Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 215: Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicäa

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

By patron request, Wes Fenlon and Henry Gilbert join Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey go a little buggy as they explore the history and influence of Hayao Miyazaki's manga and anime classic Nausicäa of the Valley of Wind

This week in Retronauts, this one goes out to all the small mothers out there. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a thrilling, dazzling, dazzling, spectacular episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And I'm in a box with some cool people. Who are these cool people this week? Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I think Nausica is Coolica.

I'm not going to say Awesomeica. I'm thinking outside the box today. All right. Who's the God Warrior over in the corner? Henry Gilbert and calm down. Calm down. Okay, calm down. And I'm West Friendlin from PC Gamer.

I wear my blue tunic, especially for in honor of Nausica today. It better be soaked in Omu blood. This episode was prophesied. It was prophesied by the request of patron Benjamin Swan, who was even cooler than the rest of us in this room because he said, make an episode about Nausica. And my first thought was, well, there aren't really any games about Nausica. So what does that have to do with Retronauts? And then I said, who the hell cares? Let's just talk about it anyway because someone's paying us to do it.

Yes, you two can request an episode topic if you go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. and support us at the request and episode level. And that would be pretty awesome of you. But in the meantime, we are recording for Benjamin Swamp. So, Benjamin, this one goes out to you. I guess you are a small lover. All right, so this is one of those episodes of Retronauts where we aren't going to really talk about games that much. But I do think that this topic is germane to Retronauts because it is, one, an old thing.

And also because I feel like Noseka's had a tremendous impact on Japanese kind of pop and nerd culture, but especially video games. And if you have played a lot of Japanese games, you have probably seen things that when you watch Nowsika think, oh, that seems really familiar, even though I've never seen this before. And that's because this was a huge, huge media success in Japan back in the 80s and was very influential. And I don't know if it's still the case, but until, you know, very recently, whenever, you know,

anime magazines and pop culture magazines would have their polls of readers' favorite female characters, Nausica, always came in up at the top. And personally, I don't get that based on the movie. I'm not a huge fan of the anime, Nausica, but I love the manga. Now, did this come because you had read the manga before you saw the movie, or just retroactively you went, there's so much more in the manga? No, it's because I discovered the manga first. I was picking up the trade paperbacks and the comics, the floppies, as Viz was localizing them in the 90s. And the anime, I think, took a lot longer to come over. I did not watch Warriors of the Wind because I don't hate myself like that.

But, yeah, so by the time the anime came out, I was like, man, this is just like a little snippet of the real story. And they've changed a lot of the characterization, and I'm just not a huge fan of it. And that was, you know, I think inevitable because this is one of those things like Evangelion or Akira where the manga was, you know, kind of successful. And very early in its, you know, the run of the comic, they said, let's do a movie on it. And so the manga debuted in 1982 and ran until 1994. It took a long time for Miyazaki to create it because this was, something he created himself by hand and pencil, painstakingly. It's a beautiful, beautiful manga.

Do you know if he had any assistants who worked on it with it? I do not know, and I'm not going to pretend to. It looks so much like his style. It feels like every line is his line. He likes punishing himself with work so much, I would doubt, that he had an assistant. Yeah, I read several interviews with him from the time. Or are we going to get into that later, sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to continue giving the context here, which is that the manga,

debuted in 1982, concluded in 1994, but the anime came along in 1984. So the manga was, you know, still like in its pupil form. It was still, you know, like, as a god warrior, it hadn't even, you know, fully formed its flesh yet. It was still just like a throbbing ball at that point in its development cycle. So, yeah, the, the anime kind of ends very early in the story. And there's a whole lot to the story, like even more so than Akira, which kind of the, the, The movie ends like halfway through the actual story, but this ends like pretty much, you know, midway through volume two of seven. It's kind of like act one of the story. Yeah, pretty much.

But, you know, they change up stuff so much that it's pretty much, well, they couldn't really continue telling the story because they did make some pretty big story changes. So it has to be kind of this complete thing. But I realize that I'm probably in the minority of people who read, you know, the full manga before. seeing the movies. So, you know, I can't come at it with the perspective of someone, you know, who had never seen or never read the source material. So I have to assume that, you know, people who watched the anime first had a very different experience than me. So I'm curious if that describes you guys. Yes. Yeah. I, uh, I knew of the Viz floppies because I was reading Ron Malone half and other Viz comics, which were like trying to make, weekly chapters of manga work as a monthly published comic. It doesn't really work. Well, they would do two chapters per monthly comics.

So I was running at half the speed of the Japanese publication. But that worked out in Nausica's favor because Miyazaki took his time. Yeah, well, and so, but I knew, I knew it was a big deal, but I, the limited availability of Jibli films in America up until the late 90s made it. So I didn't really experience Nazica. And then also when the non-sika anime finally was released in America, that was when the manga was sort of out of print. It kind of went in and out of print. And so I never read the manga until the super-duper fancy special edition from a few years ago.

Yeah, that is, I feel like anyone who loves Miyazaki's work or Jeeply films needs to buy the manga. Even if you don't necessarily like the directions that the manga goes, it's that, that volume, that two-volume, hardcover set that's oversized, it is, it's so beautiful. It's such a great collection. And I love both in their own way as their own things. And maybe I would feel different if I had read the manga first and then saw the anime as like this compromise of an adaptation. But I love them both. Yeah, the movie to me really feels like I love the story, the themes of it that obviously are explored much, much more deeply in the

the manga, but I think the most striking thing about the movie is, it's just, like, it is anesthetic. Like, just the look and feel of that movie and the world is so vivid. And just, like, I talked about the color blue. Like, that is such an important part of Nassica's character and the look and, like, the whole, there's a whole backstory she has of being the chosen one and all this stuff. And, like, the color is a primary part of that. And characters just have to say out loud, she's very, oh, she's very.

She's bluer than the Omoo blood. Yeah, you know, you get it like on the cover of the manga, but you don't get it, you know, page by page. And there's so much in that movie that feels like it inspired a generation of style. Color plays a big part in the story, and that makes it difficult in the manga, which is, you know, not even black and white. It's like gray and white. It's all drawn, like I said, in pencil, and it's very delicate. But, you know, like in addition to Nausica's blue tunic, which and the golden feelers of the, the omelior. Also, the color of their eyes denotes the giant insects, like what their mood is.

When they're blue, they're passive and docile. But when they turn red, then they're going to wreck shit. Yeah. Time to fight. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of kind of expository texts saying, oh, their eyes are red, which they don't have to do in the cartoon because there you go. They're red. I only just saw this movie this morning.

Really? Bob, you're such, you're like one of the ones. of the biggest weeps here. I'm a fraud, number one. How has this happened? I'm a fraud. I've been uncovered as a fraud. No, I feel like this seemed like the least essential movie of the Jibli canon or the

Miyazaki canon to see. Really? It seemed like it was posited as that. And I also think that Disney really dragged their feet on releasing this one. It was like 2006 or something. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry, Henry.

Oh, no, I think it was four. I think the DVD was four. They got access to the entire catalog when the, contract was signed, but I feel like they were just like, do we have to do this one? And I mean, that's why I didn't ever see it, because I think I just came out too late.

And it's surprisingly hard to get now. I was in Canada before this trip, and I was like, I have to watch this for retronauts, and I really want to. The only way to get it is to find the DVD was released on in 2004. I don't think there's a Bluery release outside of the, that Miyazaki

collection that's out of print in like $800. It is a very hard movie to watch. I thought I had it on Blu-ray. Disney did put out a separate Blu-ray for it. In like 2012 or so. I mean, it was a limited print run for sure. But you can't get these digitally, which is a total shame. I mean, Miyazaki's not, he'll be dead before

they release it digitally. Like, that's not happening as long as he's around. We'll be up to our necks in Jibbley movies. But yeah, I never saw this. And I wanted to read the manga, but it was always like too expensive. It was like a you know, it was a prestige manga thing. So the books would be bigger and they'd be like $16 instead of $9. So

So this is a really new experience for me. But I am aware of the story and the characters and everything like that. And, of course, the impact on the game is immediate as soon you start watching it. Like, oh, this is Final Fantasy. That's it. That's all you really need to know. Yep, pretty much. Yeah, that's actually really surprising, Bob.

I'm curious who posited to you that it's the least essential of the Miyazaki movies because I feel like it's the foundational movie. I feel like this is kind of like the cornerstone of his cinematic empire. I think it was just pedants on the Internet in the late 90s, early 2000s that were like, Well, it's actually, it's a top craft movie, and it's not jibbley and all that crap. It's got the jibly logo on front of it now. It's packaged as a jibly film. I mean, I think those conversations are now. They've been overturned.

But back in the day. Castle in the Sky is the least essential. All of his directed ones, I'd say, oh, what happened? Nani. But still worth watching, I would say. Yeah, no, they're all worth watching. I'm not saying that. I feel like, yeah, I feel like of all of his movies, those two are like the cornerstones.

I mean, Castle in the Sky is basically. is basically like, that's pretty much the Ghibli Museum right there. It's just like come visit the castle in the sky, meet the mossy robots. I almost brought my little statue of the mothy robot with me. Look, I have seven statues of that guy. This is a contest.

