Nausicaä (character) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

is a fictional character from the science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

series Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)

is a post-apocalyptic manga written and illustrated by acclaimed anime director Hayao Miyazaki. It was serialised intermittently from 1982 to 1994 in Japan...

, created by Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki

is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...

, and the anime film by the same name, which was directed by Miyazaki. Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a minor kingdom in a post-apocalyptic world, and she succeeds her ill father to the throne during the course of the manga.

Fuelled by her love for others and for life itself, Nausicaä studies the ecology of her world to understand the Sea of Corruption (or Toxic Jungle in the anime) which came into being after the Seven Days of Fire, a technological war which killed most of humanity.

Nausicaä has an impressive commitment and a magnetism that causes her to be admired and adored by all. Her empathy allows her to communicate with many animals, including the Ohmu, an intelligent race of giant insects who are guardians of the Sea of Corruption or Toxic Jungle and are feared by most other humans.

Development

The beginning of the character of Nausicaä is in an aborted project of Miyazaki's. He wished to adapt Richard Corben

Richard Corben

Richard Corben is an American illustrator and comic book artist best known for his comics featured in Heavy Metal magazine...

's Rowlf (about a princess protected by her dog) into an anime. Miyazaki found similarities with Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740...

which would inspire him to wish to create a character which highlighted the theme of "devotion, self-giving". Finding Corben's princess "bland", Miyazaki imagined "a young girl with character, brimming with sensitivity and contrasted with

Foil (literature)

In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....

an incapable father". This character, named by Miyazaki, was a young princess who was "bearing the crushing weight of her destiny" when her sick father abdicated, leaving the burden of the kingdom to her, and having to bridle her personal aspirations.For example, waging war in the first volume of the manga on behalf of an allied kingdom, leaving her "secret garden" to die, where she researches the plants of the Sea of Corruption. Miyazaki gave Yala a dog "which always accompanied her from a young age and especially cared for his mistress". This dog is found in many design sketches of Yala.

The transition of Yala to Nausicaä came when Miyazaki began to develop the character. Miyazaki intended Yala to wear short pants and moccasins, exposing her bare legs "to effectively show vigorous movements and a dynamic character", but was forced to abandon that idea as it did not make sense to expose her legs in the harsh environment in which Nausicaä was evolving. Around that time, Miyazaki began to like the name "Nausicaä", and he renamed the character.

Nausicaä's name comes from the princess Nausicaa

Nausicaa

Nausicaa is a character in Homer's Odyssey . She is the daughter of King Alcinous and Queen Arete of Phaeacia. Her name, in Greek, means "burner of ships".-Role in the Odyssey:...

in the Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

who assisted Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

. The Nausicaa of the Odyssey was "renowned for her love of nature and music, her fervid imagination and disregard for material possessions", traits which Dani Cavallaro sees in Miyazaki's Nausicaä. In English, the Greek name is normally , but in the soundtrack for the film it is /ˈnɔːsɨkə/. Part of her character comes from a Japanese folk hero

Folk hero

A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...

known as , whose story appeared in the Tsutsumi Chūnagon Monogatari

Tsutsumi Chunagon Monogatari

is a post late-Heian period Japanese collection of short stories.-Authorship:With the exception of one story, the authorship is unknown. It is likely each story was written by different authors at various times and later collected together into a single text....

while another part was inspired by the writings of Bernard Evslin

Bernard Evslin

Bernard Evslin is an author best known for his adaptations of Greek mythology. With over seventy titles, which include both novel-length retellings and short stories, Evslin is one of the most widely published authors of classical mythology in the world...

, as he had written a more in-depth extrapolation of the Odyssey

Odyssey

s Nausicaa.

The Princess Who Loved Insects was about a clever and beautiful princess who rather than beautifying herself and courting, would spend her time outdoors playing with bugs and caterpillars. Miyazaki has said that Evslin's Nausicaa reminded him of the princess who loved insects, and he wondered how the princess who loved insects lived her life after the story ended. He said that the two characters "became fused into one and created the story". He also said that Nausicaä is "governed by a kind of animism

Animism

Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....

". Miyazaki felt that it was important to make Nausicaä a female because he felt that this allowed him to create more complex villains, saying "If we try to make an adventure story with a male lead, we have no choice but to do Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones

Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...

