Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Volume 7 »

Hayao Miyazaki was a budding filmmaker in 1982 when he agreed to collaborate on a project with the popular Japanese anime magazine Animage. This was Nausicaa, which would make Miyazaki's reputation as much as his 11 films and TV shows. Set in the far future, Nausicaa visualizes an Earth radically changed by ecological disaster. Strange human kingdoms survive at the edge of the Sea of Corruption, a poisonous fungal forest. Nausicaa, a gentle young princess, has a telepathic bond with the giant mutated insects of this dystopia. Her task is to negotiate peace between kingdoms battling over the last of the world's precious natural resources. Nausicaa took Miyazaki 12 years to create, in part because he worked with few or no assistants, doing both the writing and drawing using a meticulously detailed style that critics have compared to the work of the French artist Moebius.