I would argue, Henry, uh, Panyo, take a hike. Oh, actually, I've had enough of your shit. The least essential. That are... It's a fun movie for babies, but it's no classic. Something that struck me when I first watched NOSCA is I hadn't, I saw Princess Mananoke and Spirit Away well before I

saw Nasca. And Princess Mononoke was at the time, like, probably my favorite movie, I don't know, for a few years, my favorite anime. Just the art is incredible. But later watching Naska and then rewatching it as I've gotten older, like, I feel like in a lot of ways Monanoque is just sort of a retread. It's a retread. It's a retread of that movie, you know, from some different perspectives and some other themes coming in. But it's very similar in its man, human versus nature, kind of. balance and what it has to say about that. Well, I think that's a really interesting thing about experiencing Miyazaki in a non-chronological way as Americans, because in Japan, they, you know, in other regions, they got to experience his stuff as it comes out. But when we start with Monanoque, which was the first feature-linked Jibli film, no, Totoro then Monanoque, then when you go back and see themes that he was returning to at Monanoque, but you saw them the first time in Monanooga, or in Spirit. it away, it confuses you a bit more. And especially, like, last year, I took it upon myself to finally watch all a future boy Conan, which I'd never seen before. It also has very many of the same themes that Nazica touches on, too.

Like, he's, especially, like, visually, there's multiple moments in the anime of Nazica that feel taken directly from what he did in Conan as well in 78. So it's, I mean, as an artist, he's really fascinating. by this concept, the concepts in this for sure. Yeah. I mean, if you kind of start reading about his career, Nouska itself is taken heavily from a manga that he created in, I think, the 70s called People of the Desert, which even has like similar, not only similar ecological themes and seems very Dune-inspired,

but, I mean, like heavily, heavily Dune-inspired, but there's, like, similar names, like Pejite or Pejit or whatever you want to call it. So he does tend to kind of recycle and regurgitate. I mean, he's very about ecology. So, of course, he recycles. It's just conservation, you know. I would say regurgitate, yeah. No, retread, rework, reiterate.

And I think that's maybe that. That's kind of NOSCA itself, actually, the manga, like the ending that many people may know just from the movie, which is this sort of happy, like, yeah, we're going to live, you know, in harmony with nature and stuff. Sure. isn't how the book ends. Yeah, he really kind of treads back on that and goes, no, that was too neat. That was too clean. Well, it kind of changes the story as it goes.

Yeah, I mean, the movie ends on a climactic, not a climactic, but a pivotal moment in Nausica's journey. Like, I think, you know, cutting it off at that point made a lot of sense because it is sort of like the moment at which she sort of ascends into becoming, you know, the realization of this mythic figure that people have referred. to, and that plays a huge part in the story going forward in the manga, but, you know, I think you just couldn't, you couldn't contain all of the manga in a single movie. There's just no way. Well, it's like the end of her superhero origin story at the end of the first movie. It's just like, well, now Spider-Man is Spider-Man, and he'll keep having adventures, just like Nazegov will keep having adventures. Right, but Spider-Man never, like, doomed humanity to extinction. I'm sure in one universe he did. Probably. Is it a natural order?

Are Marvel zombies his fault? No, no. But in Spider-Man, I'm sorry. I didn't even, I didn't, I didn't, I, I triggered it. Who can't be late for that idea? But yeah, I feel like in a lot of ways, Nausica is, the character is sort of the archetypal Miyazaki female character. Wait, who is this Miyazaki guy? We keep talking about Miyazaki.

What the, who is, who is this, the schmo? It's the grumpiest man you'll ever meet. Really, really is. You know, friend of retronauts, Kyle McLean has met Miyazaki in a very, like, casual setting. He was on, like, a bullet train or something once, and he walked past, like, down the aisle. I feel like this is probably his story to tell, but I'm telling it anyway. He was walking down, down the aisle and, like, just saw Miyazaki sitting there, and he did a double take. I cannot imagine a more dramatic double take in your life.

Right. Yeah. You know, Kyle? No, okay. We're just thinking, like, for anyone who'd be listening to this podcast, pretty much. It was a double take, and I don't, I feel like, you know, he's very good about decorum when it comes to presenting himself in, you know, in, in, in public in Japan. So I feel like he probably didn't have a fan boy moment. Yeah. But apparently Miyazaki kind of noticed and was like, oh, hey, come on over and talk.

I think that's because Kyle is very well dressed. If I was wearing, like, my tootero shirt, like, is that Miyazaki? He would have just like, no. Will you sign my mousy robot statue? Yeah. I think it's a more of a Kyle thing than an everyday experience thing. Probably so. But anyway, apparently he was very genial, very friendly.

I could see him being friendly to fans. Well, that's much to his family members or co-workers or. Yeah, so it's co-workers, it's family members. But also, like, I read a number of interviews last night just to get ready for this. And even him 40 years ago, when people ask him a question, he's like, that's, dumb. That sucks. I don't like that. Like, it's someone asked about, you know, oh, you worked on all these series in the

70s, including one like Dog of Flanders, which is a beloved anime series. And he said, it was a rating success, but I see it is trash. And that's all he said about it. Like, that's it. Wow. Which, so I, and when people, it's like, oh, this, Nossica's like

Horace, the North God movie you did in the 60s, and he's like, I'm embarrassed by that. That was a child making it. I don't even want to think about it. And they're like, well, no, but these themes are similar. He's like, sure, fine. They are. I was like, Jesus. We still haven't actually said who he is, though. Oh, yeah, sorry.

Great artist. Okay, cool. And a great man. So we can give us full name. It's Hayao Miyazaki. And, yeah, he is a director and animator. And Manga Kha, who has been working and active for, I don't know, nearly 60 years. He's getting close to 80.

And he's still Is he currently retired, semi- I think he's in one of his non-retirement phases. Okay. He retired, but was still working on a short, and as anyone could have expected, the short became a full film. He's like, oh, I can't make this a short. It has to be a full film.

Right. It's C.G. It's his first CG feature. He does the rock star thing where he's like, this is my farewell tour, and then a couple years later, he's like, ah, I just got to play more music. So a shorthand, do people still call him the Walt Disney of Japan? Because I always bristled at that. He would be the Walt Disney of Japan if Walt Disney quit.

after, sorry, I feel like he's not racist enough. No, no, well, I mean, that's for history to decide, Jeremy, but Miyazaki, I feel like he would be the Disney of Japan if he quit after, like, Animal Treasure Island and, like, made theme parks and merchandise and stuff like that. So I feel like that was the shorthand for, like, Americans, like, he's the Walt Disney of Japan. I feel like, you know, those caps they wear in Nausica, like, the soft helmets, those could, those could have been the Davy Crockett hats of Japan.

I guess he missed his opportunity. I just didn't merchandise enough. The Ghibli Amusement Park is this like secret thing in the woods. You have to buy tickets to 18 years in advance and like you can't ever take pictures or tell people what you've seen. I love it. But yes. It's like the opposite of all this team. And it has a short film that you can only see there and it's just random with film.

Well, not random, but it's like you won't know in advance what film you're going to see pretty much. I well, and yeah, Haya Mizaki, if I had to compare it to an American animator, boy, I, That's harder because, like, Disney stopped being an animator after, you know, I mean, he was working on animated films, but he was not directing the films anymore. He, he entrusted and elevated other people, not to say the Miyazaki didn't elevate folks who did things, but he still had a strong hand on his films from 1968 to 2013 with his last feature film. He can't give up that control too much. If I'm going to compare him to one, I'd maybe say Don Bluth. Like, Don Bluth never became, he wasn't a businessman, he was an animator, and he just went from being a low-level animator at Disney stuff in the 60s, up to making his own major directorial debuts in the late 70s or early 80s, like Hayo Miyazaki did as well. Or maybe Richard Williams, except he was actually able to finish his master pieces.

He's so much more successful. He's insanely successful. Was he the Thief and the Cobbler? Yeah, Thief and Cobbler and Roger Rabbit, I believe. Yeah, so one thing that really stands out about Miyazaki is that he has a very, very pronounced point of view that, you know, young people are terrible and human kind is kind of terrible also and that we disrespect nature and that technological innovations are mostly bad. And he's not, I don't think he's that much of a curmudgeon, but it definitely is a point of view. that informs his work. So, you know, like, Spirited Away is very much about sort of a child who is, you know, just kind of like a surly kid listening to music and playing video games and stuff, like, you know,

just lost in America. She's spoiled. In modern technology, she's spoiled. And then she kind of learns, you know, by being taken away to this other world to become self-reliant and to, you know, respect the world around her and it completely changes her. Like, that is, you know, his vision of child rehabilitation is. is fantastical, but it's still, like, kind of grounded in the sense that, you know, things as they are are kind of bad and everyone should feel bad about it. Well, another component of Haya Miyazaki, too, is that he is like an ultra workaholic, a mega workaholic.

And up until he did Nazica, self-identified as a Marxist. Like, he was a big time. He actually said doing Nazca made him no longer a Marxist. He's like, I can't read everything in class anymore. Nazica is a princess. and that doesn't mean you're bad because you're in a higher class. But that's also why, like, even post his Marxist period, the power of work, the empowerment of work and, like, how satisfied characters, every Miyazaki films is like, boy, boy, I'm tired

from working so hard today. I'm so pure and good. Well, there's often, like, a work montage kind of thing, like, like in Spirited Away, where Sin is scrubbing the floors and there's the little, like, spiky guys who are, And the satisfaction of like, boy, I work so hard and now I get to eat my meal and boy, this is nice. Like that's, I mean, that's how he runs his business too if you've seen the behind the scene stuff. Yeah. It's funny.

The one exception to that is Lupin the Third, the Castle of Cagliostro, which is like my favorite of Miyazaki's movies. Oh, it's so good. And it's the one in which no one does any work. They just steal shit. That's funny. I was reading Henry was posting on Twitter an excerpt from Miyazaki interview where he's talking about that movie and he hates that movie too. Falky he hates it. I lost my mind.

