Ani-Me #24 (Rewatch): NAUSICAA and Living In A Doomed World (Patreon)

I’ve been feeling a lot of doom lately.

But growing up I never learned to equate doom with depression. To be fair, I had a lot of trouble connecting with feelings in general. There was this quiet terror that permeated everything. A sense that inevitable doom was all around me and that everything was going to go horribly. I didn’t realize it, but I was, like, morbidly depressed. But that was mostly because I didn’t have the emotional equipment to handle it on any level. So I just went numb. With everything. Almost all of the time. Because of this, I kept trying to find outlets for things in the form of explosive escape, whether it was movies, sports, or the few friends I felt comfortable talking to. But a lot of the confidence of adolescence did not come with internalizing any kind of self value. Instead, it came with a series of toxic adaptations modeled by the adults around me. So I created a projected self versus an organic one. And I thought these methods were solutions. But I was just running from things that were very, very wrong. And it wasn’t until later in life when all the adaptations, modeled behaviors, and lies to myself all came crashing down that I was finally able to meet the old friend of depression for what it really was. And now, I can instantly recognize those grand feelings of doom with the reality of what is happening, what is causing them, and what I’m really feeling. And while it comes and goes in waves, it’s not quite a stretch to say that it’s easy to look at the state of the world and feel a genuine sense of doom about everything that’s unfolding.

It’s weird how much this has to do with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

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I first saw the film close to twenty years ago and I’m not sure why exactly, but it didn’t hit me square on as some of his other work did. Perhaps I was just still too new to anime and bouncing off a lot of things that I just wasn’t used to yet? Or maybe it was that on first glance, Hayao Miyazaki’s second feature feels like a lot of familiar sci-fi. There’s a world destroyed by pollution, warring kingdoms, and even a child of destiny. But watching it all these years later, you can see that, like all his work, there is a level of depth and observation that goes far beyond the mere appearance of tropes. Because Miyzaki is not just modeling the troubling psychology of a post-apocalyptic world that struggles with the threat of extinction, but also offering the emotional solutions to find a way forward.

From the very start of the film, doom hangs everywhere. It’s literally toxic air, all part of “the sea of decay” that is eating up more and more villages, and soon turning bones into dust. Only gas masks make passage through that part of the world possible (sound too familiar?). And if that weren’t enough, giant bugs named Ohms are being driven mad by human activity and fly into rage attacks to consume the people around them. But within it all this madness, there is the titular valley of the wind. A home. A respite. A place of safety. And it’s where a young, brave, headstrong princess named Nausicaa tries to find both peace and progress with a world of decay. We even see the way she emotionally communicates and distracts the insects (and soon we learn she is researching the sea of decay to understand it). But of course, this much peace cannot last. Because some war-like kingdom is stealing a giant weapon from another kingdom and it all crashlands into their valley. Which is to say, the toxic ways of the grander world spill in, fostering an invasion that feels incidental, yet obligatory. They can be marched over, or they can become part of their cause. They can join and nobly battle the Ohms and the sea of decay with more and more powerful weapons! But of course, it’s all an emotional metaphor…

“What are you so afraid of?”

This is what Nausicaa shouts as she has a loaded gun pointed at her face. The one pointing it is Kushana, another imperial princess who doesn’t even seem to know how to process Nausicaa’s question. Because Kushana is like me in those early years, unable to connect to my fear and just driving deeper into the wrong solutions I was taught. But make no mistake, her fear is what is holding that gun. She, like so many in the kingdom, feels that same impending sense of doom. So of course she wants to “fight it,” but their definition of fighting means all the old world solutions. Which means it’s military bombast and seeking out an ancient weapon called the “Giant Warrior,” which yeah yeah yeah MAY have turned the world to fire in the first place, but hey, can use it on the bugs. They genuinely believe in the nobility of what they are doing, but this not only characterizes the symbolism of chasing the very thing that ends you, but unlocks the whole psychology of fear.

