Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
Prior to creating "Nausicaä", Miyazaki had worked as an animator for Toei Animation, Nippon Animation and Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), the latter for whom he had directed his feature film debut, "Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro" (1979). After working on an aborted adaptation of Richard Corben's "Rowlf" for TMS and the publishing firm Tokuma Shoten, he agreed to create a manga series for Tokuma's monthly magazine "Animage", initially on the condition that it would not be adapted into a film. The development of "Nausicaä" was influenced by the Japanese  Heian period tale "The Lady who Loved Insects", a similarly-named character from Homer's "Odyssey" and the Minamata Bay mercury pollution. The setting and visual style of the manga was influenced by Mœbius. It was serialized intermittently in "Animage" from February 1982 to March 1994 and the individual chapters were collected and published by Tokuma Shoten in seven "tankōbon" volumes. It was serialized with an English translation in North America by Viz Media from 1988 to 1996 as a series of 27 comic book issues and has been published in collected form multiple times. Since its initial serialization, "Nausicaä  has become a commercial success, particularly in Japan, where the series has more than 17 million copies in circulation. The manga and the 1984 film adaptation, written and directed by Miyazaki following the serialization of the manga's first sixteen chapters, received universal acclaim from critics and scholars for its characters, themes, and art. The manga and film versions of Nausicaä" are also credited for the foundation of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio for which Miyazaki created several of his most recognized works. Synopsis. Setting. The story is set in the future at the closing of the ceramic era, 1,000  years after the Seven Days of Fire, a cataclysmic global war, in which industrial civilization self-destructed. Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth is still heavily polluted and the seas have become poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the Sea of Corruption, a toxic forest of fungal life and plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large mutant insects, including the massive Ohmu. Humanity clings to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain. The  ability for space travel has been lost but the earth-bound remnants of humanity can still use gliders and powered aircraft for exploration, transportation and warfare. (Powered land vehicles are mostly nonexistent, with humanity regressed to dependence on riding animals and beasts-of-burden.) Plot. Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a state on the periphery of what was once known as Eftal, a kingdom destroyed by the Sea of Corruption, a poisonous forest, 300 years ago. An inquisitive young woman, she explores the territories surrounding the Valley on a jet-powered glider, and studies the  Sea of Corruption. When the Valley goes to war, she takes her ailing father's place as military chief. The leaders of the Periphery states are vassals to the Torumekian Emperor and are obliged to send their forces to help when he invades the neighboring Dorok lands. The Torumekians have a strong military, but the Doroks, whose ancestors bioengineered the progenitors of the Sea of Corruption, have developed a genetically modified version of a mold from the Sea of Corruption. When the Doroks introduce this mold into battle, its rapid growth and mutation result in a daikaisho (roughly translated from  Japanese as "great tidal wave"), which floods across the land and draws the insects into the battle, killing as many Doroks as Torumekians. In doing so, the Sea of Corruption spreads across most of the Dorok nation, uprooting or killing vast numbers of civilians and rendering most of the land uninhabitable. The Ohmu and other forest insects respond to this development and sacrifice themselves to pacify the expansion of the mold, which is beyond human control. Nausicaä resigns herself to joining in their fate. However, one of the Ohmu encapsulates her inside itself in a protective serum, allowing her to  survive the mold. She is recovered by her companions, people she met after leaving the Valley and who have joined her on her quest for a peaceful coexistence. The fact that the mold can be manipulated and used as a weapon disturbs Nausicaä. Her treks into the forest have already taught her that the Sea of Corruption is actually purifying the polluted land. The Forest People, humans who have learned to live in harmony with the Sea of Corruption, confirm this is the purpose of the Sea of Corruption and one of them shows Nausicaä a vision of the restored  Earth at the center of the forest. Nausicaä travels deeper into Dorok territory, where her coming has long been prophesied, to seek those responsible for manipulating the mold. There, she encounters a dormant God Warrior who, upon activation, assumes she is his mother and places his destructive powers at her disposal. Faced with this power and its single minded and childlike visions of the world, she engages the creature, names him and persuades him to travel with her to Shuwa, the Holy City of the Doroks. Here she enters the Crypt, a giant monolithic construct from before the Seven Days  of Fire. She learns that the last scientists of the industrial era had foreseen the end of their civilization. They created the Sea of Corruption to clean the land of pollution, altered human genes to cope with the changed ecology, stored their own