An excellent debut for Ghibli.

#In a Shellnut
It's been a thousand years since the Earth was engulfed in the Seven Days of Fire. Humans live in a technological backwater compared to what once was, and the Sea of Decay takes more and more land everyday, spreading toxins and hostile insects that threaten the extinction of mankind as a whole.

The Valley of the Wind remains one of the last few peaceful places in the world, detached from politics and shielded mostly from the Sea of Decay. However, when a foreign power brings back a weapon from millennia past, Nausicaä and the people of the village find their peace rapidly fleeting.

#Strong Points
Supreme audiovisual design that has aged like fine wine.

The world building is interesting and well communicated.

#Weak Points
Being a show destined to be watched by children, the story is somewhat simplistic.

Similar Shows

Name: An excellent debut for Ghibli.
Item: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Rating: 90
Author: Hirobrinslayer

Any movie from studio Ghibli,
There are a variety of topics, but their style has remained somewhat consistent through it all.

Castle in the Sky by studio Ghibli,
This one is remarkably similar, so I mention it apart.

#Elaboration
This movie is pretty good. It's very much designed for children, so perhaps an adult audience might not find it quite as interesting as someone younger, but it still has enough substance to entice me to watch it twice.

The main character is pretty much your standard Disney-esque princess character. She is loved by all, loves all, and wants nothing more than for everyone to live in peace and co-exist with nature. This, however, does not stop her from being an absolute badass sometimes.

The social commentary is somewhat on the nose. Anyone who watches will easily notice it and you get the usual "humans have polluted the earth and now we reap the bitter seeds we have sown", but it is perfectly adequate for a children's show.

#Spoiler Section

Spoiler, click to viewclick to hide

Nuclear imagery is something that I notice much more in Japanese films. Massive explosions are all well and good to a western audience, but to the Japanese not 40 years after they were nuked, I imagine that such things hold much more import. Indeed, I doubt anyone watching it at the time had any trouble believing that it was nukes that turned this fictional world to dust.

I actually quite like the world building. The setting is interesting and the idea of nature adapting to the pollution and even slowly filtering it out over the course of thousands of years is really very cool. The bugs remind me a lot of the video game Factorio, which takes a, ahem, different stance one how one should best treat bugs, but overall it's quite similar.

Even in this post apocalyptic hellscape, people are waging technological wars that seem to destroy much more than they gain. It's a very fitting show of human nature, I think.