, with a Nazi or someone else who is a villain in everyone's eyes". Miyazaki said of Nausicaä that "[She] is not a protagonist who defeats an opponent, but a protagonist who understands, or accepts. She is someone who lives on a different dimension. That kind of person should be female, not male." When asked about Nausicaä's "vision and intellect far greater than other people's", her "distinguished fighting skills", and her leadership, including taking "the role of legendary savior", Miyazaki said that he wanted to create a heroine who was not a "consummately normal" person, "just like you or everyone else around you".

Nausicaä's affinity with the wind was inspired by translations of European geography books from the Middle Ages, where mastery of the wind was described as "witchcraft" and was feared and respected. Mills were described in these books as being used for "pushing sand dunes or grinding grain", which left an impression on Miyazaki. Inspired by the Earthsea

Earthsea

Earthsea is a fictional realm originally created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964. Earthsea became the setting for a further six books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968, and continuing with The Tombs of Atuan, The...

cycle of Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

, Miyazaki coined the term as an alternative to Guin's "Master Windkey", which was translated into Japanese as .

Miyazaki had intended to make Yala more pulpy than his other female characters, a feature of sketches of her between 1980 and 1982. However, he realised that he could not draw Nausicaä nude without feeling like he should apologise, changing his idea of the story to be more "spiritual". When Miyazaki draws Nausicaä in poses which are a little "sexy", like the cover of Animage

Animage

is a Japanese anime and entertainment magazine which Tokuma Shoten began publishing in July 1978. Hayao Miyazaki's internationally renowned manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, was serialized in Animage from 1982 through 1994...

in March 1993, where Nausicaä smiles while wearing a torn tank top, he cautions that "Nausicaä never takes such a pose", however this does not prevent him from drawing her like this, saying "Well, if I hadn't drawn her as beautiful, there would have been some problems. I thought that I should settle down and draw her consistently, but every time I drew her, her face changed-even I was overpowered." He felt that over the 14 year run of the manga, rather than Nausicaä changing as a character, instead Miyazaki felt that he understood her better.

When Miyazaki is obligated to draw Nausicaä smiling for covers or character posters, he finds it difficult because "it does not match the character of [my] heroine". He does not like "representing Nausicaä as too radiant or with the attitudes typical of a heroine", and imagines that instead of this, when she is alone, she has a "serious [...] calm and collected" (but "not surly") attitude. He regards her "sombre and reserved" nature to be offset by her femininity. Miyazaki believes that characters like this, "far from being fulfilled [...] are the most altruistic".

The kana

Kana

Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...

that Miyazaki chose to write Nausicaä's name in, ナウシカ (nauʃika), was that used by Yataka Kobayashi, the Japanese translator of Bernard Evslin's works. Miyazaki preferred it to the transcriptions of Nausicaä also in use, ノシカ (noʃika) and ノジカ (noʒika).

Helen McCarthy considers Shuna from Journey of Shuna to be prototypical to Nausicaä, and Dani Cavallaro feels Lana from Future Boy Conan

Future Boy Conan

is an anime series, which premiered across Japan on the NHK network between April 4 and October 31, 1978 on the Tuesday 19:30-20:00 timeslot. The official English title used by Nippon Animation is Conan, The Boy in Future....

and Clarisse of Castle of Cagliostro are also prototypical to Nausicaä.

Character outline

Although a skillful fighter, Miyazaki's Nausicaä is humane and peace-loving. She has an unusual gift for communicating with the giant insects, and is noted for her empathy toward animals, humans, and other beings. An intelligent girl, Nausicaä frequently explores the toxic wasteland which surrounds the kingdoms, and conducts scientific experiments in an attempt to define the true nature and origins of the toxic world in which she lives. Her explorations are facilitated by her skill at "windriding"; flying with an advanced glider

Hang gliding

Hang gliding is an air sport in which a pilot flies a light and unmotorized foot-launchable aircraft called a hang glider ....

-like craft called Mehve, equipped with a jet-assist.

Plot overview

The story of the manga, refined by Miyazaki over 13 years between February 1982 and March 1994, was published in the magazine Animage

Animage

and collected into seven volumes. It is much more complex than the story told by the film.

