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Thursday, September 16, 2004
More on Nausicaa
Looking through some back issues of The Comics Journal last night I came across a review by Stepan Chapman of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in issue 170. It's entitled "In The Valley of Manga of the Pillbugs". 'Pillbugs' is a reference to the Ohmu, the insects that are at the centre of the story, that do look quite a bit what I call a Potato Bug except that they don’t roll themselves up in a little tiny ball when you pick them up. Although, that may be because they and are a couple of thousands of times bigger.
I was really was hoping to read some critical analysis, and the review didn’t really hit the spot in that regard, but it's an enthusiastic summary of the themes, setting, and politics of the story, which by this point (1994) was up to 700 pages but still incomplete. I did come across what might be criticism in the final few paragraphs of the review: It must be admitted that characters in mythic fairy tales have lots of mythic resonance but very little depth. In this one, we have a cute kid (telepathic), a wise old monk (mummified), a gleefully merciless emperor (reconstituted), et cetera, et cetera. Probably the only characters who are neither black nor white are bitch-warrior Kushana and her aide-de-camp, Kurotawa. Kushana is hell on her enemies and hates her family’s guts, but she's fiercely loyal to "her" fighting men. Kurotowa is a delightful blackguard who prides himself on being an opportunistic shit, but sometimes catches himself behaving unselfishly and has to stop and get a grip.
I like the Kurotawa/Kushana combo too.
One of the main reservations I have about Nausicaa is that it began really well, but as it progressed and Miyazaki butted up against plot obstacles, his solution often seemed to be to introduce a new character. This gets kind of confusing and clumsy from a story structure point of view. Granted, he was probably doing this because he’d written most of his other characters into corners, but the result is that very important characters, that have never been previously been mentioned, keep popping up. This seems strange considering it’s getting close to the end of the story. Isn't there some kind of rule about that? Something along the lines of, "Don't duplicate character elements if you can combine several in one"?
An example is the young girl, Tepa, blown in to Nausicaa’s valley by the wind of the Daikaisho (a kind of global environmental cleansing) in Volume 6. She wants to be a wind rider, shares much of the spirit of Nausicaa and seems specifically designed to fill her shoes after she’s gone. This automatically made me think a. that something bad would be happening to Nausicaa in the last issue and b. that Miyazaki still wanted to have a happy ending of sorts by having a replacement. If I'm right, then the plotting maneuver is too obvious. There were several young characters rescued by Princess Nausicaa earlier in the story that could have served this purpose.
I know this is meant to be an epic story, but I’ve still got close to 200 pages to go, and I'm running out of steam. My feeling is that it might have had more impact if it had ended somewhere around issue 5. But my predictions could be wrong, or if right, the ending may compensate for what might ultimately be a small weakness.
Also of note, Christopher Butcher has posted a review of the first volume of Nausicaa that he wrote for AnimePlay magazine.
posted by Alan
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1:29 PM
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