日本のメディア:Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

This Miyazaki film portrays a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has destroyed itself with massive superweapons called "God-Warriors" over a thousand years ago. The world is now faced with the dangers of a growing poison forest infested with huge insects that swallows up human kingdoms and wipes out their populations. Over the course of the movie, we follow the main character Nausica, a princess of a kingdom known as the Valley of the Wind. She appears to be the one character who seeks to understand the insects that dwell in the deadly poison forest, and her actions eventually save humanity. Clashing human kingdoms that only seek to annihilate or conquer in the face of impending doom from the forest complicate matters which all leads to the culmination at the end of the movie. The ending had high action with great animation, and a great soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi.

I really enjoyed the movie, and it instantly became my favorite Miyazaki film. I thought that the world building of the movie instantly stood out and remained one of the film's most captivating and impressive aspects. I have seen Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, and My Neighbor Totoro, but I think that this movie's action, message, music, and impressive scenes all combine to make it my favorite. While it is not as whimsical as My Neighbor Totoro, or have the same levels of individual character development as Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, I found the action and the world itself to make it stand out to me. One thing that I noticed is that although there were high levels of action, there was minimal blood shown in the movie. Despite this, many characters are killed on scene. My interpretations is that Miyazaki wanted to portray a darker movie with darker themes yet still wanted to be accessible to younger audiences without being restricted for high levels of violence.

In terms of the language being used, I noticed nuances that were not stated in the subtitles like the children of the village calling Nausica ひめねえさま which implied a stronger familial bond between the children and her compared to the subtitles simply writing "princess" or "Nausica" in its place. Additionally, I found it interesting how the word ふね was used to describe the flying machines in place of 飛行機. To me, it created an implicit comparison to the zeppelins "airships" of WWI rather than bomber-type airplanes that they seemingly resembled.