It puts you in a gas mask inside a dead world and dares you to find it beautiful. Nausicaa kneeling in her secret basement garden, proving the spores grow clean in clean water and soil, is the thesis of every Miyazaki film that came after, delivered in 1984 with pencil and paint. The ohmu are not monsters, they are grieving, and the moment she throws herself in front of the herd in a blue robe stained with golden blood lands harder than any battle. Watch the Gunship glide, watch the Mehve cut across those spore clouds, watch Kushana stand there with her prosthetic arm exposed and refuse to be a simple villain. Yes, the environmental sermon gets loud, and yes, the manga is deeper than two hours can hold. Doesn't matter. You still remember the little fox squirrel biting her finger, then licking it.

A millennium after the nuclear war known as the Seven Days of Fire wiped out almost all life, humanity survives in only a few places. A toxic jungle, thick with poisonous spores and huge insects called ohmu, keeps spreading across the planet. The Valley of the Wind, a peaceful farming kingdom by the sea, is sheltered from the poison and led by its courageous young princess, Nausicaä. Her calm is broken when an airship from the kingdom of Tolmekia crashes in the Valley, and a menacing pulsing object turns up among the wreckage. Soon the Tolmekian army invades, planning to bring back a deadly weapon from the old war. Nausicaä must stop them before they doom the world, while still guarding her home against the advancing jungle. The film is an action adventure that mixes fantasy and science fiction with serious drama.