"Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind": It Formed Me, Defined My Concept of a Saviour, Made Me a Feminist Before I Knew What Feminine Means, Defined My Ideal Romantic Partner, and I Believed I'd Dreamt It Until I Was 32. (Detailed Synopsis Included.)

A Nagging Forgetfulness

    In 1985, I was six years old. Children's television at the time in South Africa wasn't anything to write songs about, but it was good enough. We had a few locally-produced TV series such as a sweet little Afrikaans language puppet show called "Liewe Heksie", a delightful peek into the world of a sweet little witch - broomstick, black cat and the various little friends that made up her community, we had a Southern Sotho dub of that era's animated "Spider-Man" which we could watch receive the English language dialogue for via simulcast through our radios, we had the inimitable "Robotech", an anime staple of the 1980s for just about any child, as well as "He-Man" and his female counterpoint "She-Ra".

    That being said, our family had a VHS machine, and renting cartoons to watch after school was always a treat. I have a plethora of memories of the various go-to's my brother and I had - old Disney movies and shorts, "Silly Symphonies" featuring everyone's most beloved cartoon legends of the day: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc... There were older films, like what today is largely regarded as ethically problematic due to its representation of minority groups in America, "The Song of the South" as well as 1960s "Pollyanna", and then there were certain special things that were very specific to the later 1970s and 1980s - that were born during those years and had died before it the 1990s were ushered in. Among these were "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (1979) and "The Water Babies" (1978). My bother and I watched them all again and again and in most cases, I grew up remembering every detail of every one of them.

    There was, however, one film, also animated, the storyline of which was lost to me by the time I'd become a more or less proficient reader. I couldn't have been older than nine and yet, I'd find myself lying awake in the dark at night, trying desperately to remember it. It lived in me, somewhere deep in me, and stubbornly refused to ever rise up as a narrative of any kind. All I knew of it was its name, "Choppy and the Princess".

    After a few years of searching in my early teens, I found an old anime series made between 1978 and 1979 the English version of which went by that very name, and while it definitely had some of the hallmarks of the mysterious film that had been gnawing at my developing psyche for years - the irrelevance of gender when it came to character, the kindness of strangers and so on - it simply was not the film. The film I remembered had me leaning toward the television prone to fall on my face at any second. It had my heart thumping against my little chest as if it were trying to escape. Most profound of all of my memories of this mysterious film was that I could distinctly remember being brought to tears by it several times during its running time. Six-year-old boys are not known for their sensitivity when it comes to cartoons. Whatever it was that I has remembered watching, it had been profoundly moving for me.

    By the time I'd hit my late teens, I'd resigned myself to the idea that the film that somehow lived within my memory, but had hidden itself from me could only have been some kind of phantom of the human memory. I had unconsciously invented a romance - something of enormous value that in time had been lost to me, and though it continued to nag at me from time to time, at least now I could make some kind of sense of it all. By the age of eighteen, I already had lost so many dear things that this elusive memory of a movie that touched me deeper than any piece of art ever had was really only a bit of a nuisance. I had to allow the memory to fade.

Fast-forward the tape

    Life took off, as life does. Nobody wants to read about my teenage years. As a matter of fact, I doubt anybody cares about anything outside of the revelation that had snuck away from me via some alleyway in my personal history, had run and woven its way through the avenues of time and was sneaking up to knock me out by way of a chance meeting in my future.

    After a brief period of unemployment in 2011, I was asked to open up a musical instrument repair department within a large music wholesaler in Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg, my home city. The job I was asked to do came easily to me. Workdays weren't particularly demanding, but I was, at least initially, a department of one. Any and all instrument repair was handled by me. I'm not a particularly manly man. Some might consider me to be somewhat gender fluid, although that would be an aesthetically-drawn conclusion only. I'm small, effeminate, but over the years, I'd learnt to wield power tools and woodworking equipment as well as any manly man might. Setting myself up at the musical instrument company had been easy, and my days ended at the same time everyone else's did. Because of that, I was quickly able to make a few friends there, and one of them was a guy by the name of Neil.

    Neil was a funny guy who enjoyed a beer and as things turned out, he and I shared similar taste in music and film, too. We hadn't known one another long when one night, after we'd had a little jam together in his apartment, he asked me if I enjoyed Studio Ghibli films. I told him I did. Who doesn't like Ghibli, right? Hayao Miyazaki is a legend of animation, and I'd only recently been spirited away by "Spirited Away". Neil asked me if I'd like to borrow some movies from him to watch at home and I said sure. That night, Neil leant me two films, one called "Princess Mononoke", and another called "Nausicaӓ of the Valley of the Wind".

    When I arrived home that night, I was still buzzing a little from the jam, as one often is after a musical collaboration that goes well. I wasn't ready to sleep at all, and watching a movie seemed like just the thing to do at the time. Both films Neil had leant to me were still in their original cases, having been bought by him from a DVD store in New Zealand that was closing. I studied the cover art on each. Neil had urged me to watch "Princess Mononoke" as soon as humanly possible, but for some reason I couldn't explain, the less impressive cover design of "Nausicaӓ of the Valley of the Wind" seemed to sing to me with the voice of a siren. I booted up the PC and carefully placed the "Nausicaӓ" DVD into the DVD tray. As the DVD whirred to life, I poured myself a large glass of wine and settle into my office chair.

    Fifteen minutes later I was sobbing uncontrollably. After what by then had probably been about twenty-seven years, fate had reunited me and the film that had done so much to make me who I am today.                   

A Review of "Nausicaӓ of the Valley of the Wind"

    It's as this point that I need to issue a spoiler alert to anybody who managed to survive the preamble to my review of this incredible film. This is a Studio Ghibli film, arguably the first truly great Studio Ghibli film, and it is a product of a time before computers and animation shared anything of the partnership they do today. Every frame of this film, 25 of them per second of its running time, is a work of art, and so I'm proud that along the way, I've been able to provide stills to illustrate the various important aspects of the narrative. There will be quite a few of them, but I hope that their inclusion help to make the review easier to follow.

    An additional note to the reader: I'm a middle-aged man, and I've written this review using the type of vernacular a middle-aged man uses when he isn't concerned with the academic concerns of the sensibilities certain adults harbour when it comes to the use of certain words. I'm by no means a potty mouth, but this might not be the sort of review certain parents would endorse as a child-friendly piece of writing. If occasional use of terms in the same vein as "shit-ton" don't bother you, and you're game to read a fairly detailed synopsis of "Nausicaӓ of the Valley of the Wind", then I love you. Read on.

    The film presents us with a cold open. We overlook a barren, windswept wasteland. 

    We're following a cloaked human figure wearing an air-filtering mask under a wide-brimmed hat. He rides upon an ostrich-like bird called a horseclaw (https://nausicaa.fandom.com/wiki/Horseclaw) that likewise wears an air-filtering mask fitted to its beaked noggin. Just behind the rider trails another horseclaw, also masked, and gently being led along by a sort of harness.

    With our horseclaw-riding stranger, we enter what appears to be all that remains of what had been a human settlement. We're surrounded by dilapidated manmade structures upon all of which some sort of fungus seems to have taken root. 

    Our cloaked guide dismounts his horseclaw, approaches and enters one of the structures closest to him - a building that possibly had served as a house, although, with all the fungus sprouting out of it, it's difficult to tell. He removes a rifle from its holster at the side of his horseclaw before he goes in. The door doesn't so much swing open as it merely falls off its hinges. We observe the room with our masked man and find that what we're looking at is indeed the darkened interior of a house within which various fungi and their spores have entirely taken over. A second or two pass before our gaze settles on the skeletal remains of a human being, still wearing a helmet, its grim face staring out of a mixture of darkness and the forest of fungi grown about and over the corpse, now, along with every inch of the structure that once may have served him as a home, serving only as a host of the fungal forest that seems to have engulfed this place, and as a warning to anyone who comes upon his final resting place.  

    It's here that, for the first time in the film, we see the eyes of our mysterious cloaked man. His facial features remain obscured by the hat that casts it into shadow and his air-filtration mask. 

    He looks down to find a small rag doll lying at his feet, evidence that once children played here. He bends to pick it up, but it just crumbles away between his fingers as if it were made of loosely-packed sea sand. Before turning to leave, he surveys the scene again, saying to himself, "Another village destroyed." 

    The next shot, our perspective is shifted to a view of giant dragonfly-like insects called royal yanma (https://nausicaa.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Yanma) swarming together above the ruins of a structure that appears to have served this particular village as a sort of windmill. 

    Our cloaked man remounts his horseclaw saying to it and the other that it's time to go. He continues, "Soon, this will also be consumed by the Sea of Decay." (This dialogue is based upon the English subtitles provided with the film. Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese. I've used four transliterated subtitle files in an effort to provide the best-translated quotes I can find. The English dub if the film refers to the expanding fungal forest releasing poisonous spores into the air as the "Toxic Jungle".)

    It's at this point, one minute and fifty seconds into the film's runtime, the first notes of the film's musical score, a string arrangement of ascending and descending 16th notes fades in, punctuated occasionally by the drama of a simple, yet regal-sounding horn section, As these notes, nascent with anticipation, peddle dramatically, we are given a little bit of exposition in the form of a short set of captions set over one of Hayao Miyazaki's legendary watercolour backgrounds, an extraordinary post-apocalyptic landscape only Studio Ghibli could've dreamt into reality and projected onto millions of screens worldwide in the mid-1980s. Its English translation reads, "1,000 years after the collapse of industrial civilisation, the Sea of Decay, a swamp exuding toxic vapours, covered an Earth strewn with rusting ruins, threatening human survival."      

    The main orchestral theme begins to play as a montage of images bearing a resemblance to tapestries one might associate with castle and temple decorations that have withstood the test of time under the guard of people who've placed tremendous value in them in the form of hope or faith, begins to carry us from one symbolic-seeming image to the next, while of course, company credits are displayed. As an introduction to an animated film of such moral and philosophical scope, as simple as it is, this introductory montage is an audio-visual sensation that, though simple and steady-paced, is enormously rewarding, especially to those who might have seen the film before and are already aware of the twist lightly-concealed like an undervalued treasure near the film's end - a twist that places the film perhaps a decade or two ahead of its time. 

    As the introductory montage draws to an end, the film's score treats us to not the first of a few uplifting musical movements, but certainly the most pronounced one thus far, and it accompanies an image of what some might interpret to be an angel - a being feminine in appearance, winged and wearing a blue robe. This angel flies from the panel's right-hand side to meet what appear to be three small children who themselves appear to be rushing over to greet her with absolute adoration and excitement, adoration and excitement of the sort only children, as yet unjaded by the world, innocent of all the despicable secrets, plots and schemes adults grow to accept as being natural, even inevitable, are truly capable of.

    Above and below the angel and children on the tapestry are what appear to be golden fields.

    This final image on the tapestry fades into another image of a clear blue sky above thick, pillowy cumulonimbus clouds as the musical score opens up into a serene string-based melody following the melodic structure of the film's main musical motif, but an octave higher. This melody soars, as does the glider onscreen we're looking down on from above as the production credits that remain reach their conclusion. 

    As the last of these production credits scroll across our screens, we're shown a few moments of foreshadowing, as well as clues as to what the history of this Earth had been. That the image below bears a resemblance to a giant skull is unmistakable, and will be addressed shortly.

