Rating: 
Summary: The best Japanese comic I have ever read
Review: Although familiar with the animated film, "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," I had never before read the original comic series on which the film was based. In fact, Nausicaa, while good, had never been amongst my favorite Miyazaki films. Now that I have read the first volume of the Nausicaa comic, I am a full blown Nausicaa junky. Wow! This is such an amazing comic! There is so much more room to flesh out the characters and the plots of the film. There is a lot going on here, and some tough issues are being tackled. The comic is intelligent and yet captivating and entertaining. A rare achievement in comics. Miyazaki is one of the master storytellers of all times, and this series may be one of his crowning achievements. I am sure the remaining volumes will live up to my now-high expectations. I wish I knew a young girl that I could pass down "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" too. I think it is one of those books that could make quite an impression on a young persons life. It sure made an impression on this adult.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: Back in 95 I watched the poorly translated American version of Nausicaa, entitled "Warriors of the Wind" At the time I believed this to be the only version in existence and was quite happy with it. Time went by and I had entered into college, where a fellow student brought up Nausicaa. "Nausicaa?" I asked, "what's that?" And he showed me, and to my disbelief it was a 4 book series based on the anime I watched so long ago. He let me borrow his four graphic novels, and on that day I had read them from page 1 to 1050. These books are something special. A world as multi layered, beautifully realized, and wonderfully imagined as Tolkien's Lord of the rings. I've read these books countless times, and each time the drawn images on the page breathe with life like no other comic I've ever read. There are messages here that enlighten us on Ecology, Genetic engineering, Philosophy, Religion, war, life and death. And that's only the tip of the ice berg. Miyazaki has crafted a world that seems alarming real, yet delightfully surreal, and it is here that all of his current films have drawn inspiration, a wonderful inspiration that has inspired thousands and will do so for many years to come. (Now if only they'd make this into a four part movie like LOTR, then I'd be truly happy.)
Rating:
Summary: Probably the best serious work in graphic novel format
Review: From the best known animator outside the US. Miyazaki is never a comic artist, in fact, Nausicaa is his only work in graphic novel format. While the backdrop of the story, a post-appocolyptic portrayal of a world very much like our own but not quite exactly earth, is hardly original, Miyazaki has a lot of surprises in store for his readers. I don't want to spoil the fun for any potential readers. Nevertheless, this is something I can say. Nausicaa is a serious science fiction work, with very rich and engrossing details. The characters are well developed and very likable in ways you won't find in many post-appocolyptic stories. Despite a rather moody background, the story is not as dark as you might expect from a book of this type. Finally, true to his origin, Miyazaki delivers top quality art in his books.
Rating:
Summary: Nausicaa cries out to become an anime series.
Review: Hayao Miyazaki lent his drawing talent, and extraordinary eye for detail and storytelling to this epic. A cautionary tale of an all too possible future, focuses on what ignorance, neglect, and exploitation of the environment may cause. The scope of this tale could easily translate into a season or two, of quality anime in Japan. It would be hard to turn down such a Miyazaki backed project, given his track record. Unfortunately, his production company specialized in movies, and not anime series. A movie of Nausicaa was made, and the Japanese version is considered a classic. The film however, condensed too much of the story that existed, and other parts had not even been completed as yet in the manga. It would be nice one day to present the entire epic in anime form. Like many long epics, this story follows the classic line of what is called, the "Hero's Journey". Nausicaa a young girl with a kind, determined heart, and a sense of destiny, is the hero. Like most tales of such scope, the hero's call to action, must be precipitated by dire events. The hero is not usually someone who sees him or herself in that role. Like Nausacaa's character, they possess extraordinary characteristics, which are brought to the surface by need or tragedy. Along the way, (Journey) the hero, (heroine in this case) is changed by his/her accomplishments. This graphic novel set is unlike any other that I own. I can read through a 200-page Ranma 1/2 book in an hour. Many others, whether humor or action, rarely take more that an hour and a half. They are entertaining for sure, but I rarely feel like I've read any real literature. Nausicaa is different, I found that to follow, and enjoy the story, reading 20-30 pages at a sitting was quite fulfilling. The depth of story, detail of the art, inspired my imagination, and I wanted to take a break to digest what I'd read. It took me six months, of off and on reading to complete the four volumes, "Perfect Collection". I think the author of the graphic novels forward was correct in saying, this is considered to be the greatest graphic novel ever written. This is definitely not for the casual comic book reader. If you want to see big booms, and bangs on every page, pass these books on by. Better yet check out the free pages Amazon.com has posted and determine if you like what you see. You'll rarely find a better value than this, in compiled manga collections.
