Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Magical Miyazaki knew how to captivate and move the audience from the very beginning. The theme of "boy and girl saving the world" is still unfinished, but adventurous ecological motifs, later expanded in Laputa or in Mononoke, were already working here. The only stumbling block is the overly drawn-out passage about the open war, but the rest pulled me into the irresistible world of Ohms, the Wasteland, and beautiful underground caves. (08/24/2007)

In the end, it was a very good movie after all. It didn't really grab me at first, I wasn't in the mood to be lectured on "the field of ecology", but then somewhere, at some point, the film won me over and I hoped it would last a while longer. In this case, Miyazaki's imagination and ability to shape a story did not disappoint me. I'm not a fan of films with ecological overtones, but this is the only one I would happily watch again. The only thing that disappointed me a bit was the soundtrack – bland, flavorless, it fit only one time (in the sense of "Yes, nothing else really fits here"), yet that didn't detract from the film. EDIT. 28 Jan 2017 – It's interesting how your tastes change. After almost seven years, I went to see the film in the cinema and ended up enjoying the soundtrack the most, I consider it one of Hisashi's best. On the other hand, I found the film itself perhaps a bit too lengthy, it couldn't hold my attention, so I'm downgrading it from the original 5 stars to 4 stars. Something was lacking in order for me to give it a full rating. (02/20/2010)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was the first in a series of blockbusters that made Miyazaki internationally famous, but coincidentally, I came across it as the last one - when I had already thoroughly understood his work, artistic style, and narrative technique, so he couldn't surprise me with anything. It is definitely a grandly constructed image of an alternative world, and one can admire the director's imagination, but at the same time, it lacks greater character plasticity and a more developed thought world because these simplified eco-activist ideas seem to have come straight from Greenpeace, including the mythology of "Goddess Gaia." From an artistic standpoint, Miyazaki repeats himself and, similar to Disney once upon a time, actually creates a kind of template for his characters. I couldn't identify with the characters precisely because they were so flat. At this stage of his creation, Miyazaki still boxed his characters into prominent heroes and despicable villains according to the black-and-white vision of B-movies. This simple morality just doesn't work for me. Overall impression: 55%. (11/20/2011)

A post-apocalyptic ecological fantasy where medievally dressed people race around in planes that resemble WWII bombers and fight giant insects? I guess no combination is impossible when put together by a true visionary, which Hayao Miyazaki clearly is. The film won me over in the first fifteen minutes and held me tight until the end. (07/02/2023)

Hayao Miyazaki is more mature in this film, if only because the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by human activity and waste. Yes, it's an ecological advocacy, but if every environmental advocacy were presented in such a way, it would be fantastic. A beautiful story with great graphic ideas. (08/15/2017)

I appreciate the ecological subtext, which, given the time of the film's creation, seems almost visionary. Apart from the engaging animation, I really liked the accompanying music, but for my taste, too much space was given to the turmoil of war. I'd rather spend more time enjoying Princess Nausicaä's mysterious expeditions into a strange post-apocalyptic world. (65%) (04/08/2021)