The film was developed in 1983, when Tokuma Shoten, the publisher of Animage, felt that the manga was successful enough to make "a gamble" at a film being economically viable. The film takes the context and characters, but the scenario is radically different from that of the manga, although many scenes from the manga (corresponding roughly to the first two volumes) were used with only slight changes.

In the summary below, parts of the manga where Nausicaä is absent have been omitted to focus on the character.

In the manga

Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a very small nation with fewer than 500 inhabitants (and steadily declining in population). She is the eleventh child of King Jihl, and the only one to live to maturity. She is rarely seen without her Mehve or her companion, Teto the fox-squirrel. At the beginning of the manga, Nausicaä, the princess of the Valley of the Wind, is set to succeed her ill father, who can no longer go to war to honour an old alliance. Under the command of the princess of Tolmekia, Kushana, Nausicaä needs to go to war against the Dorok Empire in a suicide mission across the Sea of Corruption. Delayed in the forest by the attack of Asbel, where she saves the insects, she encounters a tribe of Dorok and learns of their plans to destroy the Tolmekian army. She helps the baby Ohmu which was tortured by the Dorok to attract the insects to the Tomekian army, and her dress is stained blue with its blood. She is recognised as "The Blue Clad One", a figure in the Dorok mythos who is fated to cause a revolution in the world.

Having awakened the old heretical legends, Nausicaä becomes a mortal enemy of the Dorok Holy Emperor Miralupa, who uses his mental powers to try to infiltrate her mind when she is weak. Miralupa is betrayed and murdered by his older brother, Namulith, and at the doors of death, finds his redemption in the spirit of Nausicaä. Nausicaä discovers that the Dorok are using a new fungus of the forest as a biological weapon to extend their reach. She arrives at an understanding of the role of the Sea of Corruption and its inhabitants in the process of purifying the Earth.

When Namulith decided to marry Kushana to form a single empire under his rule, he suffered a rejection due to his body changing and bequeathed the god-warrior to Nausicaä in revenge. The god-warrior is a living weapon, an artifact from the ancient world which led to the Seven Days of Fire. Not knowing what to do with this immeasurably dangerous and uncontrollable creature who takes her for its mother, found at Pejite, then stolen by the Tolmekians and finally by the Dorok, Nausicaä names the god-warrior Ohma. She decides to go with Ohma to the Crypt of Shuwa to seal all the technologies of the ancient world behind its doors.

In the garden of Shuwa, Nausicaä goes through a test of character, as the Master of the Garden imitates her mother to tempt her to stay. Ohma, controlled by the Tolmekian Emperor Vuh, fights the Master of the Crypt. After cracking the crypt, Ohma dies of his wounds. Nausicaä finally joins in destroying the foundations of the building, sealing the old technology inside.

In the film

After finding the shell of an Ohmu while collecting spores in the Toxic Forest, Nausicaä rescues Master Yupa from an Ohmu that she pacifies.Lord Yupa then gives Nausicaa a fox squirrel she names Teto. Upon returning to the Valley of the Wind, Obaba tells the legend of the Blue Clad One, who will walk in a field of gold and renew the lost link with the Earth. The next night, a Tolmekian airship is attacked by insects and crashes in the Valley of the Wind, and Nausicaä hears the last words of Lastel, a princess of the city of Pejite who wants the ship's cargo to be destroyed. When the people of the Valley of the Wind try to destroy the airborne spores of the Toxic Jungle, they note that a wounded insect that Nausicaä reassured retreated back to the Toxic Jungle.

The cargo of the Tolmekian ship, a hibernating god-warrior, is retrieved by the people of the Valley of the Wind, and they are immediately visited by many Tolmekian ships and tanks who kill King Jihl, the father of Nausicaä. Filled with rage, Nausicaä kills many soldiers before Yupa intervenes. The Tolmekians, led by Princess Kushana, intend to retrieve and awaken the god-warrior, and use it to burn the Toxic Jungle. Obaba opposes this idea, saying that all who have tried to destroy the forest have been killed by the angry Ohmu and the jungle grew over their towns and bodies. However, to avoid a slaughter, Nausicaä agrees to become Kushana's hostage and accompany her to rejoin the main Tolmekian army at the city of Pejite, which the Tolmekians have already conquered.

During the journey, they are attacked by Lastel's brother Asbel, who almost destroys the entire fleet, and is apparently killed. Mito, Nausicaa and Kushana escape using the gunship and land in the jungle. Nausicaa communicates with the Ohmu and discovers that Asbel is alive and she uses her glider to rescue him. They sink into the sands of the jungle and discover a non-toxic world beneath the jungle. Nausicaa realises that the plants of the jungle are purifying the soil and produce clean water and sand.

Actors

Nausicaä is voiced in Japanese by Sumi Shimamoto

Sumi Shimamoto

, real name , is a veteran Japanese voice actress born on December 8, 1954, in Kōchi, Kōchi Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from the Toho Gakuen School of Music, she joined Gekidan Seinenza, a theatrical acting troupe...

, who won the role after impressing Hayao Miyazaki with her performance of Clarisse in Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. Patrick Drazen praised Shimamoto's acting in a scene where Nausicaä stops an insect from diving into an acidic pool by getting in its way. She is burned by the acid and she screams. Drazen described this scream as being one which "tears at the listener and raises the bar for cartoon voices". Nausicaä's English-language voice was performed by Alison Lohman

Alison Lohman

Alison Marion Lohman is an American actress. She has had lead roles in the films White Oleander, Where the Truth Lies, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Flicka and Drag Me to Hell as well as smaller parts in Matchstick Men, Big Fish, Gamer, and Beowulf...

Reception

In a chapter dealing with "Female masculinity and fantasy spaces", Nausicaä is described as being a "strong young female lead drawn strongly from the shoujo tradition", relating the story of a Takarazuka Revue

Takarazuka Revue

The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theater troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales. The troupe takes its name...

playwright called Ogita who compares his work with Miyazaki's. For Ogita, it is most important that the heroines of Miyazaki are pure and asexual, to emphasise themes of purity and strength. who "takes charge" of her own life, Nausicaä has also been said to have a "brave and wholesome" mind, and as "one of the best examples of a truly "empowered" female." Stig Høgset found the too-perfect portrayal of Nausicaä to be unrealistic. Susan J. Napier argues that as Nausicaa is the heroine of an epic

Epic (genre)

An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry. However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, and video games where the story is centered on heroic characters, and the action takes place on a grand scale, just as in epic poetry...

, her competence, powers, and presentation as a messiah are not part of Nausicaa being an unrealistic character, but instead, she is real as a character inside the epic genre. In the beginning of the film, Nausicaä is presented as "a mix of precocity and fairy-tale innocence", her innocence coming not from naivety but from scientific wonder. Early in the story, she kills the warriors who killed her father, which Susan J. Napier described as "genuinely shocking," and Kaori Yoshida points to as evidence of Nausicaä representing "traditional masculinity rather than femininity". When she avenges her father's death, the scene is "ambivalent" in its message, suggesting both "a masculine rite-of-passage" and "a moral object lesson", which makes Nausicaä afraid of her own power. Nausicaä later "comes to regret her vengeance" and becomes a diplomat to prevent further wars between the different states. Although Nausicaä is a warrior, Nausicaä acts "reassuringly cute" such as taming Teto and calling things "pretty", which contrasts her with San of Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke

is a 1997 epic Japanese animated historical fantasy feature film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. is not a name, but a general term in the Japanese language for a spirit or monster...

. Inaga Shimegi feels that Teto's taming is the first glimpse of Nausicaä's "supernatural ability of communication". Thomas Zoth regards Nausicaä as "Miyazaki's archetypal heroine" and notes shades of her in Ashitaka, San and Lady Eboshi of Princess Mononoke.

Opinion is divided as to whether Nausicaä is sexualised or not - Napier notes that Nausicaä's relationship with Asbel is "potentially erotic", but Kaori Yoshida says that Nausicaä's body "is not the typical kind designed to stimulate" the male gaze. The quality of tapes on early fansub

Fansub

A fansub is a version of a foreign film or foreign television program which has been translated by fans and subtitled into a language other than that of the original.-History:...

s lead to the rumor that Nausicaä does not wear any pants. Yoshida presents Hiromi Murase's theory that Nausicaä represents a post-oedipal

Oedipus complex

In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...

mother figure. Susan J. Napier and Patrick Drazen note a parallel between the character of Kushana, the rival warrior princess, and that of Nausicaä: Napier describes Kushana as Nausicaä's "shadow", noting that Kushana is not shown with any "alleviating, feminine" virtues as Nausicaä is, but that they share the same tactical brilliance. Drazen describes this as a "feminine duality". Miyazaki has described the two characters as being "two sides of the same coin", but Kushana has "deep, physical wounds".

Nausicaä is presented as a messiah and also acts on an ideology of how to interact with the natural world. Her powers are presented as proof of the "rightness" of her "mode of thought". Unlike other characters who avoid or try to ignore the forest, Nausicaä is scientifically and beatifically interested in the forest. Lucy Wright believes that Nausicaa's world-view reflects a Shinto worldview, as expressed by Motoori Norinaga

Motoori Norinaga

was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...

: "this heaven and earth and all things therein are without exception strange and marvellous when examined carefully." Wright believes that Nausicaa is presented as a "healing deity", as she is concerned with the space between purity and corruption, and atones for the wrongs of other people. In the manga, Nausicaa faces an old monk who says "the death of the world is inescapable" because of the folly of men, Nausicaa retorts: "Our God of the Winds teaches us that life is above all! And I love life! The light, the sky, the men, the insects, I love them all more than anything!!" Later, she responds to the Guardian of the tomb of Shuwa who tries to tell her she is selfish for refusing the purification program of the old Earth and allowing the sacrifice of all the lives of the ancient world: "We can know the beauty and the cruelty of the world without the help of a giant tomb and its retinue of servants. Because our god, he lives in the smallest leaf and the smallest insect." Raphaël Colson and Gaël Régner see in these tirades a "world view which clearly calls to mind the spirit of Shinto

Shinto

or Shintoism, also kami-no-michi, is the indigenous spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a set of practices, to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written...

".

When the god soldier is activated, he chooses Nausicaä to be his "mother" and asks her who she wants him to kill. Marc Hairston considers this to be a recurring theme throughout the manga: Nausicaä is given power and is told to make difficult decisions. In 2000, Nausicaä placed eleventh in an Animax

Animax

is a Japanese anime satellite television network, dedicated to broadcasting anime programming. A subsidiary of Japanese media conglomerate Sony, it is headquartered in in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, with its co-founders and shareholders including Sony Pictures Entertainment and the noted anime studios...

poll of favourite anime characters. The first daughter of Jean Giraud

Jean Giraud

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings, for instance the...

is named after the character. The character Nakiami from Xam'd: Lost Memories

Xam'd: Lost Memories

Xam'd: Lost Memories, released in Japan as , is an anime series, conceptualized by Bones and co-developed by Sony Computer Entertainment, Aniplex and Bones, which made its debut on Sony's inaugural launch of the PlayStation Network video download service at E3 in the United States on July 16,...

has been noted to bear many similarities to Nausicaä.

Nausicaä won the seventh Animage

Animage

Grand Prix, and the June 1987 Grand Prix, coming second in May 1991, and again coming first in December 1992.

Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter and writer.Schodt's father was in the US foreign service, and he grew up in Norway, Australia, and Japan. The family first went to Japan in 1965 when Schodt was fifteen. They left in 1967 but Schodt remained to graduate from Tokyo's American...

believes that in the film, Nausicaä's character became "slightly sweeter, almost sappy" and suggests that her "high voice" and the low camera angles which show the bottom of her skirt to be due to "an emphasis on 'prepubescent female cuteness' in commercial animation."

Marc Hairston reads the 1995 music video "On Your Mark

On Your Mark

is a song by the Japanese rock duo Chage & Aska. At their request, animator Hayao Miyazaki produced a music video for the song. The music video was created in 1995, is entirely animated, has no dialogue and runs for six and a half minutes. The song was used in advertisements for NEC.-Synopsis:The...

" as being Miyazaki's "symbolic release" of Nausicaä.

Raphaël Colson and Gaël Régner feel that Nausicaa had "to grow up faster than her age" because of her responsibilities, but that she acts with maturity, diplomacy, attention and resolve. They see her as "the princess of an idealised feudal system ... loved and respected by her subjects, ... feared and admired by her enemies."

Development

Character outline

Plot overview

In the manga

In the film

Actors

Reception

Further reading