Watching the Disney redub on the Cartoon Network right now. I still think it’s pretty cool. The first time I watched it was as a fansub in 1999, I think. I don’t know if being in the original Japanese makes it just seem more epic or something, although at least the Disney version doesn’t have any cuts like the first dubbed version which most Miyazaki fans find completely abhorrent.

(info about the movie)

The story is an ecological fable about a post-apocalyptic world that is almost completely inimical to human life, with toxic spore-infested jungles and lakes of acid., with the jungles inhabited by gigantic insects known as the Ohmu. Somehow humanity has clung on, however, and sadly many of the survivors have not learned the lesson of the destructiveness of war, and in fact some want to revive one of the ancient biomachines known as God Warriors that were responsible for the destruction of the earth. But I won’t add too many spoilers. Nausicaa herself is a princess of the Valley of the Winds who has a preternatural ability to communicate to the Ohmu as well as other animals who must save her Valley from destruction, caught between warring nations that want to revive the monstrous God Warrior as well as the enraged giant Ohmu.

I swear I had never read anything about Nausicaa before I first watched it, although Nausicaa was first released in the ‘80s and also existed as a manga. I find the parallels with the land with the toxic desert and the poisoned ocean that I was trying to map very interesting.