--- title: "Warriors of the Wind" year: 1984 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind" fi1m_score: 85 critics_score: 73 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T06:20:08.585181+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T06:20:08.853139+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Warriors of the Wind (1984) Directed by Hayao Miyazaki · 1h 35m · MPA PG · Adventure, Animation, Fantasy **Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 73 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Everyone wants a weapon; the girl wants a proper look at the beetle > Miyazaki’s first great film, made a year before Studio Ghibli existed, sends a princess into a poisoned forest to understand the monsters rather than fight them. The plotting frays in the last half hour, and this 95-minute version is not the whole film. ## Synopsis A thousand years after a war burned the industrial world, a poisonous forest called the Sea of Decay is spreading, patrolled by insects the size of houses. The Valley of the Wind, kept clear of spores by the sea breeze, is ruled by the ailing King Jihl (Mahito Tsujimura). His daughter Nausicaä (Sumi Shimamoto) flies a glider into the forest to collect insect shells and study the plants everyone else fears. Her teacher Yupa (Gorō Naya) returns. Then a Tolmekian airship crashes in the valley at night, carrying a dying girl, Lastel (Miina Tominaga), and a cargo nobody should be moving, and the Tolmekian princess Kushana (Yoshiko Sakakibara) arrives with an army to collect it. ## Review Hayao Miyazaki made this in 1984, the year before he and his producer Isao Takahata founded Studio Ghibli, and it is the film in which nearly everything they went on to do is already visible. A thousand years after the industrial world burned itself down, a poisonous forest is eating what is left, and the people who survived spend their time fighting each other for the scraps. Into this Miyazaki puts a girl with a glider who would rather look at a monster than kill it. It is one of his best films, and the version carrying this title is not quite all of it, a point we will come back to. Nausicaä is the reason it works. She is a princess who does her own flying, a naturalist who chips the lens out of a dead insect’s eye to see the world through it, and a fighter who hates fighting. Sumi Shimamoto gives her a light, level voice that never tips into sweetness, and Miyazaki’s script lets her be frightened without making her small. The early scene in which she talks an enraged Ohmu, a creature the size of a hill, back into the forest with a whistle and a flare tells us more about her than any speech, and the film knows it, because it keeps the speeches short. The world is drawn by someone who has thought about how it would work. The Sea of Decay is white and blue, with fungus trunks like cathedral pillars and spores drifting down like snow, and the insects in it are not slimy horrors but armoured, deliberate animals whose rows of eyes glow red when they are angry and blue when they are not. The valley is the opposite: windmills, wheat, tiled roofs, a sky that goes on. Editors Naoki Kaneko and Shoji Sakai let the flying run long enough that we feel the wind under the glider, and they cut the fighting on the ground short and hard. The sequence that got us comes early. A Tolmekian freighter, on fire and full of insects, comes down over the valley in the dark, and Nausicaä flies alongside it trying to steer it clear of the houses. There is a girl inside who is dying, and the film gives her about two minutes. We were more shaken than we expected to be by a drawn airship, and it is because Miyazaki draws the scale honestly: the ship is enormous, the glider is a scrap of cloth, and the fire is the only light. Joe Hisaishi’s score under this is a low electronic pulse, and it is better than his grander cues, which lean on the synthesiser sound of 1984 more than they should. The wordless child’s voice he uses as Nausicaä’s theme has dated the least. The villains are the weak part. Kushana (Yoshiko Sakakibara), the Tolmekian princess who invades the valley with a plan to burn the forest, is given one good reason to hate the insects and then not much else to do; Kurotowa (Iemasa Kayumi), her second in command, is a schemer from stock. Asbel (Yoji Matsuda), the boy from the rival city of Pejite, arrives to shoot things down and stays to be talked round. Once the armies start moving the film has three factions, a weapon from the old world and a stampede to manage, and the last half hour manages them in a rush. Motives get shouted in passing, and a legend told by Obaba (Hisako Kyōda) in the first reel is asked to carry more than any legend should. Then there is the title. The film Miyazaki made is *Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind*. *Warriors of the Wind* is the name under which a shortened English-language version, cut by around twenty minutes and rewritten in the dubbing, went out to cinemas, and the 95 minutes listed here is that version. What was removed is mostly the quiet: the looking, the botany, the reasons. The film still plays, because the drawings carry most of it, but anyone who finds it under this title should know they are getting the edited one. Set beside [*Princess Mononoke*](https://film.one/film/princess-mononoke) (1997), which tells much the same story with the sides more evenly shaded, this is the plainer and more hopeful film, the one that believes a single decent