Miyazaki Couldn't Choose A Shorter Title??

Intro

Miyazaki’s first film sees it’s release over here and once again, Disney does a job with it.

The Story

This is a story about Nausicaa a girl with a strange power to be one with both animals and nature and also who is the princess of the Valley Of The Wind. In this world, the entire world has been polluted. Humans are an endangered species as they fight to survive against an ever increasing toxic jungle that releases poisonous spores into the air and is inhabited by giant insects that are vicious when angered.

There is a legend that someday a warrior clad in blue robes, walking in a golden field will save these people but everyone takes that as a myth for the most part. One day though in this humble little town, a giant airship crashes near by and inside of it is a giant heart. No one is sure what it is until another airship comes very quickly and the town is overrun by a heavily armed kingdom who are offering the people the chance to live peacefully and without fear of the toxic jungle for they plan on releasing a weapon of awesome power and destruction to destroy not only the toxic jungle but also the insects inside of it.

Nausicaa must now not only fight to defend her town but also stop the mad plans to destroy the toxic jungle and also the two nations that are at war leaving the Valley Of The Wind and it‘s peaceful inhabitants in the middle of the crossfire.

The Good And The Bad

This was the very first film released by Studio Ghibli (though if you wanna be very technical, Studio Ghibli wasn’t officially formed until after this movie was released) back in the early 80’s and while the movie itself is over 20 years old, the animation style and emotional impact is just as strong now as it was when it was first released.

Using themes of respecting nature and living in harmony with each other rather than living in constant struggle and bloodshed, the storytelling in this anime is absolutely incredible and lives up to the incredibly high standard of quality that anime fans have come to expect from one of Miyazaki’s films.

While it may not wow you with tons of special effects and computer generated graphics, the simple use of light and shadows along with some gorgeous cel animation are downright incredible and to watch a film that has been released more recently by Miyazaki and to compare it to this one you can see just how far his genius has come in the last 20 years.

Music

Once again this film uses a mostly instrumental track composed by Joe Hisashi who I’ve come to regard as one of the better anime composers in history. His simple use of mixing strings with brass and very simple vocals layered on top of each other have become sort of trademark for him and he always captures exactly the right feeling with each and every piece that he creates.

Dub vs. Sub

Ok, anyone who has read my reviews knows that I am hyper critical of Disney when it comes to their dub tracks of Miyazaki films and have been ever since I watched their release of ‘Castle In The Sky’.

But you’d also know that I can be fair and admit when they have put out a good release and there have a couple of them so far. This one I can’t say is perfect but it does look like over the last few years Disney has really taken the time to learn from their mistakes and really try to make this one better than they have in the past.

In this case most of their cast are actors that are perfect for the role. Examples of this are easily Patrick Stewart as Lord Yupa, Uma Thurman as Kushana, Chris Sarandon as Kurotawa, and Edward James Olmos as Mito. These are actors who are very skilled in their craft and for them to step up and not only agree to do anime but to do a good job at it is always a welcome treat for me. While I admit that they weren’t perfect (I noticed Patrick Stewart’s timing was off a couple of times), they did do a decent job and even if their timing was off at times, their performances were spot on.

The only two performance I have to say that I didn’t really agree with too much was Alison Lohman in the lead role of Nausicaa. I honestly had never heard of her before last night and so a quick search on imdb told me that she’s done a couple of big name films in the last couple of years, they weren’t anything that I paid attention to and in this film I paid even less attention. Not all of it is her fault. Sometimes the sound engineering was off and that made her performance sound worse than it really was but there were sometimes when it made me wonder if her and the director were on the same page or at one or two points, even reading the same script.

Kudos to Disney though for two things with this film. First off, for putting out a decent dub performance for this anime classic. To get a film of this magnitude wrong is simply not an option and for the most part they managed to get it right. There were mistakes made but overall, they’ve come a long way since releasing some of their other titles.

The second item that I thought was wonderful was the use of a legitimate anime actor within the cast. Even though it was only for a small role, I had quite the smile on my face when I watched the credits of this film and saw Bridget Hoffman’s name listed for one of the small roles. I’ve really started to take notice of her work lately and so to see her credited on here was a big deal for me.


Extras

There really aren’t too many extras but I really did enjoy the ones that they did have. The first one is a short (about 10 minute) long featurette about the actors and how they felt about doing the very first Miyazaki film. It’s always nice to hear American actors speak with respect towards someone that most Americans don’t even realize who it is but I thought it was really something special to hear Uma Thurman talk about him. I’ve always respected her as someone who is not only beautiful but also very intelligent and so hearing her speak about someone that I actually enjoy as well kind of makes me feel like we had a bonding moment (lol).

The second extra that I thought was really fun to watch was a half hour documentary about the birth and history of Studio Ghibli from the release of Nausicaa, to the release of Princess Mononoke in 1998. Originally airing on Japanese television a few years ago, I thought this was a clever extra for Disney to put on the DVD as it was a great way to expose more American views to the Miyazaki and his genius and also pad their own wallets since Disney releases most of his films over here.

The final two extras included with this release are the original Japanese TV spots and trailers and also as usual on disc 2, viewers can watch the entire movie in either English or Japanese in storyboard format. Fans who are REALLY into animation should get a big kick about this, the rest of us will probably pass.

One thing that I thought was really interested was that this release didn’t contain one of the traditional cut and paste introductions by John Lasseter that we usually see on the release. I’m not sure why we didn’t.


Overall

This was a great release and I am so not sorry that I spent an evening watching this as this is easily a classic anime that needs to belong in everyone’s collection so that not only can adults watch this but also children as well. While some of the very minor and none bloody violence may make it a bit more appropriate for older children (I’d say about 7 or 8), it’s still something special that needs to be seen by everyone and discussed afterwards.

The themes are very simple and laid out in a very elegant format. If you haven’t seen it yet, you have no reason to wait any longer.

Final Grade: 89% - B

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Castle In The Sky
Spirited Away
Kiki's Delivery Service
Grave Of The Fireflies
The Cat Returns


©L.B. Bryant 2005