Nausicaa: Manga Review (7/30/2022)

 Nausicaa is a masterpiece. and it might just better than anything else Miyazaki has ever created, Studio Ghibli movies included.

Most people finding this manga will have already watched the movie, as I have, so lets just get the differences between the manga and the movie out of the way first:

Firstly, the movie is actually the adaptation of the manga, and not the other way around. Furthermore, compared to the movie, the manga encompasses a longer, more complete story, and frankly it is just a higher quality in general.

I admit I am biased because I enjoy reading much more than I enjoy watching, but I believe a lot is gained from consuming Nausicaa in the manga medium. The movie is cool, sure, but the manga contains far greater depth that any movie could ever hope to achieve. The movie only encompasses the first two volumes of the manga, and it also has a completely separate ending.

When I talk about the "depth" that the manga has compared to the movie, I mean that because Miyazaki wasn't constrained as much while drawing the manga, he was able to create a work exactly as he envisioned it, without any compromises. The movie could only cover around two hours of screen time, but with the seven volumes of the manga, Miyazaki has all the room he needs to explore every inch of the story that he envisioned. It's because of this that the manga carries with it a sense of completeness, like it accomplished exactly what Miyazaki wanted to do.

That being said, even though this story a certified classic, I don't think that I got a level of enjoyment from this manga that equaled its quality. In other words, although I appreciate the quality of the manga, I didn't actually enjoy this manga as much. I think that this was more to do with my personal taste just not matching up with what Miyazaki wanted to create.

I honestly didn't really like how the story had this depressing tone permeating throughout every volume. I think a healthy dose of depression is almost essential for any great manga, but this story just beats you over and over in the head with the message of "humans are evil and a cancer to nature." Things just die and die and humans do terrible things over and over again and it got tiring for me.

As a result of this, Nausicaa is not the most bingeable manga. I personally love binging manga and finishing things pretty fast, but this manga just had to be digested slowly, with every volume needing its due time to digest.


***Starting now, I will be discussing some parts of the story that may contain spoilers, so skip this if you are worried about that***

There are also a few parts of the manga that just made me uncomfortable. I didn't really like how all the people just started worshipping Nausicaa. It was probably symbolic or something, but it just made me feel kind of weird. There's also a wide prevalence of the Miyazaki style/mentality, which is basically just "war is bad, environmental damage sucks, and flying machines are cool." It's cool at first, but at some point halfway through the story I got pretty tired of just how often Miyazaki would hit you with the "war bad" message.

Towards the end, I think I got a bit burnt out by the manga, and I just did not agree with the ending. I thought that it was a reversal of Nausicaa's character, because in the end she basically decides to just kill off a bunch of unborn people who were supposed to be the people who repopulate the earth after it was pure again. I also personally didn't like that Nausicaa destroyed the crypt, although I guess it makes sense as overall commentary stating that some knowledge should never be gained (I'm pretty sure this was a metaphor for nuclear warfare). Just to be clear, these aren't things that I would actually want to change in the story, it's just that I personally didn't like some parts of the story because I can see a message that Miyazaki is trying to send, and sometimes I wouldn't agree with the message.

***spoilers end***


tl;dr Nausicaa is a masterpiece, but that doesn't mean that it will be the most enjoyable manga to read. Definitely read this if you are a fan of manga in general, and I recommend it even more if you are a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, or if you like depressing media.

To me, this manga isn't a 10/10, just based off of my personal criteria where I think a manga has to be both exceptional in both quality and enjoyment. Nausicaa definitely hits the mark quality wise, but enjoyment wise, it just wasn't really there for me. Because of this, I'm giving it an 8/10 overall.

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