Sensual Phrase, Volume 4

Rating:
Summary: Anyone who love Japanese anime, must read!
Review: My favorite Miyazaki movie, "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind"! Many people are saying that Nausicaa is similer to "The Lord of the Rings". I don't agree at all (Hey, I love The Lord of the Rings too by the way! Did everyone like Return of the King? I thought that was the best out of 3 movies). Nausicaa has storonger message for environmental disruption more than fellowship.
For this movie, Nausicaa, I recommend you to see movie first. Then you should read books because books go much deeper than movie. Nausicaa tries to stop other warring nations from destroying themselves and from destroying the only means by which their world can be saved from the spread of polluted wastelands.
Plus please read books over and over again. You won't get message right away. It's pretty complecated.
It might be too complecated for children. However, it does not means they should not read. They will feel diffarent and see more in this story when they grown up.

As an additional info., "My Neighbor Totoro", "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "Princess Mononoke" are something which you should consider to just enjoy fantasy world.
I heard from many people didn't like "Spirited Away".
I love Miyazaki movie and normaly, I can get Miyazaki message from the movie easily but for this one, I couldn't get much message right away. So! I personally suggest to watch more than once. I realized later, it had meaning everywhere how much we pollute our planet and make us think there is something we can do for it. You won't realize that if you don't pay attention enough (just like what I did (...).

Rating:
Summary: Children's version of story a little over children's heads
Review: This english-language, hard-bound edition (along with a companion vol. 2) sets cels of Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 movie "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind" against big-type text to create a children's book of the story. It's a lovely and very rare keepsake, and if you find it, it's something you'll want for your kids if only to give them a striking alternative to the usual Disney industrialisms and spineless child-psychologist-approved piffle.

One snag though: the Nausicaä story is very involved and somewhat difficult to follow, with a huge cast and many changes of scene. It involves a young, supernaturally-aware, pacifist warrior-princess in a feudal, post-environmental-apocalypse future when nature is trying to annihilate mankind in an effort to cleanse itself, and mankind's wars are only accelerating that process. The dust jacket suggests the book is actually meant for children 12-18, which I find problematic -- they're old enough at that age to follow the story, but probably too old to accept the children's-book format. Maybe the ideal reader is a 7- or 8-year-old wise beyond his or her years.

The movie that this book is adapated from has only been shown a few times in its entirety in English. An 80's adaptation by Roger Corman called "Warriors of the Wind" hacked over a half-hour of story and character development and is widely regarded as one of the worst pieces of anime butchery ever. Those who've read the manga will also notice the movie (and thus this book) make radical changes in details and plot, if not in theme -- the original story ran about 1,000 pages was years away from completion when the movie was made.

Tokuma produced similar books for the Miyazaki movies "Laputa Castle in the Sky", "My Neighbor Totoro", and "Kiki's Delivery Service".

Rating:
Summary: An opinion from a Japanese reader
Review: Well, I have only read Japanese edition of the Nausicaa and don't know whether the English version is the same. But I would suppose they are the same since the cover drawing shown on AMAZON is identical to that of the Japanese edition.

While most Japanese anime are produced based on an original manga that was published, successfully, in a manga journal, the animes produced by Miyazaki Hayao are usually original and not based on a precedent manga. Miyazaki himself wrote somewhere that he gave up the career as a manga writer and focused on anime production. He is recognized in Japan as a great anime producer, of course, but not as a manga writer. Nausicaa is the only exception, with a good reason.

If you are familar with the modern manga drawings of, say, Otomo Katsuhiro, you cannot fail to recognize that the drawings of Miyazaki lack some strength the serious Japanese manga have achieved, looking rather like rough sketches or something. There is an essay on Nausicaa by Miyazaki himself in the Japanese edition, which I hope the American publisher has retained in the English edition. There, he said that he was urged and urged to publish the manga version of Nausicaa (this book) and finally forced to do that.

Mr. Miyazaki is known as an outspoken person. Then, what is this modesty about? Nothing, except that he does not want to admit that he could not fully express the notion in the Nausicaa in an anime and was forced to publish it in a manga format. OK, it's well done.