It's so good. even though it's not his character or anything. It just, it's beautiful. I mean, he informs that movie, too. Like, even he's working within the, you know, kind of coloring within the outlines of the character who was defined as kind of immoral and selfish and sleazy and, yeah, just terrible. And he softens everyone a lot. It's funny. And, you know, the, the character that Lupin rescues in Castle of Caliostro is Clarice.

and she's very much kind of in that same lineage of Nausica. That's another defining trait that I wanted to talk about with Miyazaki's work is the idea of this kind of like feminine purity almost. I don't know if that's necessarily the way to describe it, but you look at, you know, Clarice, you look at Nausica, you look at a lot of characters, you know, San from Monanoque. The kids from Totero. Yeah, they're...

Kiki, yeah. Yeah. Like these characters are, they have a sort of purity to them. They're young, they're pretty, but, you know, they're both gentle and tough. Like they are, what did I say? Compassionate yet, but not passive. And they have selflessness to them. I was sort of thinking it's like the whole Joss, we didn't think, but without the level of horniness that he brings to it. Or it's like, this woman is strong and she's hot and she can kick your ass and it's also hot. Although, Nousa does take a nude bath in the manga, so you get a little of the horniness. The market needed that page. Yeah, there's no foot fetishism. Yeah. Well, I do think with Miyazaki, I wonder, too, going back to this stuff, like there's very often father figure characters with these women who when you like, you're like, this feels like an aspect to Miyazaki.

Like, even in Nausica, like Yupa is Miyazaki. But he usually, Miyazaki creates a good boy for her to end up with. He's like, I wouldn't be, like he's a father who's saying, I wouldn't be ashamed if you have. ended up with this man, sure. And even Whisper of the Heart, which he like storyboarded but didn't direct like that has a very similar figure. And I think back to like how in Castle Cogliostro, the amazing moment at the end, like so acted perfectly through the animation of Clarice hugs Lupan and he almost hugs her back.

He's like, boy, I could marry you. Like, nope, got to, can't do it. You're just a kid. Gotta go steal some stuff. Yeah, hey, it's back to fun for me. Yeah. See, any other interpretation of Lupo? he would not just hug her, but then, like, grab her butt and then whisk her off and, you know, deflower her and then disappear before she wakes up.

It's funny because, like, the newer Lupon series, which are great, four and five, they definitely use that version of the character. I mean, mainly because they have to. The Miyazaki version or the horny version? The Miyazaki version. It's like the gentleman, honorable, not the cad who murders people and is very rapy. Every iteration of Lupon is kind of different. And so, like, people refer to the different lupons, according to. according to their jacket color, like pink Lupin, green Lupin, blue Lupin.

Yeah. So there definitely is kind of that roving interpretation. But I feel like Miyazaki's vision of Lupan is the most digestible, the most, you know, palatable, I guess who would say? He calmed him down. But I think, yeah, a lot of Americans don't really understand. It took so long for me to get the scope of Miyazaki's career. Like, we, has advertised to us because that's how I think the licensing goes. A lot of Americans think that his career, like, begins with Ghibli, or maybe with Castle

Cogliostro. But, like, he worked for over a decade before Castle Cogliostro. Like, he was one of the top animators. Like, he, his skill was obvious from the beginning at Toy Animation. He just, like, quickly moved up the ranks. Yeah, before Castle of Cagliostro, he had already worked on Lupon. Yeah. He worked on a few episodes.

He was a key animator in the very first series of Lupin, like that early on it. Right, yeah. But there were a few episodes toward the end that he animated, yeah. Which he also thinks suck if he doesn't like that. But, yeah, it's funny because I was contacted by discothec media to do commentary on some Loupon episodes. And I was like, oh, I'd love to do the, you know, like these episodes. And they came back and immediately said, yeah, there's like a list of people who have already requested that. So maybe pick some others.

I think you're probably late on that. No, yeah, he worked like at Toy Animation. He was one of their top guys. And, I mean, he was always shepherded by Sal Takahara, who he calls Pakusan a lot in the book because he's like, he eats a lot. He just munch, much, much. And also the guy who I feel like I mentioned every retrodonts over here,

Yoichi Katabe, too, who was like those three, like they left Toei to then do their own thing like Pandigo Panda, which was like the highest if you want to see you know if you want to see a pre-todoro watch Ponda go Ponda

like that's the same I'm saying in Japanese pronunciation here Panda go panda and yeah and then they also they worked on the Heidi of the Alps

that was their first mega super duper hit and that's I think the success of Heidi of the Alps and after that like the Ann of Green Gables and Dog of Flanders and that earned

them the notoriety and power in the animation industry to really call their own shot. But in interviews I saw like by 80, Mianzaki was like sick of it. He's just like, I don't, I'm just doing Lupon again. I'm not getting to make my own stuff. I dreamed. I wanted to be a manga artist before I became an animation artist. And so he finally started, he started a manga series that he had always dreamed of doing after all that. All right, so now that we've laid the groundwork over the past 40 minutes.

Talk about the actual Nausica thing, that thing that thing that we are here to talk about. Let's start with talking about the anime. Even though the manga came first, I feel like anime has been most people's introduction, and also it was the first of the works to be completed. So this came out in 1984, which means he probably started working on it around the same time as the manga, because, you know, animation takes a while to complete. So the manga began in 80, and then he was able to package the manga with one of the editors who would be. become the, like, boss head producer at Ghibli. He started as an editor on Nozka. Then they sold it to Toe as a distributor and other folks, too.

So, yeah, that was, that's how it began. I see. Well, there you go. So anyway, the anime is a two-hour movie. It's actually a very, very lengthy animated movie. It is. Animated movies usually top out at, like, 80 to 90 minutes. And this one goes a full two hours.

And it's beautifully animated, I mean. if you compare it to something like Akira, no, it doesn't look that just stunningly good. Nothing looks as good as Akira. No, it's not fair. One thing looks as good as that. There are definitely scenes and sequences that you can tell that they really put their hearts into. Like the big conflict at the end with the explosions and the Omo dashing and the god warrior just like melting and disintegrating. That's some amazing animation.

And there's just a beautiful look to it too with like the choices. they make for what is going to look kind of rough and more hand done versus what's going to be really detailed and articulate like you were talking about. I love the airships have this very like pencil quality too. Yeah. So one of the things that I think, you know, is really influential about this movie is the setting, which is post-apocalyptic. You know, it's the real world. I think the anime opening mentions Eurasia. So it takes place in our world, but it's more than a thousand years down the road. Like it's a thousand years after the quote unquote seven days of fire, which wiped out, you know, most of humanity and polluted the world with what

turns out to be like nuclear radiation. That's your first, it's a bad time. That's your first major RPG trope right there. Right. Something happened this many years ago. It's a thousand years later. It's a thousand years later, one millennium. But even then, it's not a thousand years from now because the civilization that collapsed

was very, very advanced. I mean, it's touched on very briefly in the book, and there's a little more extensive scene with a stronger explanation in the manga. but, like, this was a space-faring race that worked with advanced ceramics and things like that. Yeah. And so there's, like, you know, basically like colony ships that never got off the ground. And they're being harvested a thousand years later for their components by the remnants of humanity. Yeah, and the anime, they have just a quick one-off line of when they're hiding out the valley folk are hanging out in that building ship.

They're like, oh, you know, they used to go into the space even. That's pretty crazy, right? Also, in the manga, they have a little more time to talk about just the pure scarcity of technology. They say, like, this is the gunship. The valley is worthwhile. How does the valley have a gunship? That's crazy. And if it breaks, they don't have another gunship.

They can't build another one. Yeah, there's a lot of foraging and scavenging for sure. And so, yeah, that's the kind of, like, scarcity they're living in there, which is a, like, dark, depressing. that, like, in the manga starts, like, it doesn't have the first five minutes of the movie. The movie has to really establish with Yupa going to this recently destroyed city. It's like, Sea of Decay took this to. Everybody's dead. Boy, this sucks.

Like, it's a real bummer. But Henry, what is the Sea of Decay or the Sea of Corruption or the Jungle, depending on which interpretation or translation you're reading? Well, yeah, it's the thing that is secretly healing the world, but seemingly. is killing all humanity. It is this growing fungus that is defended by these giant bug creatures that is eating the planet and there's almost no part of it left untouched. The pockets of humanity still exist outside of the Sea of Decade. They're basically on like the coasts and little, you know, remaining areas between the Sea of Corruption, which is constantly expanding, and I'm assuming, you know, what little remains of original coasts after, I'm sure, all kinds of climate change.

Well, why the valley of the wind is so special, too, is that the wind keeps the spores away, like it blows them away. And that's kind of, in a couple of the interviews I saw Miyazaki kind of regretted that it almost came off as too religious. He's like, ah, Nazca turned into Joan of Arc. I didn't want that. But there's definitely a sense of, like, fate, whatever, a higher power is protecting these things. you know, like in the world of the anime anyway. It's more explicit what's causing things to live in the manga. So the Sea of Corruption is another product of the future humanity, like the, you know, our future, the story's past humanity, like the advanced civilization.

Like everything that they create revolves around biotechnology, it seems. I mean, at the end, you know, this doesn't happen in the cartoon, but in the book, like there's this living crypt. the center of everything. And it's all about biotechnology. But, you know, the last remnants of humanity bioengineered the Sea of Corruption to purify the planet. And they bioengineered, I mean, basically the Omu are like giant cicadas that can't fly. Like they're weird mutant pillbugs almost with like lots of eyes. And they're huge. You know, they're like the size of a building and they're just unstoppable. They're relentless. They have these hard carapaces. They're that even a, you know, like a ceramic blade can't pierce through.

And to just about everybody, they're just terrifying. They're like, this is death. I have to run from them and I'll probably die if I get spotted by one. Like Yupa, who's shown to be like the strongest person in the world or the best warrior. The best swordsman. He still is like, holy shit and oh, fuck. And he just runs off from it. Like, that's everyone's scared of them except for Nazica.

