Tsao- Nausicaa

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Nausicaa is another one of Miyazaki's films that could fall on my list of favorites. It is a beautiful story about a young girl, Nausicaa, who has a natural love for nature and everything its got to offer- even the insects. Nausicaa is the only human in her village that loves the insects from the forests, and begs her father to not kill them and to save them since she was a little girl. She has a secret garden that harbours all of the "poisonous" plants and the pollen that they sprout, and she explains to her sensei that these plants are not poisonous. What makes them poisonous is the soil, which has been polluted by humans, and everyone has come to believe that the wastelands just have plants that are poisonous by nature.

There are many similarities between this movie and Princess Mononoke, except this movie is a lot more passive and has a much happier ending than Princess Mononoke does. San is much more violent than Nausicaa, but Nausicaa would, just like San, do anything to protect her own kind. Another similarity is that both antagonist/villains in both movies, lady Eboshi and Princess Kushana, come for similar intentions and end up threatening the fate of a perfectly healthy group of people. But in the end, someone with courage, and knowledge of what it really means to be able to coexist and live together with nature comes out to save both humanity and nature.

Nausicaa is loved by everybody and is a great heroine to her valley of the wind. The curse from princess mononoke can be seen in Nausicaa when Nausicaa's father was murdered by the soildiers. Her hatred and anger gave her power and blinded her , leading her to kill a room full of men within seconds. This hatred / curse is reoccurring in Miyazaki's movies, maybe to make the point that hatred can only drive us into a ditch. In these cases, "fighting fire with fire" is typically the method used, but definitely the route to disaster.

The happy ending in Nausicaa is so joyful and happy that it is almost impossible for anybody to not smile or jerk a tear as they watch and progress with the storyline. People do awful things, and as humans it leads to a bigger question: is what we are doing okay? Our generation of people have neglected the effects of our actions, and many of these are major contributors to global warming and other natural disasters that are increasing as time goes by. If our generation of kids does not take action to really look at how we are now, we will surely be paying the price in our near future.