    Our opening credit sequence draws to a close, and the glider we've hitherto observed from a distance is shown to be piloted by a young woman. Making it appear easier than preparing an attractive ice cream cone, our glider's pilot lands her flying machine gently in the desert sand just outside of an area clearly long-since overrun by the Sea of Decay. Here we receive our first close-up of this young woman - our heroine, Nausicaӓ. She wears a mask, as did the man in the scenes preceding the credits, unholsters a flare gun from its place of safety beneath the right wing of her glider, and sets off with it toward the terrifying, toxic place with about as much concern as that displayed by an accomplished surfer heading toward a swimming pool.     

    Now, we've only met our heroine about two minutes ago, but have already seen her soar on a glider high above clouds, execute a speedy, yet elegant landing on it, grab a gun and head off into a swamp that's basically exclusively home to things that live to kill human beings. If any of us were still thinking she might suffer from just a little bit of onuxophobia (the fear of losing of damaging finger and/or toenails), then, by the time we've seen her deftly descend perhaps a hundred metres into this dark and insect-infested section of Toxic Jungle, I think most of us are on the same page. This young woman is fearless.

    It hardly takes her any time at all to shimmy and swing her way down to the ground level of this area of the Sea of Decay. Once there, we get to take a good look at her surroundings, and it shouldn't be surprising to any of us that she's surrounded by various fungal outgrowths and giant insects. The soundtrack has conspired with the art direction to create a place that is as mysterious and strangely beautiful as it is potentially dangerous. As is the case in certain of our own ecosystems, certain fungi are bioluminescent, and these forest glades do certainly seem to be illuminated by sources other than the sun or a flare or any electronic device. The dark, alien-looking glade surrounding our heroine is oddly compelling. And it's just as well, too, because we already know that this is a woman who is ready to show us more of it.

    As she proceeds through this dark jungle landscape illuminated as it is by various bioluminescent fungi, a specimen of this fungus growing out of the bough a tree catches her eye, causing her to pause for a closer look. She removes her goggles, takes a single vial out of a tiny pocket sewn into the flight uniform she's wearing, and with all the care of an entomophilous surgeon trying to free the leg of a crane fly from a spiderweb, gently taps a single spore loose from its parent fungus. We watch with her as the glowing spore descends into the bottom of her vial, illuminating it like a dim lightbulb. Once settled, she seals the vial with a cork stopper and returns the glowing vial to its pocket.   

    We follow her further into the mysterious, beautiful, yet toxic botanical wonderland, and we encounter what she describes as ohmu tracks, which she follows further into the forest. The soundtrack maintains an ambiance suggestive of mystery while subtly illustrating our heroine's careful and vigilant explorative journey.

    Suddenly, Nausicaӓ's eyes widen and a change in the soundtrack is emphasised by the striking of a chord on a sitar, implying further mystery and a degree of the sort of magnificence one might attribute to the discovery of a temple or a religious relic. Nausicaӓ gasps and whispers the word, "Ohmu." From behind Nausicaӓ, we're shown what she's seeing, a thing that, at first, appears to us as potentially being a thing of danger, resembling an enormous pill bug with six eyes on each of its front-facing segments. This thought is dispelled as quickly as it's introduced, though, as Nausicaӓ runs up to it describing it as a perfect ohmu shell. We now know that the gigantic insects of the Sea of Decay as like many of the ordinary insects we know from our everyday lives, endowed with hard, chitinous exoskeletons that must be shed every time the insect grows a little larger. We'll come to understand shortly that the principle indicator that this is merely a shell and not a living, breathing ohmu resides in the colour of its eyes, these being a pale grey in colour and as Nausicaӓ grows nearer to it, appear to us as the windows of a vacant building might.     

    Nausicaӓ arrives at the shell and begins to climb it, stepping on its hollow legs to do so. When close enough, she draws her sword and gives the shell a gentle, yet confident tap with the blade. This causes a sonorous ringing sound to emanate throughout the darkened chamber. She relishes in it, "The perfect sound," she says. Then, with all of her might, she stabs at the shell with the tip of her sword. Despite her having stabbed at the shell with all of her strength, she fails to leave even a scratch on the discarded ohmu shell. At first, she seems shocked, even perhaps in a bit of pain, but just as quickly, she sighs, chuckles to herself and takes note of the fact that, though she hadn't been able to mark the shell at all, the shell had chipped her Xerconian ceramic sword. Hurrying, truly excited, she climbs to the topmost eye on the right-hand side of the foremost segment of the shell, talking to herself as she climbs of the happiness the recovery of such a shell is bound to bring to the villagers, and how they'll not want for building materials for some time.

    She gazes at the crystal-clear eye and wonders if she'd be capable of flying home with it. From another purpose-sewn little pocket in her uniform, she removes a single flare, opens it up and taps the gunpowder from within it in a circle about the eye. She then uses the hammer of her flare gun to release a spark onto the powder, which burns away, leaving a darkened ring where it had been. Then, using her sword, she strikes again and again at the charred semicircle. As she does so, from behind her, we're shown as a number of what appear to be ghostly, pink worms emerge from the ohmu shell and fly away from Nausicaӓ.        

    After a minute or two, the eye comes loose, and Nausicaӓ, lifting is above her head remarks on how light it is and dances around with it a little, but just then, thousands of spores begin to descend onto the shell above her and fall around her. 

    I've always wondered if the ghostly pink worms that emerged from the ohmu shell as Nausicaӓ cut the eye out with her sword might have had something to do with it, but perhaps not. She recognises the spores as being the afternoon spores of the Mushigo palms. It's just as likely that it was simply their time of day to be released. 

    

    Nausicaӓ is left with no choice but to wait the falling of these spores out beneath her ohmu eye. She seems to be quite at peace under there, gazing up into the foliage above until the spores stop falling. However, the second they stop falling, Nausicaӓ seems gripped by a terrible anxiety. 

    Her heart pounds as she leaps to her feet, looking around for any clue as to what it might be that has triggered her violent emotional reaction. High above, a few royal yanma fly about quietly. All else is silent. But then, in the distance, a gunshot rings out. Nausicaӓ immediately realises that someone is in trouble, and that the insects must be attacking.

    Taking her lightweight ohmu eye in one hand and her flare gun in the other, Nausicaӓ begins to run as fast as she can in order to help whomever it is that has found him or herself on the wrong side of the insects. As she runs back toward the part of the forest outside of which she'd left her glider waiting, she accidentally stomps on a beetle-like insect. The insect lets out a cranky grumble. Nausicaӓ, being a true princess who never forgets her manners, offers a hasty apology.

    Finding a good place to climb in order to get a better view of what might be going on, Nausicaӓ ditches her ohmu eye and hurries to a lookout position in the left eye socket of a giant warrior long-since turned to stone. 

    From here, using a small telescope, she's able to spot the danger in the distance - an ohmu, a BIG one, likely the one that left the shell she's just discovered. It's eyes glow blood-red, indicating that it is ANGRY.

    At the same time, she notices the small figures trying to escape the ohmu. She fires a flare into the air above them in an attempt to get their attention and have them run in her direction. They respond with a flare of their own, letting Nausicaӓ know that they're on their way toward her.

    The soundtrack is tense as Nausicaӓ runs out of the patch of forest she'd been exploring, ditches her ohmu eye again, hops aboard her glider and takes off. 

    A short aside - "Back to the Future II" is a great movie, and the Hoverboard is a legendary relic of movie history, but I think my early exposure to this film, though somewhat lost to memory when I saw "Back to the Future II", must have somehow rendered me somewhat immune to the Hoverboard's charms. Sorry, Spielberg. Hoverboards are cool for sure, but Nausicaӓ's glider is the flying machine I'd have in mind if I were ever to unearth a genie-containing lamp.

    As we draw closer to those being pursued by the enraged ohmu, we realise that Nausicaӓ has come to the aid of the mysterious horseclaw rider we met before the opening credits. Swooping close enough for him to hear her, she tells him to drive upwind. He agrees to do so. Nausicaӓ then retreats and ascends up to eye-level with the enraged ohmu. Keeping pace and flying alongside it, she tries to calm it by speaking to it. She calls to it gently and asks it to calm itself, explaining that its home is in the Sea of Decay, and that it ought to return there, but it's no good. This ohmu is properly pissed. It doesn't take Nausicaӓ very long to realise that diplomacy is not the remedy this situation calls for. This provides us with an example of Nausicaӓ's way of approaching problems that's going to set us up for the rest of the film.

    Increasing her speed and flying ahead of the enraged ohmu, Nausicaӓ presses a button on the handlebars of her glider that opens a hatch underneath containing stun grenades, several of which fall out and detonate beneath the ohmu as it runs over them. 

    As the stun grenades explode, the man is thrown off his horseclaw on the other side of a sand dune. As for the ohmu, it comes to a skidding halt, its eyes having turned from blood-red to grey.. The enormous multi-ocular pill bug is unconscious. Everyone is safe.

    But Nausicaӓ's work is not done yet. As the masked man looks over the dune at the unconscious ohmu, she whizzes past from behind him on her glider, holding aloft a cylindrical device that creates a sonorous droning noise when the wind is allowed to flow through it.

    Using this device called an insect charm, Nausicaӓ wakes the ohmu up and leads it back to the forest, its eyes a cool, placid shade of baby-blue. 

    The man Nausicaӓ has just rescued watches her in amazement. He then walks to the top of the hill where he checks on his horseclaws. 

    He waits atop that hill until Nausicaӓ returns, and we discover that he has known Nausicaӓ since she was a baby. Our mysterious masked man, now unmasked and sporting the world's most impressive moustache, is none other than Lord Yupa Miralda, the world's finest swordsman, who has spent most of his life in search of the fabled "Blue-Clad One". More on that later.

  

    After an affectionate sharing of greetings between the two, Nausicaӓ discovers a small, but feisty little animal, one called a fox squirrel, is being kept in a pouch about Yupa's waist. Yupa tells Nausicaӓ how he rescued the little guy from a flying insect, but had had to fire his gun in doing so. This is what has sparked the rage in the ohmu that had been chasing him and his horseclaws. Nausicaӓ, never having seen a fox squirrel before, is fascinated.   

    Acting in accordance with her nature, Nausicaӓ encourages the feral little creature to come to her, speaking to it in soft, placatory tones and inviting it to be at peace, unafraid. 

    Holding out her left hand to the defensive and agitated little fox squirrel, she keeps delivering her gentle assurances, but the fox squirrel, being a small animal in its youth and likely having known nothing other than the constant fight for survival life in the Sea of Decay is defined by, bites into her outstretched finger as savagely as its little jaws will allow it to. Nausicaӓ flinches in pain, but doesn't react beyond that. Yupa watches on in distress. Nausicaӓ continues her reassurances, "See? You are not afraid. See?"

    The little fox squirrel drops its ears in an attitude of submission and begins to like the small puncture wounds its teeth left in Nausicaӓ's index finger.  

    Nausicaӓ excitedly asks Lord Yupa if she can keep the fox squirrel, to which Yupa agrees without protest of question. Nausicaӓ names her new pet Teto.

    She thanks him, and runs over to his two horseclaws. She calls out to them as Kai and Kui and asks them if they remember her.

    The birds greet her with great affection. Anyone watching the interaction would swear not a week had passed since they'd last been around one another, as if a year and a half had gotten onto the same train as a couple of days. That notwithstanding, these two large and apparently flightless birds truly love the shit out of Nausicaӓ.

    Lord Yupa observes Nausicaӓ's interaction with his horseclaws from a small distance away and considers what a mysterious power she so unconsciously wields over every living thing.

    Yupa walks up to Nausicaӓ, Kai and Kui and asks after the wellbeing of everyone in the Valley of the Wind. For a moment, Nausicaӓ looks downcast. He asks he what's wrong and she explains that her father, King Jihl, is no longer able to fly. Yupa asks if the cause of her father's illness is to do with the toxins exuded by the Sea of Decay. She nods, continuing by saying that her father believes his fate to be one shared by all who live near to the Sea of Decay. Yupa expresses regret at not having returned to the Valley sooner. Nausicaӓ refuses to share in that regret and speaks for all the villagers of the Valley by saying that they're only glad that he's come now. Before the two part in order to make the rest of the journey to the Valley, Nausicaӓ tells Yupa that she has something to show him, a secret room that she hasn't shown anyone else for fear that it might frighten them.

    Nausicaӓ runs back to her glider, but before leaving asks Yupa if he might not mind taking the ohmu eye she had brought back with her on to the Valley for her, explaining that it's difficult to fly with.

    Watching her depart, Yupa observes with a chuckle how well she reads the wind.

    The Valley of the Winds is just that - a human stronghold on the edge of the Sea of Decay where everything seems to be powered by great, big windmills and other such wind-powered devices.  

    Many of the windmills work to draw spring water up from underground water sources, providing the Valley's people with fresh water free of the Sea's toxins, while the mountains surrounding the valley isolate it from the Sea of Decay, allowing the uncorrupted, warm air blowing off the surface of the ocean to fill the valley. In a world devastated by the Sea of Decay, the Valley is as close to idyllic as anyone is going to find.

    At a shallow lake where Yupa and his horseclaws have stopped to drink, they are greeted by two of the village elders. These two endearing old men accompany him the rest of the way, excitedly sharing various titbits of news and small talk with him.

    As they enter the Valley, three children gathering Chiko nuts stop what they're doing to say hello. We might not be aware of it, but we've already seen these children, and it isn't the last time we're going to.

    All of the villagers, young and old, gather together to greet Lord Yupa both fondly and with great respect.

    Nausicaӓ is already home, and is busily working to repair one of the vanes of a windmill, assisted by the Valley's Captain of the Guards, Mito. Mito announces Lord Yupa's arrival to the Princess, but Nausicaӓ is clearly not the type to leave a job half-done. It only takes her a few seconds to complete her repair, and she tells Mito to start the mill up. He does, it works perfectly, and down they go to join the welcoming party.

    The villagers are thrilled with the ohmu's eye and news of the discovery of the shell. They plan to send a reconnaissance team out for the rest of it the following day.

    Nausicaӓ approaches Lord Yupa with a new-born baby in her arms. She tells Yupa that the baby was born the day before to a villager named Teoto.

    The child's mother asks Yupa if he'd honour her by being godfather to the child and giving it a name. Yupa says the baby reminds him of Nausicaӓ when she was a baby.

    All this talk of Nausicaӓ and how strong she is provokes Mito, wearied by all the time he's spent worrying about the Princess, to seek a little compassion from the crowd for the sleepless nights she's given him.

    It seems that all the buildings in the valley are built to serve towards some function or another that benefits the entire Valley. The castle is no different.

    That night, Yupa sits with Nausicaӓ, her ailing father, King Jihl and an blind but wise old woman by the name of Obaba. the King asks Yupa about his travels, and Yupa replies that he's seen little more than "bad omens", the waste of the Sea of Decay having altogether overtaken two new settlements. Yupa wonders out loud why it is that the other human settlements can't attain the levels of harmony enjoyed by the people of the Valley. 

    It's at this point that we first hear the wise, old Obaba speak. She explains that their valley is protected by the clean winds of the ocean. King Jihl asks if Yupa would be willing at this stage to settle in the Valley, implying that for Yupa to do so would be both an honour and a relief to him as King. For the ailing King, his ability to effectively govern for the people of the Valley are obvious sources of concern.

    Before Yupa can answer, Obaba laughs the question off, saying that it's Yupa's lot in life to search forever.

    Nausicaӓ asks what it is that Yupa is looking for. Obaba directs her attention to the tapestry hanging on the wall beside the King's bed, a tapestry she admits she can no longer see, but remembers well. She bids Nausicaӓ look at the top left-hand corner of the tapestry, and begins to describe an ancient prophecy.

    The prophecy speaks of a man in strange blue robes landing in a golden field, and restoring peace to the world by joining bonds with the great Earth. Nausicaӓ continues from where Obaba leaves off, "And guides the people to the pure land, at last."

    Yupa asks Obaba not to make fun of him, and explains that he only wishes to know hat the destiny of humanity is to be.

    After the small gathering and conversation is the King's room, we find Nausicaӓ sitting in her own room by a window outside of which the vanes of a great windmill turn. She gently strokes her little Teto as he sleeps peacefully in her lap. She appears troubled by Yupa's fate, and expresses an earnest wish to help him.

    Shortly before dawn, Mito wakes Nausicaӓ. He explains that the wind smells strange and that he and the other guards are concerned. Nausicaӓ gets dressed and runs up to a lookout tower with Mito and Gol. Her glider is mounted there upon a rustic-looking launchpad made of wood. Yupa joins them shortly afterwards. Scanning the skies for anomalies, Nausicaӓ notices a light moving behind the clouds and gestures in its direction.

    It immediately becomes apparent that a very large airship is flying toward the Valley at high speed. Yupa identifies the ship as one belonging to the Tolmekians.  

    The crashing ship grows nearer...

    And nearer still, until we can see that there are insects scattered about the bough of the ship. The ship swoops over the lookout just metres above the heads of Nausicaӓ and the others. Nausicaӓ, no stranger to flying, immediately identifies the fact that the ship is attempting an emergency landing.

    She tells Gol, the greyer of the two guards, to help her launch her glider. Just before she's about to take off, Teto jumps up onto her shoulder.

    Flying at speed, she quickly catches up with the enormous crashing ship.

    It's covered in insects from the Sea of Decay.

    Within the airship, soldiers are seen firing upon the insects in a futile fashion. The eyes of the insects are blood-red, immediately signalling that they're enraged.

    Nausicaӓ looks ahead and sees that the ship is on a direct course for a cliffside.

    She tries as hard as she can to get the attention of the pilot, but to no avail.

    Just before the ship collides with the cliffside, Nausicaӓ sees a young woman with her hands chained together looking at her in panic through one of the ship's windows.

    Immediately after that, the entire ship crashes, exploding into a giant ball of fire.

    Nausicaӓ lands and begins to search for survivors. She only finds one, and it's the same young woman who she'd seen through the window of the ship before it crashed. Nausicaӓ carries the woman to safety away from the burning wreckage of the ship. When there, the woman stirs as Nausicaӓ checks her for injuries. Nausicaӓ gets as far as her chest and gasps, making it clear that the woman's wounds are fatal. The sombre soundtrack ensures we get the message. The woman then struggles to tell Nausicaӓ that her name is Lastelle, Princess of another kingdom called Pejite. She begs Nausicaӓ to ensure nothing on the ship survived. Nausicaӓ tells her not to worry, that everything that remained of the ship is burning. Lastelle, looking relieved, breathes her last breath uttering the words, "Thank goodness."

      By now, the village guards have arrived at the crash site. Mito is seen running and calling out to Nausicaӓ. He finds her kneeling beside Lastelle's body. On approaching, he immediately recognises the Princess of Pejite. Nausicaӓ, wiping tears from her eyes, draws her sword and cuts the chain between Lastelle's hands before crossing them over her chest.

     The sombre scene is interrupted when a giant flying insect, an ushiabu (https://non-aliencreatures.fandom.com/wiki/Ushiabu), emerges from the wreckage of the ship. Believing it incapable of flying away, many of the guards opt to fire on it with their rifles, but others, knowing that simple bullets wouldn't be enough to kill such an insect, warn them not to, saying that firing at the ushiabu would only draw more insects to the scene.    

    Having arrived among them, Nausicaӓ silences them all authoritatively and orders Mito to bring her glider to her. The village guards express obvious distress as Nausicaӓ approaches the insect, but she does so confidently. The ushiabu watches her approach, chattering its mouthparts, eyes blood-red, indicating that it is clearly in the mood for violence. Slowly, Nausicaӓ withdraws the insect charm - a hollow tube on a string, from her pocket, and begins to swing it in a circular motion, which creates a soft whistling sound. She whirls the charm with greater energy until in begins to emanate a sonorous drone. Looking the enormous insect in the eye, she begins to whisper to it...

    As the charm drones, the ushiabu extends its wings, wings that seem too small to bear the weight of such a large animal. As it does so, Nausicaӓ continues to whisper to it in reassuring tones. Behind her, Mito and Gol approach with her glider, leaving it only a metre or so behind her. She thanks them, and still looking into the ushiabu's many eyes, Nausicaӓ whispers a little louder, "Return to the forest. You're strong, you can fly."

    As if the ushiabu understood every word she said, it raises its wings and begins to spread them.

    Slowly, the giant insect begins to hoist its weight upward. Seeing this, Nausicaӓ hurls her insect charm high into the air, leaps backward onto her glider, takes off, catches the charm, and begins to lead the ushiabu back toward the jungle. Below her, the villagers cheer and Lord Yupa observes how fortunate it was that things proceeded the way that they did, thanking God that they had avoided the dire circumstances that were sure to have accompanied the death of even a single insect at the hands of the villagers. This is all accompanied with a joyous orchestral flourish courtesy of what I believe was the first of quite a few collaborations between Joe Hisaishi and Hayao Miyazaki. 

    Holding her insect charm aloft, Nausicaӓ flies alongside the ushiabu until it overtakes her and continues toward the forest on its own. 

    With an attitude of great satisfaction, she lands her glider on the sands below and watches the ushiabu fly toward the horizon, but just before it gets there, she realises with a gasp that an ohmu is regarding her passively through a set of baby-blue eyes from the distance. Once the ushiabu passes it, the ohmu turns slowly and follows it back to the forest.

    We cut to a fleet of Tolmekian warplanes flying over the fluffy cumulonimbus clouds over Nausicaӓ's Valley. The crews of each plane make use of flashlights to signal to one another in a type of Morse code.

    Oblivious of the approach of the fleet of warplanes, the villagers of the Valley of the Winds are going about the business of purging their village of spores that fell during the chaos of the night before. Children busily search the fields with determination and upon discovering such spores, call out to the adults who then burn those spores off using flamethrowers.

    An electronic organ lays down an ominous bit of music to serve as a backdrop to another group of villagers that include Mito and Yupa who are making a terrifying discovery - an enormous, veiny mass at the centre of the area in which the airship had crashed the night before. Their suspicions around the mass are heightened by the fact that the fire that had destroyed nearly all of the ship and its cargo hadn't seemed to have had much of an effect on this blob at all. Mito dismisses most of the villagers around the enormous anomaly, suggesting it be ignored until the work of cleansing the Valley of spores is done.

    Once the other villagers have begun to leave, Yupa points out to Mito that the thing has a pulse. Mito asks Yupa what he thinks it could be, a question Yupa answers by telling Mito of rumours he's heard as he travelled, rumours of a dangerous giant thought long-extinct that had lain dormant beneath the Kingdom of Pegite for a thousand years, the last of a near-invincible race of creatures known as giant warriors that were believed to have been all but destroyed during the Seven Days of Fire. All of the giant warriors had been turned to stone, all but for one. Yupa describes Tolmekia as a military state far to the west of them, and reminds Mito of the Pegite prisoner who'd died in the crash the night before.     

    Nausicaӓ, working elsewhere in the Valley helping the villagers bury those killed in the crash, hears something.

     Gradually, but surely, the din grows into the roaring of the engines of those Tolmekian warships.

 

    The warplanes suddenly appear over the village flying low and aggressively. The bow of one of them smashes a windmill as it flies over, scattering the panicked villagers.

    

    As she runs from group to frightened group, Nausicaӓ orders the villagers to run to the castle. She then catches sight of one of the ships heading for the castle, and thinks of her frail and helpless father.

    The soundtrack is tense as the Tolmekian ships open up, unleashing wave upon wave of well-armed soldiers and swordsmen in full body armour.

    Others open up for fleets of tanks to drive out of. It's clear the Tolmekians have come to the Valley with the intention of forcing the villagers into complete subservience. 

    King Jihl, in his room, orders the old and blind Obaba to hide. She answers defiantly that she will do no such thing. Tolmekian foot soldiers storm the castle and we follow their hastened ascent upstairs to the King's chamber when the shot cuts away to one of the castle's exterior viewed from Nausicaӓ's perspective.

    The sound of guns being fired resound, and Nausicaӓ sprints upstairs to find four foot soldiers and a slimy politician by the name of Kurotowa standing around a hunched over Obaba and the lifeless body of her father.

    For the first time since we've met her, absolute rage overtakes Nausicaӓ's demeanour. Anyone impressed with this less-expressed aspect of Nausicaӓ's personality might be disappointed at this point to discover that this is as pissed as we're going to see her. She cries out, "How dare you!" and ruthlessly attacks the foot soldiers standing about the body of Jihl. With a tool of some sort that she'd been using in the forest, some kind of short pole, she slays every foot soldier, one by one. 

    When she runs out of foot soldiers, Kurotowa, a shit-eating grin on his face that we're all bound to tire of very quickly, draws his sword. Nausicaӓ doesn't allow that grin to remain on his face for long, as she smashes his sword completely with a single swing of the tool she's wielding. 

    Armoured knights appear at the door, one brandishing a broadsword, another, a battle axe, Several more are obscured behind them. Without hesitation, Nausicaӓ lunges at them with her little pole. Her first attack is deflected, sending her flying backwards in a somersault. 

    Where she lands, she finds a sword and picks it up. A concerned Obaba begins to implore, "Nausicaӓ!" But it's too late for that. Nausicaӓ, entirely possessed by murderous intent and without any concern for her own wellbeing, launches herself at the knights.

        At that moment, Lord Yupa throws himself between Nausicaӓ and the foremost knight. Nausicaӓ's blade is stopped short, embedded in Yupa's gloved left wrist, while Yupa holds a dagger at the throat of the knight. Yupa warns the knight to stay where he is lest his life be lost to an old man wielding a blade fashioned from ohmu shell. The other knights talk among themselves, "That's Lord Yupa!" Yupa then speaks of the events of the previous evening - how the villagers they were now so mercilessly attacking had been toiling all night, attempting to rescue survivors from their downed airship. He goes on to say that only minutes earlier, those same villagers had respectfully laid to rest one of the Tolmekian dead from the crash. He asks them if this is how they treat all such people, however weak those people might seem to them to be.

    As Yupa speaks with the Tolmekian brutes, Nausicaӓ begins to recognise the cost that giving into her rage had come at. At this point, Yupa whispers to her. He quietly advises her to be calm.

    He warns her that fighting the Tolmekians now will result in the slaughter of the villagers. They have to survive and wait for their chance.

    Kurotowa then pulls a small gun from a holster about his waist and aims it at Nausicaӓ, but is ordered by a woman in full and resplendent body armour to stop. Nausicaӓ hasn't said a word or looked away from Yupa's blood dripping from the base of the blade of her sword since Yupa's entrance. 

    The woman recognises Yupa. She says that they hadn't come for slaughter, but to talk. The woman orders everyone to withdraw their blades. Yupa withdraws his dagger from the throat of the Tolmekian knight and pulls his injured left wrist back beneath his cloak. Nausicaӓ, overwhelmed, faints, and Yupa catches her in his arms. 

    We then cut to the villagers, surrounded by Tolmekian war engines and soldiers, all seated on the ground. Nausicaӓ appears between the Tolmekians and a tank, its cannon trained upon them. Korotawa then speaks with altogether unearned authority, demanding that the villagers listen to the words of Her Highness Kushana, the woman bedecked in armour who we'd just met at the scene of Jihl's murder. She is described as possessing the station of Division Commander of the Tolmekian Frontier Forces.

    Kushana orates to the villagers that they have come on a mission to build a unity and forge peace in the region. She makes it clear that, to her, they are nothing but a people living too near to the Sea of Decay to survive long anyway, and that the villagers should accept Tolmekian rule and join them in their mission to burn the Sea of Decay away to nothing, and thereby resurrect the Earth.

    She continues to boast of the Tolmekian theft of the nascent giant warrior, and swears that, using it, they will rid the world of insects and toxins.

    Obaba interrupts her speech, and matter-of-factly explains to her that her and her militant people aren't by any means the first to consider burning the Sea of Decay, that many before her have, and that each has only made matters worse as herds of countless raging ohmu "swarmed the Earth like a tidal wave."

  

    She explains that the ohmu would rampage until they starved to death, and that over time, the spores took root in the decaying bodies of the ohmu, thus engulfing the world in the Sea of Decay. Again, Korotawa opens his big mouth, ordering silence from Obaba, so Obaba teases him, "Ah! What will you do? Kill me, too? Kill me if you will! Easy to work murder on a blind old woman. Just like you murdered Jihl."

    This causes the villagers to freak out. Korotawa orders the soldiers to "take care of the protesting villagers and show them no mercy."

    Nausicaӓ finally addresses the villagers, sadness lurking behind the authority with which she speaks. She tells them all to stop, explaining that she wants no more sacrifices. She turns to Obaba and respectfully makes the same request of her directly. Then, again addressing everyone, she asks that the villagers submit to the Tolmekians.

    The following scene begins with tremendous energy as the soundtrack adopts strongly militaristic sound, rhythm and tonality. Villagers and Tolmekian soldiers work hard to drag the nascent giant warrior up a steep and grassy hillside.

    From a distance off, upon the castle battlement, Kushana and Kurotowa look on. Together, they conspire to take over the Valley as their own. Kushana plans to leave for Pejite upon an airship, taking with her a small group of hostages including Nausicaӓ and four other villagers of her choice. Kushana orders Kurotowa to stay and oversee the giant warrior's revival.

    That night, Yupa finds Mito, who's been chosen by Nausicaӓ as one of the hostages to accompany her, loading up a barge to be towed behind the Tolmekian airships on their way to Pejite. Mito isn't at all concerned for himself, but instead worries about the situation in the Valley. Yupa informs Mito of his plan to feign leaving the Valley and then return in secret to prevent the monster's resurrection.

    After his meeting with Mito, Yupa goes to Nausicaӓ's room to let her know what he plans to do. He arrives and knocks, but receives no answer. He lets himself in to find Nausicaӓ vanished and Teto scratching furiously at a wall.

    The wall proves to conceal a door leading to a stairwell that goes all the way down to the foundations of the castle.

 

    At the bottom of this stairwell, we notice Lord Yupa passing by piles of old weaponry that seems long since to have been decommissioned.

    At the bottom of the stairwell, Yupa sees Teto enter a well-lit room.

    What Lord Yupa sees when he enters the room blows his old, swashbuckling mind! He sees a garden of plants from the Sea of Decay, but none of the corruption that usually accompanies them. Alone, at a table set at the back of the room, sits Nausicaӓ, her head face-down in the fold of her arms on the table top.

    Yupa's first reaction is one of shock and horror, but Nausicaӓ explains to him that the plants have been irrigated with pure water drawn from underground water sources by the castle windmills, and that they're all growing in clean sand taken from the foundation. Grown in this way, in this environment, the plants are no more toxic than the air in the Valley. Through her work in this secret room, the one she had mentioned to Yupa right in the beginning after their run-in with the ohmu, she's discovered that the plants of the Sea of Decay aren't poisonous, but rather, it's the toxins are in the soil. She can't imagine how humans ever allowed the earth to become so polluted.

    Lord Yupa is gobsmacked by the fact that Nausicaӓ found all of this out by herself, but it makes more sense to him after she explains that she had done it in the hopes of finding a cure for her late father's illness. Then, with remorse almost choking her, she admits that it's too late and she's shutting it all down. She's already shut off the water and soon, all the plants will whither and die.   

    She then falls into Yupa's arms and sobs. Yupa's concern for her is of a paternal nature. He says her name in an inquiring way. Nausicaӓ explains that she's afraid of herself, that she hadn't been aware that her rage could drive her to kill. It's clear that killing anyone had never been something that she thought of as a good thing, and that having been possessed by the motivation to do so had been an entirely horrifying experience that had transformed the princess in an altogether unprecedented way, nearly breaking her.

    The next morning, the Tolmekian war ships prepare for take off with the barge containing the hostages tethered behind the command ship. Just as Nausicaӓ is about to board one of the ships, our three little friends from the beginning run over to her, calling out to her. Together, the three little ones gathered a large bag of chiko nuts for her. The Princess praises the three little ones for their hard work and tells them that the gift is very precious. They begin to cry and throw themselves at her, clutching her tightly as their little frames will allow them to. Nausicaӓ tells them not to cry because she'll be home in no time. One of the children, a little girl in pink asks her, "Really?" Nausicaӓ answers, "Why, have I ever lied to you?" The little girl says, "No." This exchange causes the three small children to brighten up as the soundtrack offers us a tender solo piano version on the main theme. They ask Nausicaӓ to promise, which of course, Nausicaӓ does, telling them that she has to go now. The children, their fears apparently having been dispelled, run back to the crowd of villagers looking on, and turn back to when they get there, saying goodbye to the princess in cheerful unison.

    As Nausicaӓ boards the ship, the tender piano motif ends with a single minor chord played slightly harder and unlike those before, devoid of arpeggiation, lending a sense of ominous drama to the weight of the promise that's just been made. 

    The Tolmekian aircraft take off with the little hostage barge in tow.

    Out next scene introduces us to Asbel, Lastelle's twin brother and Prince of Pejite. We don't meet him directly yet. Instead, we're introduced to him as the pilot of a fighter jet.

    Asbel is shown to be following the Tolmekian delegation from a distance. Aboard the barge, Nausicaӓ's fellow hostages notice how closely the Tolmekian ships are flying to one another. One of the hostages even suggests that it's as if they're expecting an attack.

    Aboard the command vessel, Nausicaӓ is gazing out of her window. She notices the high concentration of toxins swirling beneath the clouds. Then, gazing up toward the sun, she notices the presence of Asbel's gunship, and tries to warn the pilot, but it's too late.

    Asbel shoots the first of the Tolmekian ships down as if it were made of tinfoil. Alarms sound and soldiers vigilantly man their various stations. Asbel takes another ship out without breaking a sweat. As Asbel goes about his vengeful business, Mito observes the way the Tolmekian craft just seem to crumble.

    Shooting another Tolmekian ship down, Asbel does significant damage to the tail of the command vessel upon which both Nausicaӓ and Kushana are passengers. The flames from the tail damage cause the tether attaching the barge to the Tolmekian ship to break, and the barge, now without anything driving it, disappears beneath the clouds.

    Nausicaӓ tells little Teto to hide in her flight suit top, and after checking on a slain Tolmekian soldier, climbs atop the airship in the hopes of getting the attacking pilot's attention, and hopefully getting him to chill in the process.    

    Her chosen approach turns out to be one of standing atop the ship amidst the flames spewing out of the various bullet holes and rent parts about her and calling out, "No more!" with her arms outstretched. One might read this and think, "Nah, that'd never work," right? But in this case - I don't know, maybe it's destiny or something - it works a charm! It seems to cause Asbel to experience some kind of daylight hallucination in which, instead of Nausicaӓ standing there in her navy-blue flight suit, he sees his sister in a white frock. Deus ex machina, I guess. But who cares, right? This movie is the business! 

    Having seen the spectral image of his sister calling for him to stop, Asbel takes his finger off the trigger and pulls up, which results in his getting shot down and falling beneath the clouds after the untethered barge.

    Mito and the Princess need to escape the burning ship before it explodes in the air. Their only hope is a small gunship aboard the command vessel, itself nearly engulfed in flames. Nausicaӓ leaps into the gunship without hesitation and calls for Mito to follow her, get into the engine and gun compartment and blow a hole in the side of the ship for them to make their escape through. Mito makes the jump and does as the Princess says, but just before they're about to make their escape, who should show up?

    Of course, it's Her Highness, the Lady Kushana. Nausicaӓ, not being one for holding grudges, calls out to Kushana to hurry up and jump aboard. This Kushana does, and Nausicaӓ directs her into the footwell of the gunship. Mito then blows a hole in the wall of the ship and they make their escape just before the airship explodes.

    Nausicaӓ tells Mito and Kushana to mask up. They're dropping beneath the clouds to look for the barge. This high-stakes search for the lost barge is set to an interesting combination of the electronic organ with which the score has already rendered us particularly familiar, accompanied by the sort of sequencing anyone familiar with popular music of the 1980s would probably be very comfortable with.

    Down, down, down Nausicaӓ chases into the toxic air beneath the clouds. It doesn't take her long to find the barge. Having spotted it, she races over to it and a door opens in the side of it, out of which the other three older men she chose to accompany her call out happily, saved. She asks them to toss her a rope, but is told that their tow hook is broken. Mito orders them to ditch their cargo, but they begin to panic due to the very real prospect of crashing into the forest and becoming insect food. Needing to find a way to calm the three old me, Nausicaӓ orders Mito to kill the rear engine. Once he's done that, Nausicaӓ, now allowing the gunship to glide, stands up and despite Mito's shouts of protest, removes her mask and smiles openly at the three other men. It's an act of faith in the breathability of the air - an act, but one that works. The hostages in the barge beg her to put her mask back on and immediately begin to hoist all of their cargo out of the barge. You see, at this moment, down here beneath the clouds, there are two infectious forces working at loggerheads: Nausicaӓ's smile that infects all who know her with the belief that everything's going to be alright, and the toxic spores of the various fungi about and below. While performing her act of faithful defiance however, the escape gunship has entered a nose dive. Her voice is hoarse as she calls for the rear engine to be restarted, evidence that she had inhaled some of that poisoned air, and that the toxins within it had done her harm.

    The soundtrack resumes its mysterious and ominous electric organ motif, and we see the insects of the jungle beginning to swarm. Our crash survivors reduce their altitude until they find themselves gliding over a vast marsh. Nausicaӓ motions for them to land on the marsh's surface. Both the escape gunship and the barge land successfully.

    Kushana doesn't allow them much time to celebrate their escape.  As soon as they've landed, she rises out of the footwell of the gunship brandishing a golden pistol. "Thanks for saving me," she says, sarcasm dripping off every word. The others clamour over one another to find out why Nausicaӓ rescued Kushana. Kushana answers for her,

    "Because she is a fool," she says. She asks if Nausicaӓ expected her to grovel in some kind of expression of sorrow or gratitude. Nausicaӓ shows no fear at all and points out to Kushana that firing a pistol in the forest is sure to aggravate the insects and cause them to swarm. As she tells Kushana this, she points to the insects already swarming above them. These insects, the yanma, act as sentries of the forest. They will bring more insects. Nausicaӓ says they must make their escape quickly, thus motivating the men to collect all items necessary for their deliverance. Kushana, ever the narcissistic bitch, fires her pistol at the wing of the barge, insisting that only she gives the orders. Nausicaӓ, still not at all phased by Kushana's seemingly endless displays of hubris, compares her to a frightened little fox squirrel. Kushana is angered by this, but as if on cue, the waters beneath them begin to rock the two aircraft with waves of unseen origin.

    Up from beneath the surface of the marsh rise a family of ohmu. Nausicaӓ seem to possess a prescience when it come to the presence of ohmu, and is able to tell the frightened people aboard the ships that they are coming before any of them become visible.

    The ohmu rise above the water's surface to the sound of a sitar, evidently the "Nausicaӓ" soundtrack's theme for the ohmu. Nausicaӓ eagerly warns Kushana not to anger them. The ohmu approach the aircraft. Nausicaӓ looks into the deep, blue eyes of the ohmu and realises that they only wish to investigate whatever it is that has intruded upon their nest. She greets the ohmu, asking forgiveness for having disturbed them. She explains that they are not enemies.

    It's at this point, for the first time, we see the tentacles of the ohmu.

    The musical score for this part of the film is a mystical chiming of various string and key arpeggios circling as the ohmu tentacles engulf Nausicaӓ completely while Kushana has some sort of panic attack. Within the tentacles of the ohmu, however, Nausicaӓ is safe. The mystical-sounding arpeggios are replaced by the voice of a small girl singing a simple little tune with only a single lyric, and that lyric is "la".  

    Within the embrace of the ohmu, Nausicaӓ experiences a flashback - an open, golden field and a tall, mysterious and darkened tree. This vision fades into the blue eyes of the ohmu, resting as they are upon Nausicaӓ. The tentacles are withdrawn and the ohmu begin to retreat, just as Nausicaӓ asks if he is still alive.

    Red-eyed ohmu and other insects, both crawling and flying, are swarming off into the distance. Nausicaӓ retrieves her glider from a compartment in the barge and orders the others to take off when the waters clear and to wait for her above the clouds. She makes it clear that they are to wait for her for one hour, and if by then she hasn't found them, they are to fly back to the Valley. Mito approaches a now seemingly catatonic Kushana, and gently removes the pistol from her hand without resistance of any kind.

    The he the ohmu had psychically hinted to Nausicaӓ about was Asbel, and we find him firing his gun wildly at various insects in another part of the forest. He runs from them and they just keep on coming. They have the numbers, that's for sure.

    Asbel reaches a ledge, nearly falling over it, but narrowly succeeds in stopping himself and turning toward the insects pursuing him, facing them in what is likely to be his last not-so-great act of defiance.

    His gun jams up, leaving him with the option of standing his ground and trying to stay conscious long enough to discover where the self of a human being actually lies, or taking a leap of faith over the ledge. He opts for the latter. Clever lad.    

    As he leaps over the ledge, he's immediately pursued by a very large yanma. He falls and falls and falls and the yanma just about makes a meal of him, when whoosh! Out of seemingly nowhere, Nausicaӓ swoops down, grabs his hand, yanking him away from the yanma's jaws as they snap shut, and pulls him in so that he can take hold of the handlebars.

    Asbels asks Nausicaӓ who she is. She doesn't answer him, and instead reprimands him for all the killing he's done, and how helpless it's made them.    

    The yanma hasn't given up the chase at all. It comes at them from behind and tries to snap them up in its jaws again. Nausicaӓ again outmanoeuvres it, flipping them over backwards as the yanma comes in for the kill, but this time, before she's able to get them clear of the insect, it catches the glider with its tail, sending Nausicaӓ flying away from the controls. This time, however, Asbel manages to catch Nausicaӓ's arm, and he holds onto her arm as the glider does a sheer nosedive into the sand below. The yanma gives up its pursuit of the pair and flies away.

    Asbel comes to on the sand below and with a groan, looks up to see where he is, and whether he can see Nausicaӓ or not. Just then, Nausicaӓ's mask lands just in front of him. He quickly looks ahead to see her nearly entirely buried by the sand and without her mask on. The glider is similarly buried beside her. He pulls himself together and tries to get to her, only to find himself sinking into the sand, too. It's quicksand, and despite his best efforts, he's unable even to reach Nausicaӓ before he and her both sink beneath the surface.

    Above the forest, the insects are more enraged than we've yet seen them, and they are swarming in the direction of somebody I can't imagine any one of us ever wanting to be.

    The escape gunship and barge it's towing have been hovering above the forest for two hours. 

    They've already broken their promise to wait an hour and fly home, but Mito insists they wait just a little longer. Mito calls out to her, but is only answered by the droning of insect wings in the air.

    Silence descends and we see a young Nausicaӓ, no older than five, playing in a golden field. She's collecting flowers and wearing a little pink frock. We hear the voice of a younger, stronger Jihl echo through the field, calling her name. He finds her and tells her to come with him.

    Nausicaӓ's childhood music begins, this time lightly accompanied, but still only consisting of a lot of "la". It begins in a child's voice as it did before, but that voice is replaced with the voice of an older woman later. Nausicaӓ is on a beast of burden of sorts, one that bears a appearance to that of an ox, and she gazes at her father's enormous hands and massive, strong frame. 

    Her mother is there and riding alongside them. Marching alongside and looking downward are several soldiers.

    Little Nausicaӓ knows she doesn't want to be going where she is in this company. Before they arrive, she has left off the animal and is running ahead, imploring the others to stay away.

    We then see little Nausicaӓ standing with her back to a tree and insisting that nothing is there to see.

    The innocence of the very thing she so desperately wants to protect betrays her secret, though. Out from a small space under the roots of the tree, a baby ohmu has crept between  Nausicaӓ's little feet.

    Little Nausicaӓ tries, oh, how hard she tries to mask the existence of this little friend she's made in the field, but her father demands she give it to him. She refuses, saying that it's done nothing wrong, but King Jihl tells her that humans and insects cannot share the same world. 

    The baby ohmu is taken from little Nausicaӓ.

    They carry it away with disgust.

    Little Nausicaӓ calls after the adults, begging them not to kill it.

    Finally, she collapses in front of the tree and sobs. (I WAS this kid.)

    Nausicaӓ has been dreaming. She wakes to the sense of Teto nuzzling her cheek and the sound of running water rippling everywhere.

    She then takes in her surroundings - thousands of dead trees support a web-like vault above. Sitting up, she sees that she's been resting on an old tree stump in the midst of an enormous lake. Light enters the chamber by way of holes in the vault above.

    Hurried footsteps coming up behind her momentarily draw her attention away from the mysterious place she's found herself in. It's Asbel, and he's found her glider. He asks how she is. She asks where they are. He feels that firstly, he must tell her who he is and thank her for saving his life. She introduces herself and returns again to the question of where they are. With a joyful laugh, he tells her he can't fault her for finding the place so strange. He explains that they are beneath the Sea of Decay, that they fell from the vault above along with some sand.

    Nausicaӓ, shocked, then realises she isn't wearing a mask. "That's right," he says, "the air is pure."

    Asbel continues on about how he couldn't believe it at first, but at this point, Asbel is talking to himself. Nausicaӓ's stares into the subterranean haven in wonder. Asbel had left her to rest with his jacket covering her, and until now, she's been respectfully holding onto the jacket, but after hearing Asbel explain where they came from, after realising the air is pure and there is no threat anywhere about her to which she's exposed, who could possibly fault Nausicaӓ for forgetting her manners for just a moment and dropping the jacket on the ground, entirely absent-mindedly?

    Asbel asks Nausicaӓ if she's alright, but without answering, and preceded by brave, loyal, little Teto, she just walks away into the mystery.

  

    The main theme of the score begins, serene and inspired, just as we can all imagine Nausicaӓ might be feeling in these passing moments. Asbel calls after her, asking her not to wander too far.

    And so Nausicaӓ walks, staring at this, then at that. There is nothing in this place the sight of which doesn't beckon to her while inspiring a sense of wonder. Rounding the trunk of an extremely girthy, tall, fossilised tree, she leans against it and hears the sound of water moving up and down through the trunk. She stares in awe as more clean sand falls from above.  

    Picking up a small segment of the fallen sand, Nausicaӓ finds it to be of the same consistency as the soil found beneath her castle in the Valley.

    Asbel, obviously an empathetic person himself, has been running around, looking for Nausicaӓ for a while, and when he finds her lying facedown on the ground and quietly weeping.

    Asbel, concerned, asks Nausicaӓ if she's crying, and she answers, "Mm-hm, but it's okay. I'm happy."

    Later, Asbel and Nausicaӓ tell one another how they came to be where they are. After hearing Nausicaӓ's story about the Tolmekian invasion and Lastelle's passing, he tells Nausicaӓ that Lastelle had been his twin sister. He expresses regret for not having been there for her when the Tolmekians took her away with them. Nausicaӓ apologises for not having told him sooner. He, in turn, apologises for nearly killing the woman who cared for his dying sister.

    Nausicaӓ has shared her bag of chiko nuts with Asbel. He tries one, and it immediately becomes apparent that he's never going to develop a habit of eating them. 

    Asbel thinks that Nausicaӓ entertains the strangest thoughts. Having found this place has only worked to ensure Nausicaӓ has come to a good understanding of exactly what brought the Sea of Decay into existence, it's purpose and relationship with the human world. She explains that plants of the Sea of Decay grew to cleanse the world humans had polluted, that they absorb the toxins of the human world, thus rendering them inert, die and then turn into the pure sand surrounding the two of them in these vast caverns beneath the surface. She concludes by explaining that the insects evolved to protect the plants.

    Asbel, being new to everything Nausicaӓ's speaking of, imagines that everything Nausicaӓ says is only evidence of how screwed humans are if they don't find a way to contain the Sea of Decay. It's impossible to him, at least now, to imagine how humans, the insects and the toxins of the Sea of Decay could possibly share the earth for the thousands of years he imagines it would take to rid the earth of human pollution. Nausicaӓ observes how similar the approach of the Pejites is to that of the Tolmekians, a sentiment that does not please Asbel at all. Betraying a fair amount of anger in his voice, Asbel argues that the plans entertained by the Pejites have nothing to do with reviving and using giant warriors to redress a balance.

    Nausicaӓ, obviously sleepy and more at peace than we've yet seen her suggests that the two of them get some sleep to prepare for their long journey to Pejite in the morning.

    Asbel's anger quickly subsides. For a moment, he sits and just looks down upon Nausicaӓ as she falls asleep. He then covers her with his jacket once more, and lies down to sleep beside her.

    Back at the Valley, Kurotowa is overseeing the revival of the giant warrior. The fleshy sac it's been lying dormant in, a sort of external amniotic sac, has been rigged up to various machines, each of which has been purposed to deliver various nutrients and stimulants to the nascent monster, to hasten its development into to the harbinger of death and destruction all legends regarding it and the tribe it was born of claim it can be. Lord Yupa, having snuck back into the Valley, spies on the monster and its development from the mouth of a vent.

    The sac in which the monster is growing pulses ominously.

    The giant warrior's terrible features have become visible from the outside - teeth, claws, eyes - an infant form of something terrible beyond human reckoning. Kurotowa speaks to the sac of nascent terror calling it, "one cute monster." Thinking no one to be listening, he continues saying that the sight of it makes an old soldier think of "dusting off old ambitions."

    Inside the sac, the monster's eyes open, glowing green behind pink eyelids. This amuses Kurotowa, who continues, "You should've slept beneath the earth till the end of time."

    Just then, Kurotowa is interrupted by a messenger with the news that Kushana's fleet had been attacked by the Pejites, and that all ships crashed, save the barge, which was not found. He's also told that Kushana's flight exploded in-flight.

    After determining that the villagers are unaware of this, Kurotowa dismisses the messenger and orders the Tolmekian's to continue with their work of reviving the monster.

    Yupa sneaks back into the vent undetected.

    The smile Kurotowa shoots at the developing giant warrior at this point tells us all we need to know of his ambitions, regrets, or rather, his lack thereof. 

    He then says to the nascent beast, "Either fortune's smiling on this lonely soldier, or it's a trap to destroy me."

    Lord Yupa emerges at the other end of the vent where his return has been awaited by two village children. The children inform Yupa that Mito is waiting is waiting at the Lake of Acid. Yupa, led by his youthful co-conspirators, ventures out to find Mito and to find out whether anything regarding the fate of the Princess is known. As reported by the children, Mito waits for Yupa on the shore of this corrosive body of liquid in the wreckage of an old star ship.

    Mito reports to Yupa that, to their shame, they had to return without Nausicaӓ. Yupa consoles them the best way he can, by celebrating their safety.

    In about as gentle a way as such a thing can be done, Kushana is being held prisoner. Yupa tells her that he wishes to release her on condition that the giant warrior will be drowned in the Lake of Acid.

    Kushana explains that fire and water pose no threat to such a being, and that it will soon be able to walk. She simply sticks to her guns; it's too late to turn back. Her orders had been to secure the monster before other did. She explains that once all the other human strongholds are aware that the giant warrior is in the Valley of the Winds, they'll send armies to retrieve it. Her view is that they only have a single real choice: to revive the giant warrior and defy those who come to fight for it.

    If Kushana's resolve has been held in question at any point up to now, she now clears the matter up for us. What we had hitherto recognised only as an ornate suit of armour worn by Kushana is, in fact, various actual parts of her - prostheses. She removes her left hand at the wrist to demonstrate this, and tells the men of the Valley speaking with her that whoever becomes her husband will see much worse. Kushana is passionately devoted to the idea of burning away the Sea of Decay. Devilishly, she tries to persuade the men to steal the giant warrior from them, just as they had taken it from Pejite. Yupa defies her.

    Another child arrives declaring an emergency. She declares that some of the spores survived and that they're spreading toxins throughout the Valley.

    The villagers are going nuts! The Tolmekians won't allow them any weapons to use to burn away the spores.

    Kurotowa surprises us by revealing that he has a little common sense, and orders that the villagers be given back everything other than their guns. At the very same time, however, he's now investing in a new ambition - the instigation of war between Pejite and the Valley.

    Lord Yupa immediately sets off in search of the princess.

    Meanwhile, the villagers have discovered that the spores from the Sea of Decay have infected their entire forest. Obaba appears and tells them that they've no choice but to burn it all. This is not an easy thing for the people of the Valley to accept. This forest has guarded their reservoir for centuries.

    Hatred for the Tolmekians who brought this curse to the Valley spreads through the village faster than any forest fire could.

    While all of this transpires, Kushana uses a concealed blade in her heel to free herself.

    In the next scene, Nausicaӓ and Asbel fly the glider above the clouds toward Asbel's Kingdom of Pejite. It's impossible not to notice that the insects are nowhere to be seen. Nausicaӓ, prescient as always, is consumed with anxiety. Something is very wrong.

    As they approach Asbel's home, they're greeted by scores of dead insects. Nausicaӓ wastes no time in telling Asbel to mask up.

    They arrive to find that Pejite has been thoroughly devastated by... something.

    Insects hang to walls, but this is more than a mere infestation. Machines of war, tanks and such, burn everywhere and are entirely inoperable. 

    At the steps leading to Asbel's palace, they encounter the remains of an enormous dead ohmu.

    After surveying, Asbel laments that Pejite is finished, that they wiped out the Tolmekians, but...

    He doesn't continue. Nausicaӓ knows something smells. Just then, a brig flies overhead, one Asbel recognises as belonging to his friend. The brig comes in for a landing.

    Upon coming to a stop, two men climb out of the brig. They seem glad to find Asbel alive and well. Asbel's countenance isn't quite as glad as he asks them what they've done. His countrymen don't seem particularly bothered about the loss of Pejite. They simply express the sentiment that if the Sea of Decay swallows the ruins of the city up, they'll simply burn it away. Asbel doesn't see the point. The giant warrior isn't even there, to which one of his countrymen replies, "I know. It's in the Valley of the Winds." He goes on to roughly detail a military operation currently being executed by the Pejites the objective of which is wiping out Tolmekia in the Valley that evening.

    Within earshot, Nausicaӓ, clearly alarmed, even horrified, asks what they plan to do. Asbel tells them who she is, and that he owes her his life.

    It takes a bit of prompting and a bit of beating around the bush ensues, but eventually it comes out that the Pejite warriors have planned to provoke an insect attack. In abject disbelief that human beings can even conceive of such terrible cruelty, Nausicaӓ begins to sob. She calls them horrible. Well, that's what the English subtitles put there. I wouldn't be even a little surprised to find that she'd used slightly stronger language than that. One of Asbel's countrymen justify their actions by explaining that the ultimate objective is to reclaim the giant warrior before the Tolmekians revive it. The other makes the grandiose claim that they're trying to save the world. Nausicaӓ, having none of this nonsense, retorts, "So you'll murder everyone in the Valley!" After a brief pause, she begs them to call it off. The first of Asbel's countrymen to address the two of them then stops Nausicaӓ and says that once started, the operation can't be halted.

    It's clear that even if these two men were ready to listen to reason, they haven't the power to change the Pejite army's plans. Not at this stage anyway. Nausicaӓ tries to jump back onto her glider and launch, but they stop her, hold her down and restrain her. Asbel's countryman repeats what all those other fools have hitherto said, "The giant warrior will make everything right and human will thrive again." Understandably sick of all this shit by now, Nausicaӓ calls the man a liar. "You're just like the Tolmekians!" she yells. His argument is the vain and predictable one we all know from real life, that the intent of their enemy is to use the powerful weapon to destroy, implying that theirs is rather to put that unspeakable power to use in order to restore balance.

    Nausicaӓ tries to explain how well water is purified, but her explanation falls on ears primed only for instruction that matches that which they've already assimilated. Nausicaӓ begs Asbel to explain the purpose of the Sea of Decay and its guardian insects. Asbel, who seems to understand the difference between times when words might change things for the better and times when they wouldn't, simply bum-rushes his countryman, draws his countryman's pistol, aims it at him and orders Nausicaӓ's immediate release. Before Nausicaӓ is released and able to make any kind of escape, Asbel's countrymen, his friends, attack him from behind, knocking his unconscious. Nausicaӓ is taken prisoner. 

    Meanwhile, Kushana is making her escape from the Valley cell in which she'd been been held.

    As she reaches the highlands surrounding the Valley, gunfire begins to emanate from the tree line.  

    Out of said tree line run a large number of villagers and soldiers in combat. Kushana thinks them all fools, and continues on her way. From the castle battlements, Kurotowa orders the officers around him to use tanks to rescue his men from the villagers.

    Then, a soldier close to Kurotowa gazing through a telescope informs him that the villagers have caught the last man and are making their way towards the castle.

    Kurotowa just can't understand why these villagers have gotten their panties in such a knot over a couple of little forests, "just like the Pejites."

    Three of the elder guards from the Valley run up to a tank that's about to ride out to meet the villagers and quell their revolt. The three, led by Gol, are armed with flash grenades. Before they have much time to do anything else, the tank operators let out a shriek, and boom! A very brief scuffle atop the tank leads to the three elder guards taking control of the war machine.

    The villagers have captured their tank. Now they only need to learn how to drive it. Tolmekian soldiers outside fire a hail of bullets at them while inside, one of the three fumbles with levers and pedals in an attempt  to make something - anything - happen. A bit of panicked grunting later, a lever moves and the tank shoots into reverse, heading toward the castle entrance, violently crashing into it and scattering Tolmekian soldiers in every direction. The man driving the tank, now evidently getting the hang of it, pushes another lever forward, which causes the tanks treads to turn violently, tearing up the bridge as the tank itself gradually frees itself from the entranceway it had been jammed in and begins to speed forward. The bridge, now wrecked, falls into the mote below as the three old guards make their getaway.

    Kurotowa then calls again for the tanks to be mobilised when, to his very apparent dismay, Kushana approaches him. Once again, his facial expression says it all, but when it comes to Kurotowa, "I want by blankie," might just be a good one-size-fits-all for his character's scope. He really is a vile character. In any case, he very quickly, and twice as easily makes the transition from acting captain to natural kiss-ass.

    The villagers, now armed and in possession of a tank, hold a position just on the outskirts of their valley. Elderly women and children are encouraged to go and wait in the shipwreck on the shore of the Lake of Acid. Almost immediately, the Tolmekian tanks begin a full assault.

    Onboard the Pegite brig heading toward the Valley, Nausicaӓ is slouched on the floor of a small cell under the guard of a soldier outside. The loyal Teto watches over her. The voice of the guard outside the cell is heard warning somebody to look out, that Nausicaӓ's a wild one. The cell door is opened and a two women enter, one taller and a little older than the other, both of them with serious countenances. The cell door is closed behind them and the older woman whispers to the younger, "Quickly." The younger woman immediately begins to remove her headdress and gown. The older woman then tells Nausicaӓ that she may go free and warn the people of her valley. She tells her that her glider is waiting for her, and that she might still have time. It's revealed that the woman is none other than Lastelle and Asbel's mother, and that the younger woman with her is prepared to take Nausicaӓ's place in the cell to avoid suspicion. Then she apologises for Nausicaӓ's treatment at the hands of her people, and the two of them embrace. After switching outfits with the other younger woman, Lastelle's mother and Nausicaӓ leave the cell and Nausicaӓ is led to a room  in which many Pejite women have been sequestered.  

    Asbel calls Nausicaӓ over to a hatch in the floor of the room. Now wearing a pink gown over her pants, and thanking everyone there, Nausicaӓ follows Asbel down into the hatch. Asbel and the Pejite women have hidden the glider in a tiny compartment in the side of the brig. Asbel, concerned, asks Nausicaӓ if she'll be able to launch for the small room under the hatch. This is Nausicaӓ. Of course she will. Asbel opens up a door in the side of the brig to reveal a Tolmekian gunship, a Corvette, opposite them, which immediately opens fire.

    In the cockpit of the brig, the Pejite captain orders them to take cover in the clouds. Aboard the Corvette, the pilots sneer at the Pejite attempt to hide in the clouds where they'll only be exposed to violent winds and lightning.   

    Indeed, within the clouds, the brig's pilots struggle to maintain any control at all. The Pejite women and children cling to whatever they can, screaming.

    Parts of the brig begin to break off under the strain of the fierce winds. The Pejite pilots find themselves with no choice but to rise up out of the clouds and fight back.

    As they do this, the Tolmekians immediately try to force their Corvette into a position that'll allow them to board the brig, an exercise that proves successful. As the Tolmekians board the brig, the sound of automatic gunfire begins to reverberate throughout. Asbel insists Nausicaӓ leave while she still has a chance to. Nausicaӓ feels obligated to the people above who've shown her such kindness, and feels especially responsible for the young woman who took her place in the cell. Asbel implores Nausicaӓ to think of escape as a victory for everyone who made sacrifices for her.

    The fighting intensifies as the Tolmekians breach further onto the brig. The Tolmekian captain orders his men to take no prisoners. One of these men enters the compartment with Asbel and Nausicaӓ. Asbel begins to grapple with the larger man and shouts for Nausicaӓ to go. Nausicaӓ vainly protests once more, but Asbel kicks her glider out of the opening in the hatch. She immediately gains perfect control of it and watches the soldiers fight through the windows as the glides ahead. The Tolmekian Corvette releases its grip on the Pejite brig and begins the chase Nausicaӓ. Getting behind her, it opens fire, and things look bleak for a moment, until Mito, flying a fighter gunship, finds himself on a course heading straight toward Nausicaӓ. He deftly opens fire on the Corvette, causing it to explode like an balloon full of butane.

    Nausicaӓ informs Mito and Yupa about the plight of the Pejites aboard the brig. Not long after that, Mito swoops down over the brig, and Lord Yupa Miralda, hanging beneath the gunship, drops down onto the brig and begins to show us all what being the world's greatest swordsman is all about.

    The Tolmekian soldiers, on the whole not the sharpest of swords themselves, all initially seem to think of a showdown with Lord Yupa as a potential invitation to glory issued by fate. It doesn't take long for Yupa to persuade them otherwise.

    With the Pejite brig under their control and being towed by Mito's gunship, Nausicaӓ prays to the gods of the wind to protect her people.       

    A heavy silence lies over the beach bordering the Lake of Acid. It's disturbed only by the faintly blowing wind.

    Kushana and Kurotowa look onto the of shipwreck from atop a tank. Kurotowa observes that the villagers won't budge. Kushana knows this. They wait for their princess to return.

    Kushana asks what the wreckage beside the Lake of Acid is of. Kurotowa says the people believe it to have been their since the Seven Days of Fire, and that is was supposedly a ship made of the world's strongest stuff that had travelled to the stars.

    Kushana interrupts Kurotowa's story saying that she too would like to wait for the princess, and that she'd like to speak with her, woman to woman.

    Having captured the old guards who'd managed to hijack the tank, Kushana offers them the choice to aid the Tolmekians in their attack, or to suffer as the people of Pejite had. I find it admirable how vehemently these elderly men of the Valley deny Kushana and the Tolmekians. They haven't any interest in granting her the pleasure of believing they fear her to even the tiniest extent. Of the three men, the tallest and thinnest observes that his understanding of what it is to be a princess, the one formed for him by Nausicaӓ's example, renders the idea that Kushana is also a princess strange to him. To that man's right, his compatriot, a larger man, short, but stout, says for them to look at his hand. This old man's hand is covered in what appear to be lesions or bruises. He says they're what King Jihl had, and that within six months, his hand will have been entirely turned to stone. But his princess, Nausicaӓ, has said that she likes his hands, that they were the "beautiful hands of a hard worker." Kushana probes them about their will to live so close to the forest, even though it's the forest that's slowly killing them all. The thinner man begins to answer her, "You use fire. We use it a bit, too." the stout man continues, "Too much fire and nothing will grow. Fire can turn a forest into ashes in a single day, while it takes a the water and the wind a hundred years to grow one anew."

The thin man finishes, "We prefer the ways of the water and the wind."

    The third man, Gol, hitherto silent, laments, "The princess will be devastated when she sees that our forest is gone."

    As Gol laments, Kushana walks onto the sands of the shore of the Lake of Acid. A soldier pops his head up from the interior of a tank and asks Kurotowa if he has further orders for them. Kurotowa's order is for the soldier to shut up.

    Looking over at Kushana as she stands on the beach, Kurotowa finds himself feeling attracted to her.

    Looking back at Kurotowa over her shoulder, Kushana orders him to let the three men go and to have the Tolmekian soldiers fed. She declares that the attack will proceed in one hour.

    As the three old men make their way to the shipwreck stronghold of the villagers, they realise that for the first time in living memory, the wind has stopped blowing.

    Inside the shipwreck, surrounded by the Valley's women and children, Obaba groans with dread and asks to be taken outside. She is escorted outside onto a raised part of the wreck by two of the Valley's children, and once there, noticing the absence of the winds, the three gasp. One of the children complains that her ears hurt. Obaba tells her that her ears hurt due to the fact that the air is "thick with rage."

   Nausicaӓ, Mito, Yupa, the Pejites and the Tolmekian prisoners are three minutes from the Lake of Acid. Nausicaӓ orders that the engines be idled and that they drop beneath the clouds. Looking down at the earth below, they notice a red glow covering the darkened landscape. This is not Nausicaӓ's first rodeo. "Ohmu!" she exclaims.

   

    And indeed, a stampede of enraged ohmu of a scale never before witnessed is tearing its way at tremendous speed toward the Valley.

    Nausicaӓ wonders what the Pejites might have done to cause the ohmu to stampede like that. No one speaks for a while. All that is heard is the whistle of the air as they cut through it and the idling gunship engine's drone. But then, Nausicaӓ becomes aware of another sound, a distance screeching. It occurs to her that something is calling out to the stampeding ohmu.

    Far off in the direction of the Valley, just above the horizon, a small shape can be seen moving across the pre-dawn sky. Nausicaӓ narrows her eyes and orders Mito to turn towards Sirius. With great determination, they fly toward the UFO. 

    When they're near enough, Nausicaӓ orders Mito to fire a flare in the direction of the object. He does so, and the resulting sight is both revealing and terrible at once. A baby ohmu has been captured, skewered with various barbaric-looking barbed spikes, and has been suspended from a Dorok flying jar, implying the the Pejite and Dorok people have conspired together to cause the insect swarm. This relationship is not explored in any detail in the film.    

    The Dorok gunman opens fire on the gunship as it approaches. Mito's first impulse is to shoot the jar down, which Nausicaӓ urgently forbids, explaining that if the baby is killed, the stampede will never end. Mito is losing his shit. He just has no idea what to do and the situation is beyond dire. Nausicaӓ tells him to be calm. She plans to return the baby ohmu to the herd and needs her best men to be her best men. She descends into the cockpit of the gunship and breaks a steel bar away from the control panel which she prepares to use as a sort of zip slide to get to her glider, which is being towed behind the gunship. She tells Mito to fly ahead and warn the villagers.

    And so, unarmed and wearing the pink ceremonial gown she'd been given by the young Pejite woman, Nausicaӓ whizzes off on her glider to retrieve the infant ohmu from the Dorok soldiers' horrible trap and return it safely to the ohmu herd.

    On the beach, Kushana and Kurotowa have noticed the light of the first flare in the distance. They're aware that something is coming their way, and that Nausicaӓ is likely to be a part of it. Mito fires two distress flares over the shipwreck on the shore of the Lake of Acid. To Kurotowa, all this says is that there's a gunship in play. Kushana says it's been an hour and orders the Tolmekian attack on the villagers.

    The battle on the shore has begun.

    Mito's gunship approaches quickly over the lake. The Tolmekian army sees it and immediately opens fire on it. Mito doesn't fire a bullet in return.

    Instead, Mito lands the gunship on the shore nearby. Kushana orders the Tolmekians to hold their fire and runs out to meet it.

    Mito comes to a stop and Kushana runs up to him, asking after the whereabouts of the princess. Mito says she's not with him and tells them all about the ohmu stampede that she flew off on her glider to put a stop to. He tells them all that this is no time for battle, and that everybody should seek refuge on the highest ground they can find. 

    Obaba and the children are where we left them earlier. The children see the red glow of the eyes of countless ohmu, the number of which grow exponentially by the second. Obaba tells the children to hang onto her, and that all there is to do is sit and wait. There's no stopping the raging ohmu.

    If there is something that Princess Kushana and Princess Nausicaӓ have in common, it's that neither one of them is at all lazy. Kushana decided that now is the time to revive the giant warrior, premature though it is. Even the intellectually compromised Kurotowa warns her that it's too early. Her reasoning is as simple as the Tolmekian might-is-right ideology - "If not now, when?"

    The Dorok gunman on the flying jar opens fire on Nausicaӓ as if she were a fleet of fighter jets. The soldier beside him complains that shooting at her is like trying to shoot the wind. The gunman points out that she doesn't seem to be an enemy and evidently wants to talk. The soldier opines that anyone who interferes is an enemy. His only wish is to deliver the baby ohmu to the Valley before they themselves are killed.  

    Nausicaӓ comes about and flies toward them again, this time standing on the bow of her ship in an attitude of defiant submission. The soldier alongside the gunman orders him to fire, but he can't. Like Asbel before him, he is seized by hallucination and sees Lastelle standing upon the bow instead of Nausicaӓ. The soldier pushes him aside and opens fire, shooting her through the shoulder and ankle. She falls forward off of her glider and into the flying jar, knocking the soldier over. The Dorok flying jar sets the baby ohmu down on an island below fairly gently, but Nausicaӓ comes about and flies toward them again, this time standing on the bow of her ship in an attitude of defiant submission. The soldier alongside the gunman orders him to fire, but he can't. Like Asbel before him, he is seized by hallucination and sees Lastelle standing upon the bow instead of Nausicaӓ. The soldier pushes him aside and opens fire, shooting her through the shoulder and ankle. Nausicaӓ falls forward off her glider and into the Dorok flying jar, knocking the soldier over. This leads to the flying jar's descending over a small island in the middle of the Lake of Acid, setting the baby ohmu down relatively gently. Nausicaӓ and the two men, however, are thrown relatively violently from the jar.  

    With a few worried squeaks and nuzzles, Teto revives Nausicaӓ. Obviously hurt, she looks up to see the baby ohmu on the same little island they've crash landed onto. With great effort, bleeding heavily from the bullet would in her shoulder and limping on the ankle that took the other round, Nausicaӓ approaches the injured baby ohmu.    

    As she grows nearer to it, the infant's eyes change from blue to the blood-red colour typical of an enraged ohmu. She tries to reassure it, to help calm it's fear of her. Beginning to cry, she apologises and asks if there's any way it could ever forgive humans for their treatment of it.

    The baby turns to leave, bleeding profusely in the process. Nausicaӓ tries with all her strength to still the frightened insect as she notices the distant wall of glowing red eyes growing nearer with each passing moment. This little ohmu wants nothing more than to re-join the herd of ohmu stampeding in  their direction, and begins to push itself on toward the corrosive waters of the lake.  

    Nausicaӓ, being aware of the infant's wounds and the poisoned waters of the lake throws herself entirely into pushing against the baby, and as she strains vainly against the small, but strong little bug, her own feet are pushed into the acidic waters of the lake. She lets out a scream of agony, then stoically tries to force the pain down. the little ohmu seems to sense her pain, and it stops pushing against her, its eyes turning from blood-red back to blue, and it reverses, allowing Nausicaӓ to fall forward onto the island, her slight little body broken, the pink gown given her by the Pejite Queen and pants beneath it stained with the blue blood of the ohmu.

    The baby extends it's mysterious golden tentacles, and with a gentle hum, seems to ease the princess' pain. Nausicaӓ, recognising this as an act of profound grace, gently takes hold of the end of a feeler and begins to cry. The soundtrack emphasises the moment with a piece of music as tender as it is melancholic. We've just witnessed the total vindication of Nausicaӓ's choice to treat all living things with equal levels of respect, kindness, acceptance and belief, but we're not out of the woods yet.

    Nausicaӓ seems to have been healed by some sort of ohmu magic. She crawls up to it, telling it how kind it is, and how it's going to be alright. Its family are on their way to take it home.

    

    But then the stampeding ohmu change direction! In a newfound rage, they've forgotten their baby, and are heading directly for the valley!

    The Tolmekians have begun to fire on the ohmu, drawing them to themselves. The Doroks, in their hubris, laugh at this, and decide to prepare their jar for their own escape, but Nausicaӓ's having none of that. She insists the flying jar's gunman and accompanying soldier help her return the baby ohmu to the herd. The soldier argues that there's no point, and that the ohmu will simply flatten them if they land in their way. Nausicaӓ fires a number of warning shots at them out of their own machine gun and tells them just to drop her in front of them then. The gunman, and the less foolhardy of the two expresses concern for Nausicaӓ's safety.

 

    On the beach, the villagers of the Valley watch as the Tolmekians fire on the raging ohmu. Once again, as I said in the beginning, the insects certainly seem to have the numbers. Kurotowa's soldiers begin to desert him, but just as they do, Kushana appears on a tank at the top of a hill. Following behind her, a not-quite-so-cooked giant warrior drags its unfinished frame through the sand. 

    The Tolmekians gasp as one upon seeing the enormous monster appear. As undercooked as it is, it's still a hell of a beast to behold. The flame of Tolmekian faith in their warlike ideology is temporarily rekindled and they cheer. Kurotowa might be a bit of a twit, but the rate at which the giant warrior is falling apart is not lost on him.

    Kushana orders the giant warrior to burn the ohmu, and she berates it for its hesitance. In its mouth forms a ball of purple light that shoots out in a devastating beam of energy that destroys scores of ohmu.

    But the ohmu just keep on coming. Kushana orders the giant warrior to destroy them all, but things are apparently not working out so well for our giant warrior. The monster manages to get another shot off, and while it's certainly impressive, it's not quite as impressive as the first. Almost immediately, the giant warrior melts away into whatever sort of detritus remains of an undercooked thousand-year-old survivor of a race of beings too evil for the world that's been overused, and overused prematurely to boot.

    The children, still clinging to Obaba, witness the death of the giant warrior. Obaba tells them it's for the best. "The ohmu's rage is the rage of the Earth itself," she says, "There's no reason to live if our lives depend on a monster."

    Then the children see Nausicaӓ flying in beside the baby ohmu, hanging onto one of the ropes securing it to the Dorok flying jar. The jar's pilots set her down directly in the path of the enraged ohmu.  

    Distress erupts throughout the villagers of the Valley. "What is she doing?" asks a man, his voice tight with concern. A woman exclaims, "She'll be killed!"

    Nausicaӓ stoically stands beside the baby ohmu, facing the oncoming herd without fear. The enraged ohmu aren't slowed by her or the infant, but rather screech and roar as they grow nearer and nearer to them. The ohmu charge into Nausicaӓ without hesitation, sending her flying limply through the air. The villagers are horrified.

    After running Nausicaӓ down, the stampede continues. The ohmu destroy everything in their wake. Eventually, they collide with the shipwreck, the same one believed to have once visited the stars and that's believed to be built of the strongest stuff ever to have been known to mankind. The collision causes the head of the old ship to break off from the rest of it. All hiding within the structure, Tolmekian soldiers and villagers alike, are terrified. 

    Overhead, Asbel, his Pejite friends and Lord Yupa fly over in the brig, looking down on a sea of blood-red, glowing eyes. As they look on, however, from a point near the centre of the herd, ohmu eyes begin to turn from blood-red to blue. The blue glow spreads until all the eyes match.

    Obaba feels the rage vanish. All the ohmu have stopped in their tracks. As far as the eye can see, ohmu beside ohmu stands still, and they are everywhere crowded together, but for in a small clearing of them where the blue emanation began, a small circle of ohmu at the centre of which we see our baby ohmu, and Nausicaӓ's lifeless body.

    A child sees Nausicaӓ and points her out. All the villagers, grief-stricken, gasp. Obaba bows her head and says, "The princess has quieted the rage of the ohmu. She gave her own life to save the Valley." The villagers all begin to cry.

    The film's score introduces a new string theme, one melancholic and reverent.

    A single ohmu sends out its golden tentacles and after gently wrapping them about Nausicaӓ's body, lifts her high up into the air above even the tallest of the ohmu.

    Nausicaӓ's childhood theme is reintroduced, but this time, by the orchestra. All of the ohmu around Nausicaӓ extend their tentacles until they're touching her. The villagers stare on in amazement. A golden light envelopes everything, Nausicaӓ's wounds glow with golden fire, and after a short while, we see Nausicaӓ's eyes open as little Teto nuzzles her cheek.

    Nausicaӓ sits up and scans around beneath herself to see the baby ohmu, healthy, on the back of another ohmu, and she says, "I'm glad you're okay."

    She thanks the ohmu, stands up and begins to walk about upon the ohmu's extended golden tentacles. Obaba bawls into her hands, crying, "It's a miracle! What beautiful creatures! Who knew how wonderful and caring the ohmu could be?" She asks the children to describe the scene to her. The little girl to her right tells her, "The princess a blue dress I've never seen before. It's looks like she's walking through a golden field." Obaba's mind is blown. She repeats the prophecy she had told Nausicaӓ about in King Jihl's room before hell broke loose. Then she begins to sob. The children, worried, ask Obaba what's wrong. Obaba says that the legend, the one that she had earlier ridiculed Yupa for his unyielding belief in, has come true.

    Above their heads, the glider is seen being blown about, signalling the return of the winds. 

    The film ends as all the villagers run down into the valley and embrace their princess, Lord Yupa and Obaba share a few sweet nothings, and finally, Asbel lifts Nausicaӓ into the air and spins her around.

 

    How many happier endings are there in the world of film?

A Mysterious Power

    As I said in my introduction to this synopsis, this is a movie that somehow just slipped off my radar entirely for the better part of the first half of my life, to the extent that I had come to believe that it had only been screened a few times behind my eyelids, and yet, the power the film as a whole has had over my life has been more than a little profound.

    To an extent, it kind of sabotaged me. The first girl I ever developed a serious crush on was a tiny redhead with a thing for animals. I've had meaningful relationships, don't get me wrong, but the night I watched "Nausicaӓ of the Valley of the Winds" alone in my room after years of total forgetfulness was a night that made it more than a little clear to me that I was, and had for a long time, been in love with a fictional character.

    The religious angle might not be apparent to a more dogmatic religious thinker, but I think we all know that most modern monist religious orders love to dwell on the idea of a messiah, a saviour. Nausicaӓ literally sacrificed herself to save her people, and was rewarded for her sacrifice by the perceived enemy of the people with rebirth, a new life, and a second chance to die.

    Personally, strong women have always drawn the needle of my compass toward them. Modern feminism, to me, seems almost outdated. To me there was never any question regarding gender equity. I'll never advocate for the right of a person born as a man to be included in the female category of a sporting event. To me, that's just nuts. However, I'll bet that for every man that can perform a task as well as any woman can, there are probably twenty women who can do things that most men couldn't even dream of. And I don't mean biologically. I mean, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, even physically. How much of that is because of Nausicaӓ? Well, to be honest, I don't exactly know, and I can't even promise that Nausicaӓ had anything to do with it at all, but my heart said otherwise as I cried my eyes out the night I found her again.

    Interesting side-note: I'm a pretty big fan of Greek mythology, and as it happens, Homer married Odysseus' son Telemachus to Nausicaӓ, daughter of Arete and related to Athena.

    I suppose it goes without saying that I've got a similar love of all things creepy and crawly going on, as well as a sense that, as humans, we've failed massively to prove ourselves in the one area that truly distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom. 

"What area might that be?" I hear you ask? Why, what other animal has it within their power to take care of every other one and ensure a balance is maintained that fosters our best shared opportunity to enjoy an altruistic existence? If you can think of any animal more capable of performing this task, I would love to hear your thoughts. Unicorns do not count. I'm sorry, I love fiction, but mine was a serious question.

    Nausicaӓ certainly embodies the concept of indiscriminate, unconditional love.

    One final note I'd like to make is that much of the research material to do with "Nausicaӓ" online give what I have called in my synopsis "giant warriors" the name "god warriors". I used "giant warrior" only because both the English dub and all subtitle files I was able to find did so without ever once referring to them as the latter.  

In the end, I'm just glad I did find her again. Neil will forever have my gratitude for reintroducing me to her. And if I can play a part, even the tiniest role in making her part of somebody else's world, well, I'd consider that an honour.