Like, she's this weird. He talks about it a lot, too. There's, he talks about a lot in interviews, too. In Japan, there's this popular story called, like, the princess who loved insects. And he just, in the localization is like, she loves bugs. She loves it. Well, and there's a flashback in both the book and the movie where she finds, like, a tiny, you know, like a larval oomoo. And she wants to protect it.

And everyone's like, ah, the bugs have possessed her. But, you know, they never really explain where Nausica's compassion for. nature and for the insects comes from, but she clearly has this strong vision that works against the conventional wisdom, you know, everyone who fears the sea of corruption, everyone who fears the insects, whereas she sees them as part of a system and wants to understand them. And, you know, a key to understanding her character is when Yupa discovers her in the building and the castle's foundation, where she has drawn pure water and pure soil and planted sports. from the Sea of Corruption, and they've turned out to be totally fine.

They don't give off the poisonous miasma that the Sea of Corruption Plants do. And they're like normal size as opposed to, you know, robbed an Nagy and like just towering over everyone. Love that word. I know, right? I even mispronounced it. It's so great. It's a real G-R-E word. But, yeah, the, like, she goes against the grain.

And, you know, everyone always, everyone who knows who knows. They're just like, oh, that crazy Nazica. Right. They indulge her because, one, she's the princess, so what are you going to do? But also because she's so gentle and so inclusive. Like, you know, something you really don't get in the movie is that by the end of the story, she has basically formed a coalition of people from all the nations and all the, like, sects. And, you know, people who normally would hate each other, like, they come under her banner.

and their differences no longer matter. It's a key part of her character that you get some of in the movie, but much, much more of in the manga, is that she, it's not just like that she values the insect's lives, but she doesn't want anybody to die. Right. Actually, I think the movie does a better job of making this explicit, and it's because of one of the big, like the big changes in how the story advances, when the Tolmechians, like the Tolmecian Empire that is basically one of the major powers in the world,

one of the two major powers, They come to the valley. In the manga, they start to invade the valley, and she goes out and meets them and stops them. And she accidentally kills a soldier while trying to fight them off. But in the cartoon, like, they don't just roll into the valley. They invade the castle. They kill her father. And she wipes out, like, a whole platoon of...

A half dozen guys. Yeah, like a whole squad of soldiers... With just like a stick. She kills their asses. It's like a little tiny flamethrower or something, and she, like, just savages them. But, you know, at the end of that, like, she very explicitly says, I'm terrible. terrified by how this rage took over me and I was frightened of myself and I want all the killing to stop. And I don't think that she ever really has that like very clearly stated moment of, you know, elucidation in the, in the manga.

It's more clearly stated in the cartoon. When her killing there is so justified, they just murdered her father. Like they're standing over and he was a sick old man. They didn't have to kill him to take over the valley. So no one, the audience would be fine if she is like, I had to get revenge for my father. But for her, even the most justified of deaths is meaningless to her. And she's like, no, I was not right to do this. I hate myself for doing this.

I never want to do this again. Like that's, Yupa is much more like, he's like, well, no, sometimes you got to fight. I think her character in the manga is that too, because it puts her in just tough situations time and time again where she is forced to fight for a cause or she doesn't want to fight, but she recognizes, like, if I don't fight, I will die or more people will die. And she, I mean, at the end, she makes a very dramatic decision, but over the course of it, she has to really make, like, terrible choices and see terrible stuff over and over again. And she always does so reluctantly, and she always tries to find the most peaceable solution.

So at the end of the manga, when she's like, yo, Oma, mess up that crypt, kill it for good. Sorry, spoilers. This is a big spoiler. Like, it feels climactic. It's like, you know, she has been so, you know, pushing so hard to create peace and to find, you know, a course of negotiation and, like, a way for everyone to come out alive and happy, you know, with everything for the best. When she finally makes that decision to actively kill, you're like, you know, all of that has led to this. It's a meaningful decision. Well, the anime also has a ton of stuff, Mizaki is so good at, like,

like flying, just the flight is, he loves to draw flying machines. Yeah, there's, I mean, the Valley has, the Valley faction has three different vehicles. They have the barge and they have the gunship. And then Nausica has a little, like, tiny powered glider called Mev, which is extremely cool. Yeah. So cool. It's basically like one of, one of her powers that, or not powers, but skills that's really

called out in the manga a lot. is her ability to see the wind. Like she can say, oh, well, there's a layer of heavy air here. So if you hit that, then you'll be able to kind of coast along it. So she can, like, see the currents and the density of air in a way that very few people can. And it's, you know, something that she actually hands down and passes on to a girl from the valley who kind of like is, you know, everyone's excited. Kind of midway through the story that there's like, oh, you know, there's another wind. rider.

But then at the same time, they're like, wait, if another wind rider has come, does that mean Nausica is dead? So then they get all sad. But, yeah, it's like a special skill that the people of the Valley of Wind have. And it kind of sets her apart. And, I mean, there's a major hopelessness to Miyazaki as well. Or cynicalness. It ends with hope, but I wonder how much is what he feels is a good ending to a movie versus

what he really believes because he definitely feels time and again in his stories. he tells the story of modernism is killing us. Like the modern world is killing the planet. We will all die. The best hope we have is that the small remainder of people left after we finally murder the planet will be able to fix things or somehow survive because it gave up on all our past bullshit. That's also a future boy conan.

But even more hopeless is the idea of like, this isn't future boy Conan, this is in Nasca as well. the remaining people alive in this doomed planet are like, well, we still have to fight each other. And my country hates your country. And we're still going to fight over what's left. Even though death is assured all around them from the Sea of Decay, they'd rather kill each other. The Pejee in the movie, they destroy their capital because they would rather the Turkicans not have it. Like, that's how desperate and hopeless is view is.

That carries through in the manga, too, the Dorox. who basically the Pagetet take the part of the Dorox. Like the Doroch has a much, much bigger part in the manga. Like, they don't even exist in the movie. And the Pagetet basically, they get wiped out early on. Like, they are almost a non-factor in the manga. Like, they do the same thing. Like, they try to master the genetic engineering and everything that the bygone race had created.

And so they create these mutant fungus. They looked at the spores and were like, that's not deadly. Yeah, let's crank it on. Yeah, so they have this like hairbrained scheme to create mutant mold and instead of, you know, using that as a weapon to gain supremacy over the Tormechians, they end up destroying their own kingdom because the mutant molds go kind of out of control and converge in the center of their kingdom and just like turn everything into a sea of corruption. And that's, that's, you know, throughout the manga, you're just like watching just scores and scores. of people be wiped out and humanity's purchase on arable land, like, you know, places where they can actually live, just becoming smaller and smaller. It just feels so bleak.

I think the elephant in the room is that Haya Mizaki was literally born during World War II in Japan as a Japanese person. So he was a child during the reconstruction. So I can see how this could affect his view of humanity as it like a hateful and tribal species for sure. Yeah, I mean, the manga, it's just, it's so frustrating to read sometimes because, you have these military powers that are scheming to get one up on the other person, on the other kingdom, and destroying themselves and destroying thousands of civilians in the process and just, you know, whittling away what little of the world is left for that, you know, for the race. And it's, they refuse to learn. They just keep saying, well, you know, this has happened.

So now we're just going to invade these other kingdoms and take their land from them. It's in the movie, too, or the page you'd say, like, no, no, no, we're not like them who want to use the monster. We are going to kill the, we're going to destroy the C of Decay with it, like, no, you won't. Other people have tried, like, ah, but we're going to do it better. We'll, I know. We have nukes. Yeah. It's great.

I know these nukes killed everybody last time, but this time, like, that's, I think he sees that as, like, there's just the hubris of man. Like, they'll never stop. And I think that, you know, again, to talk about the mega spoiler end of the manga, I mean, that is why Nazika is just like, you know what, I'm just going to cut this thread. Like, if humanity deserves to die, then we deserve to die. Yeah, I mean, she says a few times, like, you know, as long as these technologies exist, people will keep abusing them. And so the only solution is just to get rid of them, to make them go away. Well, and also, Nazika came together. Like, a reason it's such an amazing big budget, like risk is because it was made during the bubble economy.

of Japan where there was just money, money, money everywhere. And I think, you know, that kind of consumption society that's around him, this huge, like, market capitalist society also inspires the hopelessness of like of Miyazaki thinking, where does this end? Where do we keep consuming all these things? Right. One of the things I really like in the manga that's, it has sort of the alternative to these warring empires that keep just doing the same thing over and over again, which are the, is it the forest people? I forget the name. Yeah, the people of the forest. People of the forest who have kind of given up on, you know, former human culture and say, we're just going to live in the sea of corruption. We're just going to wear these gigantic, like,

shapeless suits all the time. Made of insect carcasses or something. But they never, but they're, but that's kind of a failure too. Like, they're just cut off and their way of life doesn't ultimately seem sustainable. So the manga is, I guess it's kind of depressing that it's like, well, you can be over here with the regular humans killing each other, or you can be cut off but kind of just doomed to slowly fade away. And like neither solution is really a good one. There are a lot of, you know, noble characters within the story. I mean, Yupa is a huge one. And he's the Cid of it, I'd say. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he's like a cross between Gurney Halleck from Dune. And I mean, they even gave him Patrick Stewart's voice. I did not realize that. Like, I was

reading the manga and thought, you know, there's a lot of Dune in this story, and Yuba really reminds me of Gurney. And then I watched the dub last night for the first time I'd only ever seen the Japanese version, like the Japanese subtitled version. And I was like, okay, so the guy who played Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's Dune is the voice of Yupa in this. So clearly, I think they spotted that. And they were like, yep. But he's also kind of like an Obi-Wan Kenobi, where he's sort of the voice of wisdom. And in the manga, it's more explicit because he's sacrifices himself to, he doesn't protect, do it to protect Nausica, but he does it to protect Kushana.

