Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Review

Miyazaki makes this before Ghibli exists, with Topcraft doing the drawing and Joe Hisaishi scoring a Miyazaki picture for the first time, and the studio that grows out of it is essentially built on the strength of the result. The world does the heavy lifting. A toxic jungle that turns out to be cleaning the earth rather than killing it, insects the size of houses that behave like a single nervous system, and a valley of farmers whose survival depends on a wind that could stop any morning.

Nausicaä herself is the argument: a princess who solves problems by understanding them, and whose one moment of rage is staged as a failure rather than a triumph. The politics are unusually adult for a 1984 adventure, with Kushana given real grievances instead of a villain's motive. The animation is where the age shows. Character movement is stiffer than the studio's later work, the color is flatter, and the last act leans on a vision sequence that resolves the plot faster than it earns.

None of that dents the film. It is the first time Miyazaki puts his whole argument about people, machines, and the living world on screen, and the argument still holds.