is protected from the spores of the toadstool by the winds blowing from the sea. She has a special feeling for dealing with animals and nature and is also a talented aviator. She examines the plants of the mushroom forest and finds out that their poison is due to the contaminated soil everywhere.

Shortly after her old teacher, the sword master Yupa, returns to the valley, a large transport ship from the kingdom of Torumekia crashes in the valley of the winds. Among the victims is a princess from Pejite. Before she dies too, she asks Nausicaä to destroy the cargo on the airship, which contains the embryo of a war titan. Soon the Torumek army attacks, occupies the valley and some soldiers kill Nausicaa’s bedridden father. Thereupon Nausicaä becomes enraged and kills five of the soldiers in a rage before she is stopped by Yupa so as not to plunge her people into ruin. The leader of the Torumek troops, Princess Kushana, announces to the valley dwellers that she intends to unite all of humanity and then to eradicate the sea of ​​rot with the insects. Kushana also harbors a personal hatred of the insects that once took her arms and legs and now wears prostheses in their places. The kingdom of Pejite had already attacked her and her troops in order to appropriate the embryo that is now to be hatched into a full-grown titan in the Valley of the Winds. Even the contradiction of the elders of the valley, according to which the sea of ​​rot should never be touched, because otherwise the land of the people would be destroyed by a flood of insects and then devoured by the poisonous forest, cannot prevent the Torumekians from their plan. Kushana decides to return to Pejite, leaving her staff officer Kurotova with a small force. Nausicaä, who meanwhile regrets having killed five people, and some warriors of the valley, including the chief castle servant Mito, are said to accompany them as hostages.

Above the Sea of ​​Decay, their fleet is attacked by a hunter from Pejite. During a dogfight, Nausicaä escapes with Mito and the other comrades and also saves Kushana from her crashing ship. In the sea of ​​putrefaction, Kushana brings the Ohmu up with one shot, but Nausicaä can communicate with them and calm them down. She then looks for the pilot from Pejite, who also crashed, and the others capture Kushana and return to the Valley of the Winds. After Nausicaä has found the pilot, Prince Asbel of Pejite, they both rush into the caverns under the sea of ​​rot. Here air, soil and water are pure, and Nausicaä discovers that the trees of the mushroom forest do not rot when they die, but instead petrify and finally disintegrate into non-toxic sand in the cavities created in this way. This fills her with a deep sense of bliss because she hopes that it will ultimately purify the polluted world.

When she and Asbel later meet survivors of the Pejite people, Nausicaä learns that they too want to destroy the sea of ​​rot. They lured an Ohmu herd to Pejite with an injured Ohmu larva to destroy the Kushana's army, thus destroying Pejite. Now the same is to happen in the Valley of the Winds, in order to finally defeat the Torumek army. In the valley of the winds, people fight against fungal spores that were brought into the valley by the Torumeki and threaten the plants. After the return of Nausicaa’s comrades, they finally rise up against the crew, but Kushana escapes from her captivity and returns to her army.

Nausicaä flees from the Pejites while the Torumek army attacks them. Yupa, who was brought here by Mito, helps in the fight against the Torumekians, while Nausicaä can save the Ohmu larva with Mito's help. But the herd can no longer be appeased and continues to run. The Torumek army, shortly before an attack on the inhabitants of the valley, revives the titan to stop the herd. But this collapses because it was not yet fully regenerated. Eventually Nausicaä tries to stop the Ohmus and is overrun by them. Their sacrifice can appease the herd and the people of the valley and the army are saved. Nausicaä, whose deeds remind her people of the redeemer from an ancient prophecy, is healed by the Ohmu. She convinced the people of the valley, Pejite and Kushana, that nature is not their enemy and that they should not fight each other.