personalities inside the Crypt and waited for the day when they could re-emerge, leaving the world at the mercy of their artificially created caretaker. However, their continual manipulation of the population and the world's environment is at odds with Nausicaä's belief in the natural order. She argues that mankind's behaviour has not been  improved significantly by the activities of those inside the crypt. Strife and cycles of violence have continued to plague the world in the thousand years following their interference. She orders the God-Warrior to destroy its progenitors, forcing humanity to live or die without further influence from the old society's technology. Development. Precursors and early development. Miyazaki began his professional career in the animation industry as an inbetweener at Toei in 1963 but soon had additional responsibilities in the creation processes. While working primarily on animation projects for TV and Cinema, he also pursued his dream of creating manga . In conjunction with his work as a key animator on "Puss 'n Boots" his manga adaptation of the same title was published in 1969. That same year pseudonymous serialization started of his manga "People of the Desert". His manga adaptation of "Animal Treasure Island" was serialized in 1971. After the December 1979 release of "The Castle of Cagliostro", Miyazaki, now at the Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS) subsidiary Telecom Animation Film, began working on his ideas for an animated film adaptation of Richard Corben's comic book "Rowlf" and pitched the idea to Yutaka Fujioka at TMS. In November 1980, a  proposal was drawn up to acquire the film rights. Around that time Miyazaki was also approached for a series of magazine articles by the editorial staff of Tokuma Shoten's "Animage". During subsequent conversations he showed his sketchbooks and talked about basic outlines for envisioned animation projects with Toshio Suzuki and Osamu Kameyama, at the time working as editors for "Animage". They saw the potential for collaboration on their development into animation. Initially two projects were proposed to Tokuma Shoten, that are significant for the eventual creation of Nausicaä: , to be set in the Sengoku period, and an aborted adaptation  of Corben's "Rowlf", but they were rejected, on July 9, 1981. The proposals were rejected because the company was unwilling to fund anime projects not based on existing manga and because the rights for the adaptation of "Rowlf" could not be secured. An agreement was reached that Miyazaki could start developing his sketches and ideas into a manga for the magazine with the proviso that it would never be made into a film. Miyazaki stated in an interview, ""Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" only really began to take shape once I agreed to serialize it." In the  December 1981 issue of "Animage", it was announced that a new manga series would start in the February 1982 issue of the magazine, despite the fact that Miyazaki had not completed the first episode. The illustrated notice introduced the new series' main character, title and concept. The first chapter, 18 pages, was published in the February issue. Miyazaki would continue developing the story for another 12 years with frequent interruptions along the way. Influences. Miyazaki had given other names to the main character during development, but he settled on Nausicaä based on the name of the Greek princess of the  same name from the "Odyssey", as portrayed in Bernard Evslin's dictionary of Greek mythology, translated into Japanese by Minoru Kobayashi. Nausicaä’s personality was also patterned in part on Homer's character, particularly in regard to her love of nature and music, her imagination and disregard for material possessions. In his essay , printed in volume one of the manga, Miyazaki wrote that he was also inspired by "The Lady who Loved Insects", a Japanese tale from the Heian period about a young court lady who preferred studying insects rather than wearing fine clothes or choosing a husband. Helen McCarthy  considers Shuna from "Shuna's Journey" to be prototypical to Nausicaä, and Dani Cavallaro feels that Lana from "Future Boy Conan" and Clarisse of "The Castle of Cagliostro" also influenced Nausicaä’s characterization. The story’s fantasy and science fiction elements were influenced by a variety of works from Western authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin's "Earthsea", Brian Aldiss's "Hothouse", Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall", and J.R.R Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". Frank Herbert's science fiction novel "Dune" (1965) was also a major source of inspiration for "Nausicaä". The setting and visual style of the manga  often reference Jean Giraud (Mœbius), whose wordless 1975 comic "Arzach" had deeply impressed Miyazaki. Among the inspirations for the environmental themes Miyazaki has mentioned the Minamata Bay mercury pollution. The Sea of Corruption is based on the forests on the Japanese island of Yakushima and the marshes of the Sivash, or Rotten Sea, in Ukraine. The works of botanist were among Miyazaki's inspirations for the environment of the story. Miyazaki mentions Nakao in the context of a question he was asked about the place "Nausicaä" takes in the "ecology boom", explaining his shift from a desert to a forest  setting. Nakao's influence on his work has been noted by Shiro Yoshioka. Miyazaki has identified Tetsuji Fukushima's "" , a story he first read while still in primary school, as one of his earliest influences. Kentaro Takekuma has also observed this continuity in Miyazaki's