Rating:
Summary: World-Class Science Fiction
Review: Hayao Miyazaki's four-volume NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
is a science-fiction epic that takes place on Earth in the
distant future. To outline what the story is about, it is
simplest to relate it in epic form. In the distant future, humans acquired great powers, learning
to manipulate the genetics of lifeforms and building great
cities. In the end, this great human civilization fell
from pollution and war in a final conflict, the "Seven Days
Of Fire", where huge war machines known as "warrior gods"
walked the Earth, spreading destruction before them. Humanity survived -- just barely. In the new world that arose
from the ashes of the old, humans survive on the fringes,
reduced to a more-or-less medieval level of technology,
leveraging off the tools and knowledge of the lost civilization
of the past wherever possible. Much of the land is covered by a "Sea of Corruption", a realm
of toxic fungal growths that would quickly kill an unprotected
human, and renders the land uninhabitable. It is the doman of
great insects, particularly the "Ohmu", intelligent and
telepathic creatures something like huge pill bugs. As the story opens, one of the great powers (such as exist
in a ruined world), the Torukmenian Empire, goes to war with
the other, the Dorok Principalities, which is dominated by
priest-kings. The Torukmenian Empire is allied with a number
of "Autonomous States", small and inconsequential
in themselves, and the Torukmenian Emperor calls
them to their obligation to support him in the war. The "Valley Of The Wind" is one of the Autonomous States, and
its emerging leader is a teenaged girl named Nausicaa. The
new war will soon threaten to pry loose humanity's weak
grip on survival and bring final extinction. The important role
Nausicaa plays is revealed in this story. * NAUSICAA has been compared to traditional fantasy epics such
as THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It does have a similar sweep and
scope, but it is entirely different in tone, being much more
a work of science fiction than fantasy, and in its own way
far more gritty and realistic. In some ways it compares to
DUNE, with a messianic hero(ine) in a world hostile to humans. Not being much of a DUNE fan myself, I would have to judge
NAUSICAA superior, and in fact it is not merely an outstanding
work of manga, but an outstanding SF work by any standards.
It is a great, grand, powerful story, vivid and intelligent
in its construction, that can completely seize the reader's
imagination. NAUSICAA is well plotted, well written, well illustrated,
and the characters are convincing. There are no real villains.
Even the Torukmenian Emperor, a venomous tyrant who terrorizes
his own children, is shown to be a person with some vision
and enormous courage. It is also stylistically original, somehow more reminiscent of
SF comics and stories of the 1930s than of conventional
manga and anime, and crammed with detail. The society of
this distant future Earth uses a mix of technologies, soldiers
fighting with spears alongside machine guns. The primary
means of transport are aircraft that resemble flying galleons,
powered by engines left over from the Seven Days of Fire that
still remain perfectly operational. Warriors ride giant birds
that were created by the old civilization, resembling the "Terror
Birds" that lived in South America before the Ice Ages. All
this may sound like a haphazard hodgepodge, but it does hang
together well, and successfully gives an impression of a society
scavenging whatever it can to get by. One warning is that this is not an easy book to read. It
covers so much territory and has so many characters (some of
whom resemble each other) that it is very difficult to keep
it all straight on the first reading, and it takes at least
two (for me, three) readings to fit all the pieces together.
I have loaned to friends who are fantasy-SF fans and they have
sometimes found it to simply be too much work. Another warning is that it is also grimly serious. The war
between the Torukmenian Empire and the Dorok Principalities is
to the knife, and sometimes the narrative seems to match
histories of Hitler's campaign against Stalinist Russia
for sheer desperation and brutality. * Those who have seen Miyazaki's movie PRINCESS MONONOKE and
liked it will almost certainly like NAUSICAA, since the two
works have considerable stylistic similarity, some similarity in
plot and characters, and a great similarity in underlying
mindset as something of environmental parables. Some have complained that the similarities are so close that
it seems Miyazaki is plagiarizing himself. I wouldn't agree
with that, and it's hard to complain about getting
two servings of the best instead of just one.
Rating:
Summary: not comic, this is art.
Review: I am surprised that USA people watch this comic series in addition to the same title movie. As you know, Naushika's story don't finish to the movie. The truth story start from reading this comic. Even if Japanase read them, the story is a little difficult, but there are more wondeful things than the minus point.
For instance, the drawing ways. Generally comic(Japanese MANGA) is simple drawing. But the comic is very detailed drawing. They is like art rather than comic. And in addition to the wonderful drawing,the expression of the character's face is very excellent, for instance joy, sarrow, longing, anger... Mr. Miyazaki can write their expressions very well. There are writers that can write comics very well in the world, but there will not are writers that can write their expressions of face very well. If there are people that was moved when watched the movie, absolutely we recommend this comis..art series. You will not waste your money by buying this arts series. I am sorry for my poor English.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking...
