Nausicaä

[avram]

I got a Barnes & Noble gift certificate, and mister_wolf had reminded me a few days ago that I’d been meaning to pick up the DVD of Nausicaä, so yesterday I did. I also discovered that the official English translation of Pom Poko was out; I figured Disney would never release that story of magical shape-changing animals who make weapons out of their own testicles. Yet there it was! I got both.

Today I watched Nausicaä, which still holds up after all these years. I just love all those great designs — the planes, the armor, the giant bugs. And probably more facial hair than in all the rest of anime put together.

One bit that I’d never noticed before: Towards the end, the valley people are under attack, and take refuge in the hull of an ancient abandoned ship of some kind at the edge of Acid Lake. The ship has a conning tower, and looks like it might be a submarine, but it could be a surface ship with a rounded body, sort of like this. It’s even got some fins towards one end, like in that picture. And one of the characters says about it “It was supposed to have been built before the Seven Days of Fire. They say it’s been all over, even to the stars.” (That’s Disney’s English dub translation.)