work and places it within the tradition of illustrated stories, , and manga Miyazaki read while growing up, pointing out the influence of Fukushima on Miyazaki's "People of the Desert" which he in turn identifies as a precursor for both "Shuna's Journey", created in watercolour and printed in colour, and "Nausicaä". Creation. Miyazaki drew  the "Nausicaä" chapters primarily in pencil. The work was printed monochrome in sepia toned ink. Frederik L. Schodt observed differences between "Nausicaä" and other Japanese manga. He has noted that it was serialized in the large A4 size of "Animage", much larger than the normal size for manga. Schodt has also observed that Miyazaki drew much of Nausicaä in pencil without inking, and that the page and panel layouts, as well as the heavy reliance on storytelling, are more reminiscent of French comics than of Japanese manga. In appearance and sensibilities, "Nausicaä" reminds Schodt of the works of Mœbius. Takekuma  has noted stylistic changes in Miyazaki's artwork over the course of the series. He points out that, particularly in the first chapters, the panels are densely filled with background, which makes the main characters difficult to discern without paying close attention. According to Takekuma this may be partially explained by Miyazaki's use of pencil, without inking, for much of the series. Takekuma points out that by employing pencil Miyazaki does not give himself the option of much variation in his line. He notes that in the later chapters Miyazaki uses his line art to, literally, draw attention to  individuals and that he more frequently separates them from the background. As a result there are more panels in which the main characters stand out vividly in the latter part of the manga. Miyazaki has stated in interviews that he frequently worked close to publication deadlines and that he was not always able to finish his monthly instalments for serialization in "Animage". On such occasions he sometimes created apologetic cartoons. These were printed in the magazine, instead of story panels, to explain to his readers why there were fewer pages that month or why the story was absent entirely. Miyazaki  has indicated that he continued making improvements to the story prior to the publication of the "tankōbon" volumes, in which chapters from the magazine were collected in book form. Changes made throughout the story, before the release of each "tankōbon" volume, range from subtle additions of shading to the insertion of entirely new pages. Miyazaki also redrew panels and sometimes the artwork was changed on whole pages. He made alterations to the text and changed the order in which panels appeared. The story as re-printed in the "tankōbon" spans 7 volumes for a combined total of 1060 pages. Miyazaki  has said that the lengthy creation process of the "Nausicaä" manga, repeatedly tackling its themes as the story evolved over the years, not only changed the material but also affected his personal views on life and changed his political perspectives. He also noted that his continued struggle with the subject matter in the ongoing development of the "Nausicaä" manga allowed him to create different, lighter, films than he would have been able to make without "Nausicaä" providing an outlet for his more serious thoughts throughout the period of its creation. Marc Hairston notes that, “Tellingly, Miyazaki’s first film after  finishing the "Nausicaä" manga was "Mononoke Hime", which examined many of the themes from the manga and is arguably the darkest film of his career.” Localization. "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" was initially translated into English by Toren Smith and Dana Lewis. Smith, who had written comics in the U.S. since 1982, wrote an article on "Warriors of the Wind" (the heavily edited version of the film adaptation released in the U.S. in the 1980s) for the Japanese edition of Starlog, in which he criticized what New World Pictures had done to Miyazaki's film. The article came  to the attention of Miyazaki himself, who invited Smith to Studio Ghibli for a meeting. On Miyazaki's insistence, Smith's own company Studio Proteus was chosen as the producer of the English-language translation. Smith hired Dana Lewis to collaborate on the translation. Lewis was a professional translator in Japan who also wrote for "Newsweek" and had written cover stories for such science fiction magazines as "Analog Science Fiction and Fact" and "Amazing Stories". Smith hired Tom Orzechowski for the lettering and retouching. Studio Proteus was responsible for the translation, the lettering, and the retouching of the artwork, which  was flipped left-to-right to accommodate English readers. The original Japanese dialogue was re-lettered by hand, the original sound effects were replaced by English sound effects, and the artwork was retouched to accommodate the new sound effects. When Miyazaki resumed work on the manga following one of the interruptions, Viz chose another team, including Rachel Thorn and Wayne Truman, to complete the series. The current seven-volume, English-language "Editor's Choice" edition is published in right-to-left reading order: while it retains the original translations, the lettering was done by Walden Wong. The touch-up art  and lettering for the Viz Media deluxe two-volume box set was also done by Walden Wong. Eriko Ogihara-Schuck, lecturer in American studies at the Technical University of Dortmund, conducted a comparative analysis of the Japanese-language manga and anime with their English translations, and demonstrates that American translations have resulted in the "Christianizing of Miyazaki's