production

Toshio Suzuki drove the making of the film

Hayao Miyazaki's manga Nausicaä from the Valley of the Winds has been published in Animage magazine by Tokuma Shoten since 1982 . It was based, among other things, on Miyazaki's impressions of the Greek mythological figure Nausikaa and the Japanese story Mushi Mezuru Himegimi , "the insect-loving princess" and conveyed Miyazaki's pacifistic, environmentally conscious and increasingly pessimistic worldview in the form of a dystopia. Miyazaki has been bringing ideas for films to Tokuma Shoten since 1980. Miyazaki was friends with the editor of Animage magazine and later head of production at Studio Ghibli, Toshio Suzuki. But the publisher did not want to support any production that was not based on an already successful work. Therefore, Miyazaki's material was first implemented as a manga for the magazine. Soon after the series began, many readers asked when the manga would be made into a film. Since the demand was so great, the publisher financed a film adaptation of the series, which was to be directed by Miyazaki. He was previously a director of The Castle of Cagliostro and was involved in many other anime productions. He interrupted work on the manga for production. The film was also funded by the Hakuhodo advertising agency, where Miyazaki's younger brother worked. It is unclear whether Suzuki had planned the film from the beginning of the manga. Miyazaki himself denies that he created the manga as such, with the peculiarities of the medium, which made the filming particularly difficult.

The movie includes about the first 16 chapters of the manga, with major changes in content. Since the plot of the manga was not very advanced, a separate ending had to be written for the film. So one of the main antagonists of the comics, the kingdom of Doruk, against which war was being waged, was completely removed and instead the conflict was rewritten as a conflict between Torumekia and the city-state of Pejite over the titans, which in the context of the film resulted in Nausicaa's appearance as savior had a positive result. In the production of Studio Topcraft , which later became Studio Ghibli , Hayao Miyazaki directed and also wrote the script with Kazunori Ito. Together with producer Isao Takahata , the script and film concept were created within three months. The entire production lasted about nine months, from the end of May 1983 to the beginning of March 1984. The later much praised high quality of the animation is also attributed to the fact that many animators were looking for work at the time of its creation and the studio was therefore mainly under the influence of highly qualified staff Wage could commit. The character design was created by Kazuo Komatsubara based on Miyazaki's manga. Mitsuki Nakamura was the artistic director. For the music, composed by Joe Hisaishi , another composer was initially planned. But after Hisaishi had sent his earlier works to Miyazaki and Takahata - the first album with compositions by him was released in 1983 - he was entrusted with the film music. He also composed the opening and closing songs Kaze no Tani no Naushika ( 風 の 谷 の ナ ウ シ カ ) and Tori no Hito ( 鳥 の 人 ).

As is usual with Japanese productions, the film is largely produced in cel animation as limited animation . For the animation of the Ohmu, however, their skin plates were made of cardboard so that they could be shifted towards one another and filmed in order to create a realistic movement. This was later mounted over the backgrounds. For the dream sequences that tell from Nausicaä's past, several cels (picture foils) were placed on top of each other, illuminated differently and filmed several times. There are visual references, among other things, in the opening sequence, which is reminiscent of The Daring Witch in Her Flying Bed , and in the design of the caverns under the sea of ​​rot, which are based on The Journey to the Center of the Earth from 1959. Compared to the manga, which shows very detailed, copper-engraved representations of the characters and backgrounds, the style of the anime is kept much simpler in order to be able to be implemented as an animation at all.

publication

In Japan

The WWF presented the film, its logo can also be seen in the opening credits

The film was released in Japanese cinemas on March 11, 1984, distributed by Tōei and presented by WWF . It was shown in cinemas until May 1, 1984. A first publication on a commercial medium took place in 1996 with the laser disc Juburi ga Ippai Sutajio Jiburi LD Zenshū , which contains all Ghibli films produced up to then. Further publications on VHS and DVD followed later .

Western versions

Universum Anime released the film uncut in German for the first time.

New World Pictures acquired the US rights to Nausicaä in 1985 . For a release as a children's film under the title Warriors of the Wind , she shortened the anime by more than 23 minutes, about a fifth of the total length. The ecological and pacifist message has been removed and replaced with a fight of good against evil. The names were also changed, so now "Princess Sandra" fought against evil " Gorgon monsters". This US version also made it to Europe, where it was released in France by Aprovision as La Princesse des Etoiles and in German in 1986 by UFA as Die Sternenkrieger , both on VHS .

In the unabridged original version, Nausicaä from the Valley of the Wind was released in German on September 5, 2005 by Universum Anime on DVD , with Japanese, English and the new German language version created for the DVD. On April 15, 2011, the unabridged film was also released on Blu-ray by Universum Film . This version contains the Japanese and German language versions. At 117 minutes, this Blu-Ray version is about 5 minutes longer than the DVD release, as the film now runs at the original speed again thanks to the new scanning and the artificial acceleration has been compensated for by the conversion from NTSC to PAL. Since the German new synchro for the DVD was recorded for 25 fps and the film has now been slowed down by 4% to the original speed, the voices of the German speakers now sound about a semitone lower than originally recorded.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created at Film- und Fernseh-Synchron in Munich based on a dialogue book and directed by Cornelius Frommann.

role Japanese speaker ( seiyū ) German speaker
Nausicaä Shimamoto Sumi Anke Kortemeier
Yupa Gorō Naya Claus Brockmeyer
Mito Nagai Ichirō Bert Franzke
Kushana Sakakibara Yoshiko Claudia Lössl
Kurotova Kayumi Iemasa Matthias Klie
Asbel Yōji Matsuda Stefan Günther

Adaptations

Two computer games were released for the film. In 1984 Naushika Kiki Ippatsu came out for the NEC PC-6001 , followed by Kaze no Tani no Naushika for the NEC PC-8801 platform . Both games developed by Technopolis Soft were distributed by Tokuma Shoten.

The film's soundtrack was released in several versions on a total of eight CDs.

In 1990, Tokuma Shoten released a four-volume anime comic consisting of still images from the film. A two-volume version for children followed in 1998.

analysis

Hayao Miyazaki

According to Frederik L. Schodt , the character of Nausicaä was adapted to the usual anime image of a cute young woman in the implementation of the manga. By changing the plot and the draft of a quick ending, in contrast to the manga, this is much more hopeful than the manga and Nausicaä fulfills the role of a Christ-like redeemer in the film much more. For Patrick Drazen, the character Nausicaäs in the film stands in contrast to the Kushanas. While Kushana, influenced by her environment and her experience with insects, believes that she is doing the right thing, but does a lot of damage in the process, Nausicaä is a heroine who ultimately saves everyone with her maladjustment. Her unorthodox deeds, however, all have a reason and at any time, even in combat, they correspond to the Japanese term yasashii ("friendly; gentle; kind"), which is one of the characteristics of heroines. In this sense she is very similar to San from Princess Mononoke .

Japonologist Susan J. Napier recognizes the two essential elements of Miyazaki's films in Nausicaä . On the one hand, the post-apocalyptic scenario shows both what mankind has lost through its own actions and, through Nausicaa's example, that a better future is possible. The narrative structure of the film is that of the classic apocalyptic story. The heroine Nausicaä protects her people from the three threats of poison, war and the Ohmu. At the end there is a scene of death and rebirth. In this sense, the film represents conservative values, the traditions and the old order, a kingdom with its princess, are preserved or restored. The plot is thus similar to European-Christian narratives of the Apocalypse, but without an emphasis on punishment and reward. On the other hand, there is a strong female main character who, in the case of Nausicaä, combines male and female stereotypes. She shows herself to be combative and technically gifted as well as caring and, like many characters of the Shōjo genre, "cute" and charming. The result is a seemingly all-round figure, who in the end even assumes the role of a savior. Since your sexuality has no meaning during the whole action, one could also, according to the critic Tōji Kamata, describe Nausicaä as a primarily androgynous figure, just as bodhisattva are, for example . However, through the scene in which she kills the soldiers who killed her father out of anger, and immediately regrets it, Nausicaä gains credibility and humanity in the audience. The scene also shows a critical examination of the violence that appears to a large extent in other apocalyptic action films. With both the scenario and the main character, Miyazaki succeeded in alienating and reversing the typical post-apocalyptic story and its protagonists as well as creating a unique, modern heroine. While others like Hiromi Murase describe Miyazaki's female characters, especially Nausicaä, as unrealistic, for Napier they are quite realistic, measured against the respective scenario.

Thomas Lamarre relates the film to Miyazaki's views on the relationship between humans and nature and technology and compares it with Paul Virilio's pessimistic worldview , in which the constant striving for acceleration leads to ever greater destruction, and Heidegger's philosophy . Like Virilios, Miyazaki represents a pessimistic expectation of the future in the film, in which progress will turn against people, but in the figure of Nausicaä he shows an alternative that is limited to observation of nature and simple techniques and, like Heidegger, develops a deterministic understanding of technology not as a problem with solutions, but as a condition that has an impact on people's behavior and perception. There would be no solution to this effect, instead there would be redemption in a task of this kind of progress, specifically in the renunciation of weapons, which Miyazaki portrays as out of control by nature. As an alternative, Miyazaki shows in his films since Nausicaä a less technical society driven by wind power. The very dominant motif of the small and large, diverse flying machines, which is very dominant in the film as well as its original, recurs in many of Miyazaki's works and reflects his fascination for aircraft. But Miyazaki's rejection of high technology is also evident in the representation of these machines: The Nausicaäs machine is a glider and gets by with the simplest means, while the more complicated machines are those of the attacker. So he shows a more independent relationship to technology than vision, which he opposes dystopia. This is also supported by the animation techniques used. Instead of the usual movements in the depths of space in western animation and cinema, the characters in Nausicaä and other Miyazaki films - especially in the flight scenes - move sideways in front of a naturalistic background and the depth effect is created by different movements in the foreground and background. Lamarre calls this animation principle, which distinguishes itself from cinema that looks ballistic and strives for speed and which Virilio criticizes, "animetism". He sees the Cel levels floating above the background as representative of Miyazaki's alternative concept of a decelerated society. The roles in which Miyazaki shows women - here Nausicaä and Kushana - are also suitable for breaking clichés. Lamarre relates this not only to the female roles themselves, but also to the relationship between people and technology, since in the film it is not men, as usual, but women who are masters of technology. He also points out that in Nausicaä, as in Miyazaki's other films, nature is never inherently dangerous. The threat posed by nature is always a consequence of human activity.

Success, impact and reception

The film was received very positively by Japanese film critics, winning the Animage magazine's Grand Prize in 1984 , the Seiun Prize for Best Film in 1985 and the Ōfuji Noburō Prize in 1986 . The box office success with 740 million yen and one million moviegoers was neither small nor overwhelming. The film gained a huge following among anime fans, topping their favorite Animage list for ten years, and at the top of the list two decades after it was released. These positive experiences led Tokuma Shoten publishing house to finance Studio Ghibli , where the Nausicaä team was to produce further films. Toshio Suzuki, first editor and founder of Animage and Tokuma Shoten, later became president of the studio. Hideaki Anno , who later produced successful animes such as Die Macht des Zauberstein and Neon Genesis Evangelion with the Gainax studio , worked as an animator for Nausicaä . Cultural historian Tsugata Noboyuki cites the film together with Uchū Senkan Yamato as one of the main influences for a new phase of anime in the 1980s. Miyazaki himself was not satisfied with the film, especially with its forced-looking positive outcome with Nausicaä as savior, and when asked, gave it 65 out of 100 points.

Until the publication of Princess Mononoke , Hayao Miyazaki was best known in the West for Nausicaä . Frederic L. Schodt praises the film as a successful implementation of the manga and emphasizes the high quality of the animation for the time and in view of the low budget, for example compared to Disney. The narrative, the scenery mixed from science fiction and the Middle Ages and the ecological question were skillfully transferred into the film. Patrick Drazen calls the film the first of Miyazaki's masterpieces, with a post-apocalyptic world that's less cynical in contrast to other scenarios such as Bubblegum Crisis or Neon Genesis Evangelion . The work changed the Japanese animation film like no other. Many scenes touched the audience and made an impression on them. The film is also significant because it represents Miyazaki's first collaboration with composer Joe Hisaishi , who was to compose the music for almost all of Miyazaki's other films. The Anime Encyclopedia emphasizes that the film is a mixture of savior and ecological messages with action and adventure. The work influenced many later films primarily with its ecological message, but also visually, for example Final Fantasy , whose chocobos mounts are borrowed from those from Nausicaä .

The abridged version met with heavy criticism. In an interview in 1990, Toren Smith, founder of the Manga translation agency Studio Proteus and a major contributor to the introduction of Manga in the US in the late 1980s, described Warriors of the Wind as "incoherent garbage, suitable for mentally disturbed 12-year-olds" ( "Incoherent garbage suitable for mentally defective 12-year-olds" ). Toshio Suzuki , Head of Production at Studio Ghibli, officially distanced himself from Warriors of the Wind in a text published in 1996 on behalf of the studio ( “If any of you have seen this edited version, we'd like to ask you to dismiss it from your minds ” - “ Should anyone of you have seen this amended version, we would like to ask you to delete it from your memory ” ) and Hayao Miyazaki was also appalled. Nonetheless, the film, as modified, won first prize at the 1985 Los Angeles International Animation Celebration. In Japan, at Studio Ghibli and other companies, the processing led to them later paying much more attention to how their works were published abroad and including corresponding clauses in contracts.