person can change the weather. Miyazaki would learn to doubt that. We were glad, for 95 minutes, to be in the company of someone who did not. Watch it at home with the subtitles on, and if you can find the full-length film under its own name, watch that instead. *Fi1m score 85, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics are warmly disposed, with four positive notices, two mixed and nothing hostile. The praise clusters around the heroine: a pacifist princess with a scientist’s curiosity and a spiritual bond with the natural world, whom several reviews treat as the film’s chief achievement. The environmental argument earns nearly as much approval, described as an eco-warning that has aged well and reads as urgent now, and the action sequences are found rousing rather than merely busy. The reservations are about storytelling rather than message. Radio Times finds the plot underdeveloped, with elements left unexplained, while still admiring the fluidity and beauty of the animation. Variety takes it mainly as a glimpse of a style still forming, calls the final-act storytelling woozy, and ranks it below the director’s later fable on the same theme. The spread is fairly narrow: nobody dislikes it, but the cooler notices see a film whose ideas outrun its plotting. ### Reviews we read (6) - **Empire**, William Thomas (90/100, inferred): The film has aged remarkably well and stands as an ahead-of-its-time eco-warning. It serves as the foundation for Studio Ghibli with its story of a princess seeking peace amid warring nations and giant insects on a dying planet. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/nausicaa-valley-wind-review/) - **Little White Lies**, Ren Scateni (80/100, inferred): Highlights Nausicaä as a complex pacifist heroine blending scientific curiosity with spiritual connection to nature, whose radical ecological ethics offer a model for coexistence with the natural world. Singles out the film's message of environmental peace and pacifism as especially vital today. [Read](https://lwlies.com/in-praise-of/nausicaa-of-the-valley-of-the-wind-studio-ghibli-ecological-message) - **The New Yorker**, Michael Sragow (80/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a magnificent anomaly—a rousing vision of scorched earth. The heroine disdains petty tribalism and believes she can bring man and nature back into synch; the movie is violent yet stirringly hopeful. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/nausica-of-the-valley-of-the-wind) - **Time Out**, David Jenkins (70/100, inferred): Praises the feisty, morally righteous heroine Nausicaä and her efforts to protect her village. Singles out the film's exhilarating action, anti-weaponry parable, attack on corporate power and plea for artisan craftsmanship. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/nausicaae-of-the-valley-of-the-wind) - **Radio Times**, Sloan Freer (3/5): Notes a strong environmental message in this vibrant animated sci-fi fantasy with an ambitious storyline exploring darker themes. Complains that the plot is underdeveloped with some elements lacking exposition, but praises the visual fluidity and beauty. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-ij1pl3/nausicaa-of-the-valley-of-the-wind/) - **Variety**, Robert Koehler (60/100, inferred): It fascinates as a glimpse into the master’s then-developing style, even when the final-act storytelling gets woozy. It's a predecessor to the better “Princess Mononoke” as a fable about man’s capacity for destroying the planet. [Read](https://variety.com/2005/digital/features/nausicaa-of-the-valley-of-the-wind-br-porco-rosso-br-the-cat-returns-1200527445/) ## Details - **Director:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Director:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Screenplay:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Editor:** Naoki Kaneko, Shoji Sakai - **Music:** Joe Hisaishi - **Producer:** Isao Takahata - **Cast:** Sumi Shimamoto as Nausicaä (voice); Ichiro Nagai as Mito (voice); Gorō Naya as Yupa (voice); Yoji Matsuda as Asbel (voice); Yoshiko Sakakibara as Kushana (voice); Iemasa Kayumi as Kurotowa (voice); Hisako Kyōda as Obaba (voice); Mahito Tsujimura as Jihl (voice) - **Runtime:** 1h 35m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 3 March 2005 - **Genres:** Adventure, Animation, Fantasy - **Budget:** $1 million - **Box office:** $9 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaskbIZtfxQ ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $11.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Ōfuji Noburō Award 1984: Ōfuji Noburō Award (won) ## If you liked this - *Princess Mononoke* (1997), Fi1m 88: Miyazaki returns to the same war between people and forest, older and less sure who is right — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/princess-mononoke.md) - *Fantastic Planet* (1973): French animation about humans kept as pets by giants; strange, slow and quietly furious - *Watership Down* (1978), Fi1m 81: British rabbits flee a poisoned warren; harder and sadder than its reputation as a children’s film — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/watership-down.md) - *Akira* (1988), Fi1m 83: Tokyo rebuilt after catastrophe, drawn with the same care and none of the hope — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/akira.md) - *Wolfwalkers* (2020): Irish hand-drawn fable of a girl, a forest and an army that wants it cleared --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind