Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' is a 1984 Japanese animated post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his own 1982 manga of the same name. The film was released in Japan on March 11, 1984. 

Miyazaki has said that the story reflects  the time in which it was made; when new world views about nature were beginning to come about in the Japan of the 1970's. The mercury pollution of Minamata Bay served as a catalyst for Miyazaki to create a story about a poisonous post-apocalyptic world in which creatures struggle to survive. The title character is based on a  girl of the same name from Homer's Odyssey. Her love of the film's insects is inspired by a princess in the tale 'The Princess Who Loved Insects,' read and loved by Miyazaki when he was younger. the choice of a female lead is an interesting one - it was done with purpose to avoid imposing conventional adventure-story ideals.

The plant and animal life in the film are based firmly on the natural world, and so appear realistic to the viewer despite initial strangeness of their forms. Originally when creating the scenery as a Manga, Miyazaki was determined to make it as difficult to animate as possible as he was reluctant for it to ever be adapted into an animation. this meant that when he finally relented and decided to make a feature film based on his story, he had to create new animation techniques to translate his complex designs.For example, to depict movement of the ohmu creatures he had to use layers of overlapping card for the segments of their bodies.
To make the natural world even more beautiful, it is contrasted to big and ugly war machines of the humans and their dusty and decaying settlements. I think the background paintings are the stand-out beautiful features of the film, while some sequences of the character animation falls a bit short. This is not due to a lack of artistic ability or mistakes, but because of budget, time and studio constraints  which were righted in later Miyakazi films. The contrast between light and darkness in scenes is used to good effect.

The sound is perfectly combined with the moving images. Silence is employed as well as the sound effects of the creatures and the jungle. I saw the dubbed English version of the film, though I would have preferred to have watched the original with English subtitles, as with the previous films on my watch list such as 'Perfect Blue.'