Review: I don't normally read manga that involves war, but this was an exception. I read the summary and thought that I would like it. Well, I was right. I didn't just like it, I LOVED it! This story was captivating. I loved the art and I didn't even mind the gory parts. This series is about a Princess named Nausicaa. She goes off to try to find out what is happening to the Sea of Corruption. She meets many people along the way that either help her, want to destroy her; or wanted to destroy her but when they finally meet her, gets captivated by her. I think she is everything a Princess should be. This storyline might be a little hard to follow for some people. It's a good idea to read the books one after another, so you don't forget anything that's happened. There are many twists in the plot. I am looking forward to the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: The (second) translator's perspective
Review: I translated the last 3/7 of this series, and in nine years of translating about 5000 pages of manga, this was the best and most important title I worked on. If you go way back to the earliest reviews here (1998), you'll find some very nice comments by Toren Smith about my translation, but I must say Toren and Dana's was a hard act to follow. They did an excellent job on the first 4/7, and my biggest challenge was to maintain both their tone and their level of quality. I give it four stars here only because I'm a bit disturbed by the way fans treat this work as a sacred text, flawless and beyond criticism. It is a great work, but, no, it is not the Lord of the Rings. Tolkein spent his entire life creating the world of Middle Earth (and not doing much else, itseems, other than teaching linguistics). For Miyazaki, the Nausicaa manga was a side project he worked on in between his many brilliant animated films. There were often long breaks, and many fans feared he would never finish it. As a result, yes, there is some inconsistency in tone and even theme. But the story only gets better and better as Miyazaki matures and his thinking becomes more nuanced and complex. The Nausicaa we see here in the later volumes is not the two-dimensional messiah figure of Miyazaki's (excellent) 1983 animated film of the same name. She is wracked by doubts, is sometimes ready to give up, and even experiences what might be a nervous breakdown. But what I want to talk about here is the experience of translating Nausicaa and the almost religious devotion of non-Japanese fans to this work. I never got so much e-mail about anything else I ever translated. For example, one time I had to translate an episode while I was on the road, and I didn't have the previous translations with me. A character appeared who hadn't appeared since the first volume, and I couldn't remember how Toren and Dana had transliterated her name, so I took my best shot and asked the editor to check for consistency. The editor didn't check, and as it turned out I had transliterated it differently (I think they had named her "Ketcha" and I had named her "Kecha," or something like that.) Wow! When the episode was published, fans went ballistic! What was more surreal, though, was the fact that fans were relying to a great extent on a so-called "fan translation" of the animated movie for reference. This unauthorized "translation" is laughably bad, and was done by a person who, although prolific, is utterly unqualified to translate Japanese. But this self-appointed translator has (or at least had) an almost god-like status among fans, and I would get letters complaining that I had "mistranslated" a line, because my translation differed from that of the unauthorized translation. In other words, the gross mistranslations of the "fan-subber" had become canonical, even where they completely reversed the meaning of the original! Today I am an associate professor in Japan's first and only Department of Comic Art, at Kyoto Seika University. I teach about the history and sociocultural aspects of manga and comics from around the world to some of the most talented aspiring manga artists in Japan. (Every year, about 400 applicants vie for 40 openings in our program.) You could say that I have dedicated my life to preaching the gospel of sequential art, and I mean that only half-jokingly. So I think I'm qualified to say this. Take a deep breath now. Step back, and look at things in perspective. This is a great manga. No, it's a great comic, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. But it is not the Bible. It is not the Koran. It is not the Talmud, or the Lotus Sutra. It's the side project of a man who considers himself foremost an animator, and who creates comics almost as a hobby. There are actually many manga that are arguably better than this (though this may be the best ever translated into English). Uncritical worship will only make prospective readers skeptical. Four stars is probably good enough, and four stars is nothing to sneeze at.
Rating:
Summary: only Manga book i read
Review: I'm japanese and I'll tell you that Japan is flooded with comic books also known as Manga.Threre are hundreds of weekly all comic magazines published and almost EVERYBODY is into some sort of those things. And I'm not. I can't stand reading and gazing at drawings at same time, it almost seemed like impposible to me. Until I saw this. I saw the animated film version of the same title and was blown away! I had to read the Manga version. The story is deep. There is a lot more going on here than in the movie. Way more complicated, and made me cry so many times. You won't understand in 1 read. I've read it like a thousand and one times, but every time you read it you find more to it. Another message here, different meanings there.....
Mr. Miyazaki took like 16 or so years to complete this. It's a masterpiece. only 1 thing is towards the end it feels like he rushed himself to end it, like very anxious to finish it and get it over with.It could've been 50 more pages to have it ended more dramatically. But well it might've taken him another 3 years for that so.... that was enough for him I guess. Anyway...
I think it's great and this is the only manga book I own and love.
Rating:
Summary: More Than A Children's Book
Review: Just like LOTR, children love it, but until they grow well into their adulthood, they will not be able to fully comprehend the essence of the story.
Children, both boys and girls, will love the major characters in "Nausicaa", because children can find all they wish to be in these characters, but most of them would be puzzled (or troubled!) by the development of the story. An exceptionally smart kid may be able to guess some of Miyazaki's plan of the story before he/she reaches Vol. 7, but I dare to bet, he/she will not accept that plan until he/she reaches 30.
This is a great gift to children. They will thank you many, many years later.
|