The German magazine AnimaniA describes Nausicaä as a “fast-paced and captivating fantasy adventure with explosive environmental policy” . The fantasy world was put together perfectly and the design was successful, especially Miyazaki's enthusiasm for aircraft of all kinds is noticeable. Compared to the manga, the anime is much less complex and offers lighter fare. The atmospheric music and the fluid, technically solid German synchronization are also praised.

After the film, as well as the historical legendary figure, the people of the Nausicaans from Spaceship Enterprise: The next century were named.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age rating for Nausicaä from the valley of the winds . Youth Media Commission (  TV version).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Marc Hairston: The Reluctant Messiah: Miyazaki Hayao's Nausicaä of the Walley of the Wind Manga . In: Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga - An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum Publishing, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 , pp. 174-183 .
  3. ↑ a b Fred Patten: Watching Anime, Reading Manga - 25 Years of Essays and Reviews . Stone Bridge Press, 2004, p. 210 f.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Drazen: Anime Explosion , 2003, pp. 259-262.
  5. ↑ a b c d AnimaniA. 10/2005, p. 18 ff.
  6. ↑ a b information on production. nausicaa.net, accessed February 4, 2013 .
  7. ↑ a b c Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. p. 180. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 .
  8. ↑ a b c Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy: The Anime Encyclopedia. Revised & Expanded Edition. Berkeley 2006, Stone Bridge Press, 978-1-933330-10-5, pp. 444 f. (English)
  9. ↑ Information on video publishing. nausicaa.net, accessed February 4, 2013 .
  10. ↑ a b c Frederik L. Schodt: Dreamland Japan. Writings On Modern Manga. (Collector Edition). Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-1-880656-23-5 , pp. 279–282 (English)
  11. ↑ Information on music publications. nausicaa.net, accessed February 4, 2013 .
  12. ^ Napier: Anime , 2001, pp. 124, 135-138.
  13. ^ Napier: Anime , 2001, pp. 202-204.
  14. ↑ Thomas Lamarre : The Anime Machine. A Media Theory of Animation . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009, ISBN 978-0-8166-5154-2 , pp. 42, 44 .
  15. ↑ a b Lamarre, 2009, pp. 91f, 95.
  16. ↑ Lamarre, 2009, pp. 55, 61f.
  17. ↑ Lamarre, 2009, pp. 80, 83.
  18. ↑ Lamarre, 2009, p. 328, No. 1.
  19. ^ Andrew Osmond: NAUSICAA AND THE FANTASY OF HAYAO MIYAZAKI. In: SF journal Foundation. 1998, accessed March 28, 2011 .
  20. ↑ Patten: Watching Anime. 2004, p. 254.
  21. ↑ Lamarre, 2009, p. 147.
  22. ↑ Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 . Regarding Tsugata Noboyuki: Anime no Rekishi . In: Anime-gaku . NTT Shuppan, Tokyo, 2011, p. 30.
  23. ^ Frederik L. Schodt: Dreamland Japan. Writings On Modern Manga. (Collector Edition). Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-1-880656-23-5 , p. 275. (English)
  24. ↑ Drazen: Anime Explosion , 2003, pp. 184, 336.
  25. ↑ Tim Rogers: In Defense of Final Fantasy XII. Edge , March 27, 2006; archived from the original on October 9, 2014 ; Retrieved February 4, 2013 .
  26. ↑ Amazing Heroes. No. 181, July 1990, p. 29.
  27. ^ Archives of Studio Ghibli. Vol. 1, 1996, p. 135.
  28. ↑ Patten: Watching Anime. 2004, p. 257.
  29. ↑ Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, Debbie Mirek: Nausicaans . In: The Star Trek Encyclopedia . Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0-671-03475-8 ( limited preview in Google book search).

literature

  • Susan J. Napier : Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation . Palgrave, New York 2001, ISBN 0-312-23862-2 . (English)
  • Helen McCarthy: Hayao Miyazaki. Master of Japanese Animation. Films, Themes, Artistry. Revised edition. Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley CA 2002, ISBN 1-880656-41-8 . (English)
  • Patrick Drazen : Anime Explosion! - The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation . Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2003, ISBN 1-880656-72-8 . (English)
  • Marc Hairston: Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Manga into Anime and Its Reception in Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 . (English)

Web links

Commons : Nausicaä from the Valley of the Winds  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 3, 2013 in this version .