animism". She indicates that this was probably done inadvertently in the case of the manga translation, which retains animistic elements and contains pantheistic phrases, but may have been more deliberate in the translation of dialogue and narration for Disney's release of  the film. In the case of the manga she attributes this "Christianizing" to the limitations of the languages involved, particularly the absence of precise English equivalents for Japanese words and concepts such as "kami", "oni" and "kishin" and honorific titles such as "sama". As another explanation, she offers that translators of both the manga and the film work from a Judeo-Christian background, in a language suffused with Judeo-Christian idioms not found in Japanese, which they introduce to the text, and she indicates that the translators work for an audience more accustomed to, and with the expectation of, the  Judeo-Christian religions' dualistic, good versus evil worldview in fictional narratives. Ogihara-Schuck concludes that particularly the film translation erased animistic motifs completely but that the manga translations, "by enveloping the text in a dualistic world view", also implicitly reintroduced this dualistic, good versus evil, worldview, absent in the original Japanese language manga, which she presumes to have been a strategy to make the works more accessible to the American audience. Publication history. The manga was serialized in Tokuma Shoten's monthly "Animage" magazine between 1982 and 1994. The series initially ran from the February 1982 issue to the November  1982 issue when the first interruption occurred due to Miyazaki's work related trip to Europe. Serialization resumed in the December issue and the series ran again until June 1983 when it went on hiatus again due to Miyazaki's work on the film adaptation of the series. Serialization of the manga resumed for the third time from the August 1984 issue but halted again in the May 1985 issue when Miyazaki placed the series on hiatus to work on "Castle in the Sky". Serialization resumed for the fourth time in the December 1986 issue and was halted again in  June 1987 when Miyazaki placed the series on hiatus to work on the films "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service". The series resumed for the fifth time in the April 1990 issue and was halted in the May 1991 issue when Miyazaki worked on "Porco Rosso". The series resumed for the final time in the March 1993 issue. The final panel is dated January 28, 1994. The last chapter was released in the March 1994 issue of "Animage". By the end Miyazaki had created 59 chapters, of varying length, for publication in the magazine. In an interview, conducted  shortly after serialization of the manga had ended, he noted that this amounts to approximately 5 years worth of material. He stated that he did not plan for the manga to run that long and that he wrote the story based on the idea that it could be stopped at any moment. The chapters were slightly modified and collected in seven "tankōbon" volumes, in soft cover B5 size. The first edition of volume one is dated September 25, 1982. It contains the first eight chapters and was re-released on July 20, 1983 with a newly designed cover and the  addition of a dustcover. Volume two has the same July 20, 1983 release date. It contains chapters 9 through 14. Together with chapters 15 and 16, printed in the Animage issues for May and June 1983, these were the only 16 chapters completed prior to the release of the "Nausicaä" film in March 1984. The seventh book was eventually released on January 15, 1995. The entire series was also reprinted in two deluxe volumes in hard cover and in A4 size labeled and which were released on November 28, 1996. The seven books, which remain in print individually, have also  been released in box sets twice, on August 25, 2002 and, with a redesigned box, on October 31, 2003. English translations are published in North America and the United Kingdom by Viz Media. As of 2013 Viz Media has released the manga in five different formats. Initially the manga was printed flipped and with English translations of the sound effects. Publication of English editions began in 1988 with the release of episodes from the story under the title "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind" in the "Viz Select Comics" series. This series ran until 1996. It consists of 27 issues . In October 1990 Viz Media also started publishing the manga as "Viz Graphic Novel, Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind". The last of the seven Viz Graphic Novels in this series appeared in January 1997. Viz Media reprinted the manga in four volumes titled "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind: Perfect Collection", which were released from October 1995 to October 1997. A box set of the four volumes was later released in January 2000. In 2004 Viz Media re-released the seven-volume format in an "Editors Choice" edition titled "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind". In this version  the manga is left unflipped and the sound effects are left untranslated. Viz Media released its own deluxe two-volume box set on November 6, 2012. The manga was also licensed in Australia by Madman Entertainment, in Finland by Sangatsu Manga, in France by Glénat, in Spain by Planeta DeAgostini, in Italy by Panini Comics under its Planet Manga imprint, in the Netherlands by Glénat Benelux, in Germany by Carlsen Verlag, in Korea by Haksan Culture Company, in Taiwan by Taiwan Tohan and in Brazil by Conrad Editora before it ceased after publishing two volumes. Nausicaä of the Valley of