She's a beggar character in the manga. She's a much better character in the manga. Like, she's, she's, she's, I don't. She's like super unsympathetic. She's, you know, she rolls in, her people kill the king, and then she's like, we come in peace. It's really hard to take her at her word in that. That's how shitty empires are. Like, I think the people of Iraq had exploded by us and said, like, we freed you, like,

I think they probably felt the same way. Yeah. Oh, I mean, also, Miyazaki is not a fan of America, by the way. Oh, yeah, the two. But no. He didn't come here to accept an Oscar for Spirited Away because he's like, you guys just invaded Iraq. Fuck you.

Like that. But that was not publicized at the time. Yeah. In the manga, she's, you see a lot more of the machinations of her kingdom that she's part of. You see her father. You see her three horrible brothers. half-brothers. And you understand that, you know, like she is a ballbreaker and she's really tough and will take no nonsense. But there's a reason for it. It's because that's the only way she

can survive. They've been trying to get her killed. Yeah. Like, yeah. And basically her mother, you know, upon her death was like, you know, don't, don't give in to this. And, you know, always fight for what you're, what is yours. But at the end, she, you know, she makes the decision not to, well, her father, as he's dying, is like, there's going to be this nest of vipers in the kingdom as you take over, but no matter how much trouble they give you, don't kill them, because once you start, you'll never stop. And so to that end, she doesn't take the role of empress. She just becomes the regent and is kind of like, you know, the steward of Gondor. And as a result, you know, it says at the very end, like, Tormechia never, or Tolmechia had never had a king again. It was always just like a standing regent. I feel like the large scale of Nasca, the scope of the story is about the whole world and humanity and civilization. But the small scale is about her and Nasica and how Nasca changes her personality and her perspective on the world. Yeah, she's a very important character. Like I would say she's probably the second most important character in the manga, not so much in the movie.

But yeah, like so much of the story is told from her perspective and so much of it is about how her perspective and her attitude toward things evolves. and changes and how, yeah, just, you know, she's one of many people who fall sort of under Nausica. And it's different with her than like with, you know, the worm handlers or the old men of the valley. They just worship her kind of. Yeah, whereas she, you know, she has this level of power. She has this level of self-assurance.

So what happens is that Nausica softens her. She, you know, she becomes more compassionate and more willing to see the folly in war and constant conflict and to say like this is nonsense. But she'll still kill some people when she needs to. Yeah, I mean, she's not afraid to like slice a person up. I'm sure. In the anime, Kishana learns a bit of a lesson by the end of

a bit. I think, I also like to you have her next to her like jokey sidekick. God, what's that guy's name? Kurtawa, her sidekick, you get to see him as like this more simple like I'm a scheming guy like I'm trying

to move up. But he's he also is, he's not a backstabber exactly. He's just like, well, if an opportunity presents itself, I guess I'll take it. But, oh, the dreams of a soldier gone again. Oh, well. Yeah. And in the, in the anime, he very explicitly is like, oh, cool, I can, I can, you know, take power now that Kushana's gone. But you don't really see that in the, in the manga.

He was kind of placed in her regiment to keep an eye on her by her brothers or her father, I think by her father and by, you know, the emperor. and he has no aspirations of becoming, you know, the emperor himself. And he also has no illusions about the fact that once she's out of the picture and they get her out of the way as they intend, that he's also going to be killed off. So he's very pragmatic. He's like, you know, I'm just kind of looking out for myself. He's a soldier's all life. He's like, well, it's just the job of a soldier. If it's my job to die eventually, then I'll take that order to.

But I, you know, the end of it, I'm glad it's hopeful just because, like, the comic is just so bleak. It's nice to feel a little good at the end of, like, maybe Nozica can save us. Maybe they can rebuild. The burning of the forest is so dark in the movie and you need the post credits thing to be like, okay, they can replant the forest because I feel like you can't do that. Like, it works as a coda, but you can't rebuild that forest. That forest is gone and the valley's dead. Leave the theater and walk it right in the traffic. You see the movie?

Like, I can't do this anymore. You can't have that. Yeah. Thank you. So one thing we haven't talked about with the anime is maybe my favorite part of it, which is Joe Hisishi's score. This was the first movie where Miyazaki worked together with composer Joe Hisishi. And they've been pretty much like a, you know, inseparable pair since then. And I think Hisashi kind of really became, I don't know, like, like, like, you know,

entered the public consciousness in the West with Princess Mononoke. That's such a majestic soundtrack. It's so good. And this soundtrack is nothing like that. It's great, but it is such a period soundtrack. It is so 1984. It is so influenced by like, you know, American pop radio. Like, it sounds like Madonna or like YMO or something like that. It's all very synthesizer driven and then it has like the, you know, the kind of electric organ sound from the 70s. It has that main theme that is very majestic. This is an epic story of adventure and fantasy. And then everything else is what you're talking about.

Right, yeah. Just like weird, like Henry was just talking about a second ago. It's like weird battle music, actually. And then there's the synthi stuff that's just wild. Well, that's where the final fantasy of it really clicked for me in my first viewing of the movie. It's like when an Omu first appears, it's like, da, da, da, da, da. Like, it's like the battle music begins there. And, well, I always...

The only menu selection you can pick is run. Well, I always wonder, and I mean, too, the horse claws. But I also always wondered, like, if that music isn't fully orchestral just out of budget reasons, and they went with a synthesizer. No, I think you still saw a lot of movies back then using that sort of, like, synthesizer style. I mean, if you look at, I don't know, like, a lot of American fantasy movies tended not to have orchestral music, But, like, I'm trying to think of some of the... Like Blade Runner, for sure. Well, Blade Runner, yeah, but I'm thinking more like, you know, medieval-type fantasy.

Like Dragon Master or something. Beastmaster, Dragon Slayer, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, now, that fits. That does fit. Yeah, I think I... Legend, I don't know. I like that he can go from, like, these up-temple battle music to then having, like, soaring, like, da-da-da-da-da-da, like stuff like that.

that fits, you know, calm winds blowing through a valley. I really like that. Yeah, but the soundtrack is very 80s anime, and I love it. I think it's fantastic. And I also, you know, this, I wanted to bring up Hideakiano, Hideojano, because he, we talked a ton about him and the spiritual predecessor to this one, the Evangelian Retronauts. and Anno, you know, was one of many animators who got a boost from Miyazaki. He saw him as a talent, hired him early in his career to work on this film. The giant that appears in the movie is, was led by Ano.

He was key animator on it. The Melty Giant. The God Warrior. Which absolutely fits with an Evangelian like you can see. Oh, yeah. Like at the very beginning, you see like that line of, you know, the flashback, the seven days of fire with the God Warriors, the giant warriors and they're all like shimmering and they're walking in this line very slowly and steadily and it's like yeah that's unit zero walking or like unit four possessed by an angel walking out

of the sun sunset and i i think you can see evangelicalian has it almost feels in a way like ono's interpretation of these themes what he would do with the idea of like the doomed world pulling itself back together and where we go from there and these weird giants that are the spirit of the earth, like, killing you back. That are very organic in a way that most, you know, giant robot anime are all mechanical. Yeah, I mean, the human part.

And when you want to get into it like... He also is, he's like unit one without the armor, too. Who, Oma? Yeah, the god warrior. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Oma even, you know, thinks of Nausica as his mother. So you get that kind of like...

Mommy issues. Yeah, the mother child concept. but sort of reversed from what it is in Evangelian. And, I mean, the crypt is almost kind of like salee or something. Oh, you know, the geo front, deep underground. It's scheming. Yeah, it's, I hadn't thought about that, but there is, I mean, aside from like the obvious visual element of the God warrior, but yeah, there is a lot of Nausica in Evangelian in a

totally different and twisted way. Yeah, with the first two projects, Gynax was really cribbing from Ghibli stuff. Yeah. Hardcore. I mean, it's hard not to be. Everyone was influenced by. I don't blame them all. Yeah, but also with Anno, I believe in the Evangelion when I said that I felt Gendo,

or maybe I said it on some other podcast I did, I do do so many. But I think Gendo Akari is a little Miyazaki as well, like his imposing figure over. If Ano is Shinji, Gendo is Miyazaki, just this imposing figure bossing him around, even when they're not working together, it's just this influence he feels. And I finally found a quote that I think really supports that from this was, so this was from the book's starting point, which is just a collection of translated Miyazaki interviews. I need to read that. I've got that and I need to read it. It's amazing.

Like, it is such. I feel like an idiot for not reading it before this. Well, so they're big. They do. It's a giant book. But they have this one interview that was done 1984, like the week the film was released in theaters. And so, you know, they're asking him about just production and thoughts on the film. And that's where he talks about it.

He's like, I kind of made her to Joan of Arc. I didn't want her to be this religious. But it's this where the ending of the film led us. But he talked about, like, how about the staff? The person asks, they all worked really hard, even as I yelled at them. You yelled at them? Miyazaki. I yelled all the time.

When I went to Topcraft, there was a myth that's Haya Miyazaki was a scary guy who made you do incredibly bothersome work. So I took full advantage of that myth, a burst of laughter. Mitsuki Nakamura-san didn't go home and he didn't sleep. He would fall asleep at his desk with his paintbrush in his hand. On top of that, he never complained even when he needed to redo his artwork. And, yeah, it's, when you hear about that kind of work, that was where Anna was working under me as hockey. It's like, okay, that's, that's something. Sounds like a terrifying guy like Gendo O'Cari.

