Visualizing environmental costs of war in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä | Hacker News Reader

Visualizing environmental costs of war in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä

jgeekstudies.org

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Absolute masterpiece both the Anime and this blog entry.

I remember as a skinny 80s kid, walking barefoot into a videostore near the beach in Spain where I lived. No internet, TV only had 4 channels, and aside from the gift of Dragon Ball on TV nothing else that interested or inspired me.

Then out of hundreds of videos I saw this, I had no idea who Ghibli, anime, even was and had few friends as I was autistic.

Yet I could tell from a couple of pictures on the cover it had themes of flying and war beautifully painted.

I ended up watching that, in the late 80s on a crt , in my swim trunks, and although we had next to no money, and plastic furniture in the house ( ironically we lived in the spanish "malibu")... just my family were common workers... I ended up spending a couple of dollars to rent it out a number of times.

Thank you Miyazaki and Studio Ghlibli for your work, it elevated souls in far reaches.

I know. The cover art is great and makes no sense. Some dude with an assault rifle (I guess supposed to be Milo/Asbel) riding a sandworm along with his buddy Dr. Doom I guess, a squid guy with a lightsaber (firewarrior probably?) and there's a guy flying pegasus for some reason? [1] Truly iconic.

Some of that is explainable but the pegasus, dude on the pegasus, and Dr Doom ... makes absolutely zero sense. I guess this is the rock opera version we never got. Maybe Dr Doom somehow sorta kinda was supposed to be Princess Kushana..?? I think the squid guy is a firewarrior, but so is the "sandworm" -- some kind of fever dream Ohm/Gorgon/Firewarrior mix. But why is a tiny adult fire warrior riding a baby giant fire warrior? lololol

I can only imagine the requirements gathering session that lead to this debacle.

Legendary.

[1]: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/00/fe/12/00fe121ffa3600cfb14bbbe1c...

Edit: Dear haters, I <3 <3 <3 Warriors of the Wind and all things Nausicaa, incl. the quirky cover. I even love your downvotes, it means you read this and cared enough to click the button, which hopefully means you are defending the cover. So I love you too!

Thanks for taking the time to write this!

I'm... appalled by that cover. I wasn't familiar with it. It's bizarre how all the elements of Nausicaa are technically there, yet it looks completely different (in a bad way). Nothing at all like the actual artwork of the movie!

This is brilliant thank you for sharing ! wtf is he riding Pegasus !!!! This is so much more barmy than I remembered - either the screenshots on the back were great or the cover was different. Great post - thanks

The hollywood version.

I caught this on HBO in the 80s. And over the years, I had forgotten the name, although it wouldn’t have helped much.

But I had remembered liking it. The glider, the giant bugs, etc.

I spent several years casually trying to find it. But “big ass bug anime” is kind of vague. Eventually I just started looking through catalogs of the timeframe from various distributors and studios.

I don’t know how or when, but eventually I was doing a deep dive on Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and read the description of Naussica. Looked up screenshots. And there it was, that one bit from my childhood.

I had a very similar experience, watching it at Japanese camp when I was about 8. I had recurring dreams of a ship going down into a poison jungle for many years and vague memories of this movie.

I found it again when mail order Netflix first came out in my early 20s. It was like rediscovering my childhood and completing a character arc.

Do yourself a flava and read the Manga. The movie ends before where the first volume ends, but the story goes in a completely different and much more interesting direction.

Also the secret truth about the world in Nausicaa (not going to spoil it here) has been copied by several other animes and video games since, it's been very influential. Notably the anime Ergo Proxy and the video game Nier seem to take some significant inspiration from it.

Worth mentioning that the manga is itself drawn by Miyazaki, and that he originally stipulated that it should never be made into a film. Fully agreed that the manga is far more beautiful and complete than the film.

Don't forget how horribly the first English adaptation of the film went too.

Was the plot completely butchered...? Yes.

Were there gaping narrative discontinuities...? Certainly.

But that 80s voice acting in the English dub... chef's kiss. The guy who voiced Milo("Asbel" in the movie) was the voice of Leonardo from Ninja Turtles and Kaneda from original dub of Akira!! (Cam Clark)

If I watch any version, I watch Warriors of the Wind. It really is the "Hollywood version" of Nausicaa.

Yeah, the newer one is better, but it doesn't hold a candle to the manga so give me that 80s synth and big hair voice acting any day.

Also I was like 5 when I saw it so nostalgia goggles.

Didn't even know about the old one. The newer one has 80s synth too, though.

It’s probably easier to list the anime characters that Cam Clark doesn’t voice!

