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.