I can see why he stopped being a Marxist because he found the joy of exploiting labor. Yeah. Work for me. I don't think it's an accident that when he stopped being a Marxist is when he led his own studio and became an owner of things. Yeah. I mean, he definitely Miyazaki seems like the type of guy who, not to bring this to wrestling, but Vince McMahon has the same feeling of just like, I don't care if I work you to death because I worked myself. to death. I don't sleep three. I sleep three hours a night and I work all the time. I only expect you to do the same thing, which is just like, that's, that is cruelty. Only, but because

you're torturing yourself, you seem to think that it's, it's not because, hey, I haven't this just as bad. I tried really hard when I was editor-in-chief of US gamer and one-up.com not to expect people to have to work the same stupid habits that I did. I tried really hard. Not to say, like, well, I'm doing this, but that's because I'm an idiot. I don't want other people to feel like that. And this is why no one has made a really dramatic and depressing anime about your life. I missed out. I could have been famous.

But yeah, that was just to know what the working conditions were like, like Miyazaki's like, yeah, I yelled at people. They weren't doing what I wanted him to do, so I yelled at them. But like, yeah, after after that, like, the multiple interviews in there, too, Miyazaki is

like, he talks about the manga, and if you want to talk about how, like, dark it felt bleaker and bleaker. It's also because he wanted to finish it, but he also hated to go back to it. He jokes and he's like, I was working on all these films because if I was doing the films that I could

take a break from the comic. Wow. And it's like, well, then just stop doing it, but he didn't want to stop doing it. He just couldn't, he hated doing it. Hmm. The George R.R. Martin of anime. That's who he is. Well, he did fucking finish it in a decade.

Yeah, well, it hasn't been 10 years. since the Fifth Game of Thrones or Song of Ice and Fire book. Sure. We've still got two more years for winds of winter before it's too late. Oh, yeah, that's totally coming out. I mean, George R. Martin is living

life of a man who will live another 10 years, that's for sure. So was Miyazaki obligated to finish this work, or did he just choose to finish it? I think he felt his God would punish him. The God Warrior would come mess up. The Ombud would devour him. It was something imposed on himself. It read very self-imposed.

I would imagine. Yeah. I don't know. Oh! Oh! Oh! Yeah! All right.

video gaming podcast. Let's do that. Okay, we need to talk about the video game aspects of Nausica, which there aren't a lot of actual Nausica games. In fact, I'm not sure how many Nauska games there are because I've been able to find direct video evidence online, like looking on, you know, both American and Japanese websites of two Nausica games, but there is a third that is known to exist and has been written about.

And supposedly there is a fourth, but I cannot find any actual evidence that it exists anywhere. It may be an urban myth. I have seen one of these games, I think the MSX game, I have seen in person, not played, but like packaged at the Mandarake Galaxy, the Kano in Tokyo. They have a copy of this game in their front of the store showcase, which is a lot of is where they have all the rare stuff that they will never sell. It is literally priceless because they will not put a price on it.

It's just like, these are not for sale. Don't take photos of these, but here they are. These are our precious treasures, and you can look at them behind glass. You know, it's stuff like, you know, gold punch out and things like that. What does the box look like? I'm really curious if they just like a, you know, like Miyazaki drawing of Nausica. That same Mandaraki, I think, has like multiple jibly cells that are also like priceless at it, that they just show off.

Yeah, probably. And they say like, no, they also say no pictures on them. And that didn't stop me, the ugly American, taking pictures. Oh, sorry, I can't read the English there. Oh, whoops. Yeah. Anyway, so two of the games, the PC 6600 and the MSX games, both of these are Japanese computers, are horizontal shooters with opaque objectives and tedious design.

I linked to, I don't know if you saw it, a kind of long play on the Japanese web of Nausica for MSSX. and it's ugly and boring. It's also a shooter, which is in a direct opposition to... Okay, but it's, you know, I had heard, so this is something that was spread into the English web by Kevin Gifford, a former coworker of mine at OneUp.com. He's been on the show. He's also a giant. He's the very tall man of retronauts. He is the god warrior of classic gaming, except he's not melty.

and he even likes, you know, ferrets, so it's kind of like Teto. Anyway, so he introduced the claim into the English blogosphere that Miyazaki hated the MSX game or one of the Nowska games because it was a shooter where you're blowing up bugs, and as a result, there had never been a jibbley-based game after that. But that's not really true. I mean, Nausica for MSX is a shooter, but you don't shoot the bugs. There's like a day-night cycle, and during, I think, like, sunrise and sunset, you see, you know, like insects appear above the sea of corruption, but you can't shoot them. Like, you're flying in either the barge or the mev, and the mev can pass through them safely, but if you fly through the bugs in the gunship, then you lose points. But you can't shoot the bugs.

Like, it's impossible to destroy them. You can shoot with the gunship, but you can only destroy those Dorok jar ships. And like, the game's design is really weird because you're just like flying and it's really repetitive, just the same thing over and over again. And then all of a sudden, after like a couple of cycles, oh, there's a jar ship. And you're going so fast, it just zips right past you. But the goal of the game apparently from what I can understand is to try to stop the Dorok ships from games. getting to the valley of wind by finding like a barge that's beyond the Doroc ships, I guess it's a tolmican, like, frigate, and land next to it, and you have to press a key to negotiate

with the ship. So it kind of comes back around to the themes. It does. And then you get back into your Mev or your gunship or whatever, turn around, and you have to make it back to the Valley of Wind before the Dorok ship gets there. That's it. You can shoot at the Dorok ship and I think destroy it if you're very good and can, you know, somehow manage to aim while streaking past it. But that's pretty much all the shooting that comes into play.

So it's not a shooter where you're like killing Omu or anything like that. I don't even know that Omu actually factor in here. There is a god warrior, but it's just like the, you know, the skull of it just as part of the scenery that you pass over once in a while. That's it. It's very boring looking, very tedious, and very difficult. It does have some interesting kind of flight mechanics. Like, you know, you're in gliders, so you're kind of like constantly losing altitude, I think. That's how it seems.

But, and then you have kind of like a banking turn, and it's really hard not to crash when you turn. I mean, well, with those first games, I can't. I also couldn't find a source of, like, Miyazaki, straight up saying, I hate video games. Yeah. But it's just, he merchandises so many things of Ghibli. It's heavily merchandise. You, the offer to do a game would have been there for 20 years before they finally kind of made a game. Yeah.

It's video games are a little much, a little bit too much youth culture, the sort of thing that he would not appreciate. This is my only platform to talk about this, but I'm glad we all as a society have calmed down about Nino Cooney. because it's not very good. It's very pretty. But I think with the second game, people realized like, oh, right, I never really wanted this. But I remember when I was in the press in 2012,

this is an old grudge of mine, but I loved RPGs, and everyone just forgot they existed. And then Nino Kuni came out, and it's like a B-minus C-plus RPG, and every headline was like, rejoice J-R-PG fans. The genre you love is now back.

I could just, I could... That was lame as fuck, but that's because I was at preview events for that game. and I think a lot of the people there didn't have a fucking DS didn't play these games like Calm down Henry

I was shaking them by the bells Where were you? I was a little bit Well I wanted I was disappointed by Nino Cooney just because I was like you guys Level 5 you don't make Dragon Quest anymore Make a fucking Dragon Quest

But of your own Like it should be this sorry I'm just bad It's a bad version of Pokemon Like YoKai Watch It's not very good It's way too grindy The localization is amazing

but it's just like all of this artistry was put behind just a very turdy game. Yeah. When Joe He, Saishi did it, the music for you. Yeah, yeah. And then with the second game it was like it was Ghibli adjacent. It's just like we got all the people. We can't say their names. Well, secretly a jibli, they don't

make as much stuff and they're kind of winding down. So a lot of animators left. Like they did their own witch movie. The people who made Secret of Arietti and when Marty was there, they kind of got their pink slips from Ghibli because they weren't

doing production as much so, then they just made their own thing in their own side studio. That's where Ghibli's at now. And that's the same type of people who can just get hired. I mean, who knows? Maybe it was easier for level five to negotiate with those people without having to move

the request up the chain to finally get permission from Haya Miyazaki about it. I was at a thing where the head guy of level five talking about this game. And people ask, like, did you meet Miyazaki? He's like, well, we met him once.

We talked to everybody else, and he gave it the okay. But he didn't act like Miyazaki was particularly excited about a Ghibli game. Why would he be? I mean, I think if you want to understand why Miyazaki wouldn't be excited about a Ghibli game, you just have to look at the PC-88. Now's a good game. Did you guys watch this video? I watched video this one.

It is extraordinarily bad. It is like, okay, I get it. It's a 1984 computer game. It has, like, really nice graphics sometimes, and then you see it in motion, and it's extremely bad. You have this, like, big drawing of Nausica. It looks like something I would have drawn in fourth grade. It's like, yeah, it's just like, God, just like this paper cut out of Nausica moving in front of a really sloppily rendered valley of the wind, which kind of looks like the Smurf Village. And, like, you go up to doors.

And I guess you press up or something and like you'll get stuff from inside the door, which includes like Tedo or a helmet or a knife. But you can also get skulls. And if you get three skulls, then it's game over. And I don't know what the point of this game is because every video, there's like two videos of it on the English and Japanese web. Like it's just this bad cut out of Nausica moving. It's such a sloppily programmed game that Nauska doesn't even reverse direction. that she's facing when she moves to the right. She's always facing to the left.

So when you move left, she's like hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. But then when you move right, she's hop, hop, hop, while still facing the left. So she's like walking backward. Oh, boy. Yeah, man. It doesn't look like a real fun time. I think if I had seen that movie as a child and then went out and bought that game and would have been so excited to get home and put it in my computer and then I would

have just been crushed. If I spent so much work and passion and so. sweat, creating something, and someone turned it into that. I would be like, this medium is garbage and I hate everyone associated with it. So I get it. I get it, Miyazaki. It's fine. It's fine. This was a bad game, and I'm sorry that it happened

to your movie. My prediction is, so Miyazaki will outlive his son just despite him, number one. But when he dies, there will be a Ghibli Kingdom Hearts game. There has to be. The rights are going to be really weird when Miyazaki dies. I mean, they'll just sell it to Disney. Yeah, yeah. But him, once enough of the old guys who

dead, they'll just sell it to Disney and Disney on it like they own everything. So, and of course he'll get KH at that point. Okay, so there weren't many Nausica games properly licensed, but Nausica's influence on games has been tremendous. We've mentioned Final Fantasy, and this became explicit with Final Fantasy 2, the Japanese Final Fantasy 2 for Famicom, where you had two empires, one of which was the Palmechian Empire.

It's pretty much the Torneki Or Tolneki and Empire, Tormeci, whatever you want to call it, Empire with like some, you know, like the serial numbers filed off. And this is the game that introduced Chocobos, which are literally horse claws. Which, by the way, in the manga,

are explicitly stated to have been genetically engineered from horses. Once upon a time, even horses were mammals, it says. So these are like genetically engineered birds that people ride around on. They're pretty cool birds to be horses. I've always wanted one. Great. Kai and Kui, yeah.

The birds you can ride are too mean. They won't let you ride them. My favorite scene probably in the manga is when Naska, like, leads a cavalry charge on Kai, one of the chokobos of Naska and goes into battle. I mean, one of the chokobo, or one of the horse claws is named Kui, which is pretty much what Chokobos say. Chokobos say quae. I mean, they were, they were not being very discreet about this. And you have all kinds of ancient technology, like, you know, lost kingdoms. weird, nihilistic bosses.

Well, it's like fantasy with a sci-fi edge to it, too, which definitely is Nazica as well. Yeah, like lost technology, something happening X number of years ago. Crystals. Yeah, lots of crystals. Yeah, I mean, the Chukobo, yeah, they, I mean, they're yellow, though, so totally different. But. On the manga, what's the difference? They're black and white.

They're gray. Yeah, I'm, and obviously, it's, there's nothing wrong with being influenced by stuff. Like, I mean, Kajima wouldn't have made a single. game if he couldn't steal for movies. So it's not wrong. I mean, he would have made Antarctic Adventure. One of the things that I was trying to do a little research into related to Final Fantasy NOSCA that couldn't really find any great answers on.

It was like, where did the concept of the stylized fantasy airship start in Japanese media? You know, obviously there were real airships of some kind that play. and whatnot, but, like, where did the quintessential Final Fantasy airship come from? And obviously, there's a lot of airship stuff going on in Castle in the Sky, but Nossica has that stuff. It does, but in the earliest Final Fantasy games, all the way up through, like, six, you know, airships are literally just like boats with, like wooden boats, you know, like scooters with, you know, they can fly.

So I don't know about that. They look more like contraptions, like an inspector gadget style contraption, right? You get like three airships and four. Or isn't one of them sort of... One of them is Lunar Whale, yeah. That's extremely, yeah. Like, that could be a Tolmeccian barge for sure, or frigate. But the others, yeah, like...

But even if it wasn't Final Fantasy, I'm curious if a lot of other video games that have airships were kind of... Was Nossica a starting point for that becoming a fantasy trope? I'm not sure. No, that could be. That's entirely possible. Well, I end in FF, FF1 through 6. Seven is where Steampunk really comes into, and I think that's where that's where the Nazica, like, floats away a bit.

Six is where the steampunk comes in. Yeah, but those six, though, has, like, Tara is a bit of a Nazica herself, too. Like, she's very in touch with the natural world and this. She's much less certain of herself, though. That's true. That's true. But she does. She is a bridge between, like, living beings, too.

Fair enough. Yeah. Well, the visual aesthetic of Nausica certainly, you know, has shown up throughout Japanese media. but I think the most prevalent imagery taken from Nausica is the Omu, the giant beetles. Like those are in lots and lots of Japanese games, especially from the late 80s and early 90s. And in fact, my first encounter with anything Nausica adjacent was playing Crystallus for NES because there is a section of the game where you have to go into a forest that's poisonous. You need a mask on to go into the forest. and the boss of the forest is an Omu that you have to fight and defeat,

which I could see, you know, Miyazaki being like, let's destroy S&K. But, yeah, that's definitely, like, they took that straight out of Nausica. But you also see those, like, giant segmented, very iconic Omu beetle shapes in Metal Slug 3 and Viewpoint. I think both of those are S&K games now that I think about it. Wow. So S&K really liked Osica. Somebody there was a big fan. Clearly.

But yeah, like those show up throughout. I feel like maybe the most overt video game to take stylistic cues from Nausica, however, is Valkyria Chronicle, which is a war game set in the sort of like, I mean, it's not post-apocalyptic, but it has this kind of like steampunk European feel. And there is just like this, this extremely Nausica look to the whole thing. The color palette, it very much. Yeah, yeah. And also the kind of like trying to find hope in a bleak situation kind of thing. And also, I mean, Miyazaki, one thing he was also inspired by was like the Cold War and he just sees America. He actually was kind of mad.

People viewed it too much like, oh, this place is America and that place is the Soviet Union. But he admitted it's kind of hard to not notice that. And definitely there's some Cold War feels to, well, actually. more like World War II feels to Valkyria Chronics, too, in that way. Okay, but of all video games for reference, Nausica, none is more overt or significant than the original Etienne Odyssey. You guys played all the way through Etrien Odyssey? That's the only one I finished. Okay, because you get to the Fifth Stratom, lost Shinjuku, and you realize, oh, this tree that we've been climbing, this is actually like somehow Tokyo.

and you get to the core of it and you discover that just like in Nausica there was an apocalypse and the world was poisoned and so the last kind of surviving scientists of the human race created these giant trees throughout the world to purify and cleanse the planet and in the end the human race is going to be reborn from sort of the hidden you know technology within the labyrinth and replace the people who currently exist on the surface, just like in Nausica. And it's so shameless and so open. And, you know, in the end, you fight the technology and the strange person who keeps the tree, like basically the crypt. And that is the final boss. And then, like, the true crypt is the secret final boss that insane people get to fight by battling through the bonus stratum, which is almost impossible to play.

They are insane. You're right to say that. But, yes, Etrine Odyssey is just the most overt. We read all the way through the Nausica manga game that exist on the planet. They just straight up lifted the story entirely. And I love it. And visually, like, Breath of the Wild from just a couple years ago is so, I mean, I think it's just broadly, jivly, but definitely the blue tunic and the post-aparclip world. The guardians are very old-like.

Yeah. Interesting. And the beams they shoot are very God warrior-like. For sure. There you go. Yeah, it's hard to remove. It's hard to really measure it properly. It's just it was such an influential anime to an entire generation of nerds who would go on to develop video games.

There's kind of no escaping it, I think. I did want to mention, too. I forgot that like a big deal for the movie was that it was endorsed by the, the World Wildlife Fund is like a good... More wrestling, Henry. Come on. It was seen as a very, like, a part of the ecological movement at the time. And in the interviews I read, he was like, oh, yeah, I think we did inspire a lot more, you know, kids in Japan to care more about the environment and get more into it.

And I'm jealous and, like, they got that and we got, like, Fern Gully. Oh, I'm really depressed now. All right, to wrap this up, let's go through the mail bag, the letters bag. I put a call out, and some people responded. So we're going to take turns here. We get letters and printed letters in the mail. We're going to read them to you now. From Haitani, to my embarrassment, I am only familiar with the anime adaptation.

But if you would count this as a Ghibli movie, it would, it sure would be my favorite Ghibli movie. The whole design of an extremely barren world with force of nature. level animals and forests made out of fungi gives us this very special 80s and 70s fantasy vibe I really miss in today's fiction. Combining that with a princess protagonist with a getting things done attitude, riding on some unexpected alien flight crafts,

and you have me some, and you got me some favorite material right there. Not the most famous opinion, but Nauke gives Mononokey a run for its money, as they are pretty much the same plot, only one of them I find way more interesting due to the design and setting choices. When Mononoke came out, I felt it felt a bit like something I've seen a hundred

times before. And today I'm still looking for something that truly gives me that feeling of being in a truly different world that Nausica gave me back then. The only thing that comes close is that weird, weird French film fracture from 1978 by Paul and Geton Brizzi. Maybe you should watch Annihilation. But Mononoke has like... That's Shinemagamei Tensey strange journey. Mononoke has like decapitations in it, too. Come on. You know, the Monanoque connection too is because he finished Nostka 94 and begins working

on Monanoque right then. Like, I think once he finished Nazca, he's like, I want to go back to the beginning and re-explore these ideas once more. Yeah, I mean, Lady Aboshi is so Kushana. Yep, yeah. All right, we got one here from Lord Mugan. I don't know how related to Nasca this is

outside of having someone who actually worked at Ghibli, but you did remind, but you did remind me of Jade Cacoon, a monster-taming game from Genki that was on PS1. A character artist from Studio Ghibli, Katsuya Kondo, worked on this game, and there's just a lot of other Ghibliisms in this game. The flora and fauna have that very alien look to them that Ghibli does so well.

Lots of Asian-style tribalism as well that almost reminds me of the Ainu culture before I even knew what any of that was. I bought the game from a pawn shop in 98. There was also a very heavy naturalistic mysticism theme that ran through it and honoring or dishonoring these naturalistic gods with rituals that would bind them to our hero, a silent protagonist named Levant. It was just a very interesting game that sort of came and went, and of course no one really talks about it or the sequel either. But I liked it and actually introduced me to Ghibli movies since I had never heard of any of the movies

or watched them before until a few years later when I would watch Princess Monanoque in high school. Jade Cacoon is really interesting. I wish I'd played it when it was new if I'd known, if I'd only known. I learned all about it from a really cool YouTube video from this guy named Clamps who has some really great King of Dome Hearts explainers to you.

We need those in our lives. Watch his one for Jade Cacoon. and you'll learn a lot about it. Cormacore Garrison? He says, just call me Cormac at the end. Okay, Cormac, hey, Cormac. It says, I'm sure this is indicative of a larger influence on Japanese pop culture in general, but the effect of Nozica and Lopida had on JRP's in particular

can't be overstated in the late 80s and early 90s. It seems of environmental disaster, ancient technologies, airships, and teens saving the world are still being ripped off by games to this day. And with good reason, one of the many, one of many areas games never lived up to Miyazaki's masterpiece, though, is in his protagonist. As in Nazica, we have a heroine for the ages, strong and independent, whose strength comes from empathy and kindness without ever mistaking that for weakness. And that also, did you really explain her about Miyazaki says he drew her with big breasts to be like, because she holds them to her chest or bosom to comfort people. That's why. Okay.

Here's one from email. Brian Pitt says, I got into Nausica and thus into studio Ghibli. By the back door, thanks to playing Crystalis as a kid and loving everything about it. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how much the game cribs from Ghibli's Uber. The boy and girl who worked together to stop an evil organization from gaining control of a hyper-advanced floating fortress is the plot of castle in the sky.

The world overrun by monsters, but actually being run by a plot designed by pre-disaster scientists who wanted to create a better world out of the disaster is the plot of Nausica. I forgot about that part. In the Japanese version of Crystalis, the first town you visit is straight up called the village of the valley of the wind. When I came to the Nausica manga, two decades later,

I had already been primed to love it. Love it. They were really overt, huh? Yes. Shameless. I have one from Seattle, Shake. Nazica was the first jibly movie I ever watched. I got it on a whim with a few other movies,

only to realize when I got home that the store clerk didn't charge me for it. Wow, nice freebie. I really enjoyed the movie. something about the 80s anime slash sci-fi atmosphere really interested me. It was also rare to see a fantasy movie with a strong female protagonist. Little did I know, this was a recurring theme in many Jibli movies. As far as influences, I remember watching Star Wars, The Force Awakens, and thinking of the opening seemed oddly familiar.

Female hero, abandoned wasteland, collecting materials left behind. I also noticed some Nostka riffs in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. It's desolate, semi-futuristic, open world combined with the resource gathering and flying slash gliding, reminded me of the free movie I got all those years ago. So there you have it. Wow, yeah. The four, I, yes, Forest Awakens.

I totally forgot how similar Ray's introduction is to Nozica, 100%. Wow, yeah. She even had, like, the goggles on, I think, when she was going through. And she, like, sits like how she sits under the Omu lens. She has a reflecting on things kind of scene, too, yeah. All right. Here's an excerpt from an email from Audrey Schlosser. Nowsika went so far beyond the scope of the anime I was used to.

the sweeping epic story, the apocalyptic world with its verdant but poisonous forests, the giant terrifying grotesque omu that you come to realize are peaceful creatures just defending themselves. Honestly, it really spoke to me as a kid growing up in the early 2000 post-9-11, terrified of climate change in war, hearing about acid rain and ozone layers and polar ice caps and feeling the anxiety for my parents and teachers surrounding 9-11 in the Iraq war. It sounds dramatic to put it like that, but growing up in that environment really did drive my fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction that remains today. and Nausica was my first major exposure to that.

And it also remains my favorite depiction of post-apocalypse. It's desolate and tragic, yet hopeful and beautiful. And all of this is driven by an incredible, strong, capable female lead. As a young trans girl coming into her own and struggling with her identity, I connected with Nausica in a way I can't remember doing with a fictional character prior. That's a great letter. That's really nice, yeah. Yeah, you know, we didn't talk about that so much,

but a thing that Miyazaki's films really stand out, especially among, compared to so many different 80s anime features and series, is empowered women in them. Like, I, a friend of our podcast, he does this video series called Kyoto Video, I watched his one on Ninja Scroll. And I was like, boy, women sure get treated like shit in this. Oh, yeah. It just reminded me, again, of just like how women who, a woman in the lead who actually has, like, agency and choice and is listened to. to by other people and also gets to win fights and isn't

kidnapped, like that is still an obscene rarity in so much of animation. And you really have two in NOSCA and Shana as well. Yeah, like I said, Kishana is a major, like a, to my view is, you know, the second most important character in the story.

From Nathan Daniels, the reason I really love the story of Nausica is Nausica herself. Look, our world is messed up and our current fictional media reflects it. Savagery is often a selling point and revenge is often the closest authors can get to a noble cause. By contrast, Nausica is beautiful, noble, humble, compassionate, and altruistic. She repeatedly responds to hatred and animus with courage and love. She responds to the suffering of all living things by pulling the corrupted world up into her embrace.

Nausica's tale resonates with me in the same way as the most rousing hagiography. She reminds me that humanity is capable of more than just destruction and inspires me to try and realize even some of that potential within myself. Bancel says, I first read the four-volume Viz publication of NOSCA in 2004 on the train to work. I was slowly working through every graphic novel my local library had because I had a long commute in those days. I had put off NOSCA because I thought the cover looked generic, armored hero chased by an ugly bug. I was hooked from page one. I love the slow pace of the introduction as NOSCA explores and finds the Omo shell.

Instead of getting off the train and going to work, I sat on a bench on the platform for as long as I possibly could before walking to the office at the last possible second. Whilst I was reading volume 3 There was a sudden snowstorm And the trains were messed up I stood on a huddled station platform Wondering if I was going to get home that night And reading I eventually got home after five hours

Of trying and felt like the evening hadn't been wasted The next day the trains didn't run So I stayed home and I read volume 4 I love this comic It is one of my favorite works of fiction of all time I think it is even better than some of the more obvious influence Like Tolkien and Frank Herbert I don't expect people to agree with me

with that, but I think the characters are fuller, the world and more interesting, and the story, better told. The anime is nice, but like Akira, it's a limited story. It is not a patch on the manga. I'm currently rereading it with my daughter. That's awesome. Yeah, I agree. Tolkien, sit and spin. Herbert, go get in that dune. Bear yourself in it. The first,

the mega collection, too, even has a map in the first page, just like a Tolkienian, yeah. All right, so one final letter, which I think gets to an important reference that we didn't talk about, And that is from Lorenzo Hulzobos. Most of my knowledge of the games, based on Nausica actually come from Retronaut, so let's instead talk about the other Nousica things.

Before I knew the Valley of the Wind, the only Nausica I knew was from Homer's Odyssey. The girl Odysseus recounts as trials of the previous nine or so years to. Her name means burner of ships, which may symbolize Odysseus distancing himself from the past to begin anew, but I find it a very good name for the protagonist of the Valley of the Wind, especially in the manga, where Nausica is presumed to never go back home, burning her ships behind her. that's a great little bit of history and my only pop culture knowledge of Nausica is the Nausikins and Star Trek

the next generation and they end up stabbing Patrick Stewart and the heart so it all comes full circle in yeah Miyazaki he said when he first read the like an account of the Odyssey he just was so taken

by the idea of Nausica this woman who was so she falls in love with Odysseus but also like she is so she becomes like a wandering female bard the only one there is like she was so you know she was so direct

in her desires she just went right for it he really he really liked that awesome so we need to wrap up now it's late and we've talked a lot about Nausica and very little about video games so it goes that's just the nature of these things but thanks guys for coming in and talking about

cool stuff from cool manga by cool guys thanks to the request of cool Benjamin Swan. Everyone, this has been Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. I continue to be Jeremy Parrish. You can continue to find me on the internet at Retronuts.com and on Twitter as GameSpite. Retronauts itself, of course, is a podcast that you will find on Libson. And if you would like to subscribe to Retronauts and get episodes a week early with a higher bit rate without advertisements, et cetera, et cetera, you can do that by going to patreon.com slash retronauts, and for three tiny dollars a month, you can get access to us ahead

of time. That's really cool. Everything's so cool. Guys, tell us about your cool selves. I'll go first. I'm Wes from PC Gamer. You can find me on PC Gamer or on Twitter, Wesley Fenland. And I'll just let Henry go.

Oh, man. Well, okay. This is me and Bob together. We have shared plugs now. But yes, if you enjoy all this talk about animation, boy, did me and Bob have a podcast for you? We do the two weekly podcast Talking Simpsons where we go through the entire history of the Simpsons from the beginning. We're in season nine now.

And what a cartoon podcast where me and Bob go through a different animated series each week. If I may suggest one, listeners that this will really love, I'd say our OkKO one, because that series is such a tribute to classic video games. And if you really want to hear me and Bob really talk about anime for three hours, You should sign up at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons at the $10 level to hear our What a Cartoon movie podcast where we talk about, say, Akira and Kiki's delivery service for three whole hours. And last thing I wanted to brag about was none of you guys,

has anybody else here had the Valley of the Wind beer? Or am I the only one here who's had of the official beer? That's right. Kazay-Notani beer. You can only drink it at the Ghibli Museum. I only drink Kazanotani Port. Well, you're going to miss out on that. But it's really good.

Go to the Ghibli Museum and try some for yourself, both red and blonde. And that is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And we also, as of this recording, we are now in the middle or at the very beginning of Talking of the Hill or exploration of the first season of King of the Hill with the Talking Simpsons. That's only available via the Patreon at the $5 level. And we do a lot of great stuff there to check it out at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And now we're done with this episode. So thanks again, everyone, for listening. Thanks, Benjamin Swan, for demanding that we create this episode for you.

And we'll probably be back sometime to talk about more anime and manga. But before that, we'll be back to talk about video games. Check back in a few days. There'll be a new episode. It's very exciting. Okay, thank you. I don't know. Thank you.