It wasn’t that bad. It cut a few scenes but most of the movie is still there perfectly intact. It even won film festival awards. The movie mostly flopped in the US market on account it being distributed on a very low budget limited release against Rambo and The Goonies. SpaceHunterM on YouTube made a good video explaining a lot of misconceptions, if you want to check that out.

The movie completely inspired me as a child and as an adult. I didn't relaize the story continued.

Miyazaki was the director of the movie and probably drew a lot more than a traditional anime movie director.

There is no work from Miyazaki that should be more relevant to us on HN than Shuna no Tabi (シュナの旅, Shuna's Journey).

It was published during Nausicaa's run and has similar themes to Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke. It's certainly more brutal.

It reads like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and the themes are incredibly prescient for the world we're about to be living in [1]. It has direct relevance to everyone on HN.

https://archive.org/details/shuna-no-tabi-complete-translate...

It's a hidden gem and often overlooked.

Spoiler: [1]

[1] rot13(Vg'f onfrq ba n Gvorgna sbyxgnyr, ohg Zvlnmnxv'f nqncgngvba zvtug qrcvpg yvsr nsgre NV. Nsgre gur ebobgf gnxr bire naq jr'er yrsg nf n sreny fcrpvrf. Gur oehgnyvgl bs pvivyvmngvbany pbyyncfr nf gur ebobgf pbagvahr gb uneirfg hf naq bhe jbeyq. Ubj jr'er yrsg gb fpencr ol naq qrny jvgu gur pehrygl bs bhefryirf.)

https://rot13.com/

Thanks for sharing this

Glad to know that others agree; this is the elephant in the room that the original link doesn't mention. The manga was completed several years after the film's release, and the expanded freedom allows the story to be expanded in every direction. Many of the themes present in later Miyazaki works (stuff like redemption for certain villains) are absent from the film but have time to develop in the manga.

Like others I want to recommend the manga. It's a masterpiece and in my opinion Miyazaki's Magnum Opus.

It's certainly his biggest world, and the themes of climate change and environmentalism are directly relevant.

I still am not sure which between Nausicaa the manga, Nausicaa the film, Princess Mononoke, or Spirited Away are his magnum opus. They are all spectacular.

I posted below about his manga, "Shuna's Journey". It's also exceedingly relevant.

This is especially true for Akira. While it's an incredible movie, it really doesn't end clearly and the reason is that it's simply not the end of the story. The movie ends roughly half way through the Manga which is insanely well done and should be read by everyone.

I'm not into anime, but this is in my top 3 favorite movies. Aside from the sheer coolness, it's environmentalist but not in the typical annoying way like the blue people Avatar movie. It's more matter-of-fact, you won't win fighting against nature or against each other.

And the main character has the right amount of flaws. Even though Nausicaa is totally against war by the second half, the movie shows that this is easier said than done. She has to reach that conclusion after taking part in the fighting herself, and even then she has to use warning shots from a machine gun. She's not invincible until the last scene.

Miyazaki reportedly hated the ending and didn't want to have such a tidy solution, but needed material because he was greenlit for a movie and Nausicaa was all he had.

The other 3 books from the manga go into much more depth politically and spiritually, with a lot more philosophy about ecology and even what it means to be human.

That makes sense, the ending was always my least favorite part too. It's too convenient.

> When analyzing Miyazaki’s films, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, often the messages regarding warfare’s effects on the natural world focus more on the direct impacts rather than the indirect ones. Additionally, many researchers look at the film from a spiritual lens with DeWeese-Boyd (2009) believing Nausicaä serves as a Christ-like figure, while both Morgan (2015) and Nunes (2021) believe that Nausicaä serves as an example of how to restore balance between humans and nature. Despite that, these authors see her role in restoring balance differently. Nunes believes that Nausicaä gave herself to nature, sacrificing her free will in order to heal the earth without personal bias. On the other hand, Morgan believes that she serves as an example of how the fragmentation between the mind, body, spirit and nature can be restored through respect and care for the natural world.

I never thought of the parallel with Christ in the numerous times I watched this film but I can understand why someone would make that connection given the final scenes.

I thought this was intentional, cause she sacrifices herself then gets resurrected, also visuals like https://www.mother-god.com/images/nausicaa.jpg and https://beneaththetangles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/507...

But she's definitely not the same throughout the movie, cause she kills 3 guys early on.

The visuals of her sacrifice and resurrection are very similar to Neo’s sacrifice in Matrix pt 3

The messiah theme is much stronger in the manga. Not just the resurrection: she collects followers, at least one a converted enemy, by showing an all-encompassing love and helping those in need wherever she can.

On at least one occasion someone explicitly addresses her as "you, who would be a messiah". And no, that's not a translation artifact; the word is 救世主.

Of course, it is also subverted in some ways, most explicitly in the end, where Nausicaä destroys a plan for a new, better world, in favor of an escape from prophecies and grand plans.

