Good film, but one of Miyazaki's weaker films. The animation is great but the story and characters just weren't fleshed out very well in my opinion... Miyazaki's last 2 efforts are easily his best films so hopefully Howl's Moving Castle will be just as amazing.

- B

The main setting is great and some of the battle scenes are well handled but overall its a bit slight for a Miyazaki film.

You can really see the development of the animation from this to the Princess Mononoke's and Spirited Aways of the world.

Bump for Flava'd

Ah so the accent on the last a is why I couldn't find it.

This movie was real good, but I think I would have liked it more if I had watched the Ghibli movies in different order. Some of the beats came off like 'well I've seen that before' even though it was actually the others borrowing from this movie. The world building was superb. Making people sympathize with giant insects is alot harder than wolves or fish, but my goodness does he do it. Major tension in the climax as you literally don't want anyone to die, not even the bad guys or giant monsters.

So I'll give Nausicaa a 7.8/10ish though I could see myself liking it more on repeat viewings without the burden of suuch great expectations.

Still have a few Miyasakis left (Cagliostro, Porco Rosso, The Wind Rises and the new one) but so far;

Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Castle In The Sky

Ponyo
Nausicaa
Howl

Totoro
Kiki

Unfortunately for this movie, Mononoke exists which is one of the all time great animated films and just does this story way better.