Because what the “doom” of the sea of decay is making Kushana feel is a lack of control. So she, and so many of the leaders of the kingdoms, have to do things that create the feeling of control (regardless of whether they’ll actually work). But by controlling others and going to war, you create that illusion of control. That sense of fight and progress. Wait a minute! What about the old adage that violence never solves anything? Yeah, that’s the problem. It doesn’t “solve” things, but the unfortunate truth is violence often gains someone a lot of things. It’s the inequality maker. for violence was at the heart of colonialism, invasion, and so much more. And so often, those who preach non-violence are doing so from a place of power and just trying to maintain control of that power (read: everything about modern policing). In short, the violence paradox is a way of seeing the world selfishly. It’s a part of the myopia of how things affect you positively or negatively (which is why Kushana’s #2 always thinks everything is either fortune or a trap). But viewing the world this way and trying to maintain control just keeps them locked in the cycle. There’s a reason one character shouts in the middle of battle: “no one stops fighting once it starts.” And it’s because it’s true.

Because none of this is uncommon behavior. I mean, the planet is literally dying around us, but Joe Biden is still putting through a 770 billion defense bill and I am going to lose my fucking mind. It is all part of a failure to reckon with simple emotional understanding of fear. There are all these flawed adaptations of wanting to be seen as “in control” and thus be seen big and epic and tall, but when the last etching on a rock made by the last human has faded from the earth, it will have mattered not. And what could have mattered was the chance to understand the thing that is killing us in the first place. To break the cycle. To change the way we live. And to find harmony in the way forward.

“You’re not even armed!”

Another character shouts that at Nausicaa as she hops onto her glider and dives into the fray anyway. There’s something so infectious about her unrelenting bravery and selflessness. It’s the spirit of youth personified. But I also love that the film really reckons with her relationship to violence. It’s so important to see the moment right after her father is killed. Suddenly, Nausicaa flies into rage and kills so many. In other films, it would feel like this origin point for revenge unleashed. But not with Miyazaki. Here, she’s terrified by her own capacity to hurt people. So instead, she doubles down on her attempts to rescue and handle every situation without violence. Never once is it easy. Never once does it fail to cost her. And most terrifying of all, the big final tests of her might involve her letting go of control completely. We see her letting her body go limp and fly toward danger in order to save everyone. These moments feel terrifying, particularly when she’s shot twice in air, or knocked like a rag doll by the ravaging Ohms. But the thing I want to clarify about this journey is that she’s never some peaceful, ever-graceful dove. She’s angry the whole time. Deeply angry. Existentially angry. But she turns that anger into the passionate fight for self, for the valley, and for the peace of the world itself. She saves us by showing how to let go of that sense of control.

There’s something so pure about this distillation, but as I try to come to grips with a permeating sense of doom around me, it comes with the rueful admission that I’m struggling to find any kind of “Nausicaa” within. Because it’s hard, dammit. And I recognize how often I feel paralyzed to help. I recognize how much I fixate on the past, regret, and mistakes instead of trying to fix things forward. Moreover, there’s just something so helplessly idealistic about her that feels unattainable. A spirit of youth that’s hard to drum up at this age. I just don’t know how to feel as grounded, honest, and brave as her. But note that even Miyazaki expressed some misgivings about her portrayal. On the day the film came out no less, he expressed some worry over how religious the iconography of her final healing was. So perhaps it’s easy to feel not as able.

But that’s when it’s helpful to be reminded that these are obviously just metaphors. And in the end, Miyazaki implied that Naussica’s nobility was just that she was a person who believed the so-called “insects” had just as much value as human life. That’s it. That simple belief. And there’s something refreshingly simple enough about that. It’s a reminder that the titular Valley of the Wind is the Candide-ian garden of your own to tend. And thus, perhaps, it’s also a reminder that when the world seems big and full of doom that you can just stop and think locally.

Which is why I’m going to make a hard right turn and bring up a matter of concrete application. Here in LA there’s a local scumbag politician named Mitch O’Farrell who, among other things, has been terrorizing the unhoused population nearby. Which is why a local organizer and worker named Hugo Soto-Martinez https://www.hugo2022.com/ is running against him for city council. We get so few opportunities to help with something that is this clear-cut. And as trite as it may sound, it is a reminder there really are Nausicaa-types in the world trying to do good.

And they need help.

<3HULK