I find it really weird that there’s analysis like this when the man is still alive. Why not just ask if there’s a connection (my guess is not).

As the site is currently getting hugged I will say that Nausicaa didn't quite leave as much an impression on me as Grave of the Fireflies, but Miyazaki's environment design is always spot-on (the entirety of Farewell My Beloved Lupin, for example, improves on every rewatch as you notice more details).

Grave of the Fireflies is the most emotionally disturbing movie I have ever watched (including non animes). It is a masterpiece but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.

Ever seen "Threads"?

It's the only movie that I liked that I'd only want to watch once.

And if you want an anime series that you can classify like this, check out "Now and then, here and there".

This starts out so innocent, and becomes so disturbing.

It was definitely not a barrel of monkeys, but I think it is an important expression of the costs of war on the innocent, and the effects of societal inequality in general. It's powerful in a way that statistics cannot deliver. You'd also be hard pressed to find a better story of unconditional love, duty, sacrifice, and maturity.

Oh I couldn’t remember what this was called. I watched it for a film class. Utterly devastating.

tell me you haven't seen Old Boy without telling me you haven't seen Old Boy

Oldboy is fiction.

The two children in Grave of the Fireflies are fictional, but they're standing in for a tremendous number of real Japanese civilians killed by these events - in some cases literally starved to death. The Americans really did drop incendiary devices on those cities to burn homes to the ground, in our real world. You can certainly make an argument that it was somehow "justified" but it's a terrible thing to have done even if you're quite sure that it wasn't a war crime (which I am not).

Grave of the Fireflies is "semi" auto-biographical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies_(short_...

I actually have seen old boy and it is an order of magnitude less disturbing.

Oldboy is a well-made film, but absolute pulp. It's disturbing in a Silence of the Lambs, manufactured drama sort of way. Your adult amygdala should probably not be disturbed by it all that much.

If you ever do, make sure to do so as a double feature with My Neighbor Totoro (as it was originally released in theaters).

Is it the source of movies where the protagonist narrates "This is the day I died"?

For a contemporary example of the effects of war on nature the area around Bilohorivka in Ukraine is quite the eye opener. At least it was for me.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bilohorivka,+Luhansk+oblas...

What do we see here ? Artillery impacts ?

Almost entirely.

On 20 September 2022, Luhansk Oblast governor Serhiy Haidai reported that Russian troops had "razed [Bilohorivka] to the ground" during their failed attempts to recapture it, stating that Ukrainian forces had full control of the town.[78]

On 18 October, Russia attempted an assault with artillery support on Bilohorivka, but the attack was repulsed. Russian troops continued to shell liberated settlements.

The armored vehicle assaults and drones destroy trenches and buildings, make craters too, but the sheer extent and size of those craters is from artillery. The tank battles weren't too destructive relatively IIRC

Memories was a good one too

https://blog.alltheanime.com/memories-cannon-fodder/

Blue Gender also good for humanity losing to something

The bigger short in "Memories", "Magnetic Rose", is one of my all time favorite stories (It's Satoshi Kon, Koji Morimoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Yoko Kanno !!!)

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-mag...

the level of detail in older anime is just crazy like Roujin Z

Blue Gender would really deserve a remake.

No one is really mentioning this article in from a highschooler. Awesome job! I'm happy to read this today and really hope she will continue to see such inspiring stories and maybe some day make some.

You should notice the shadow of the traumatic experience from atomic bombs that permeated into the Japanese society throughout the 20th century (vs. concerns around carbon emissions today.)

> The paper will show that the visuals in the film are not simply aesthetic decisions, but a crucial narrative device to convey the effects of war on both people and nature.

I don't need science to come to this conclusion.

Nothing about the paper is science hah. But it is a paper!

ARE YOU DENYING THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL OF GEEK STUDIES?

Funny though that “paper” is not about paper anymore.

The rare skeuomorph synecdoche.

>> Giant warriors walking through a city in flames

Huh. I never noticed this before but that scene is very much like

** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS **

the Rumbling in Attack on Titan, when the Colossal Titans are sent to destroy the world by Eren.

** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS ** SPOILERS **

Also see Figure 4, "Giant warrior falling apart while charging up to fire".

Possible inspiration, maybe?

If you like nausicaä give scavengers reign a watch.

Or if you like anything done by Moebius. The worldbuilding is breathtaking, and the art is magnificent.

We have satellite footage of war zones in real life to visualize the environmental impacts with cameras from outer space

"... Miyazaki warns against the dangers of harmful technology and the moral implications of its use."

Apropos for current times.

Laughs in Anno Hideaki.

Laughs in Hirohiko Araki.

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