Hayao Miyazaki - Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

8. Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind

Miyazaki turned to his own manga for the source material of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an epic fantasy animation which is considered to represent the beginnings of Studio Ghibli's works despite the fact it was produced before the company was founded by another studio, Top Craft. It is certainly one of Miyazaki's darker works, taking place in a futuristic post-apocalyptic landscape in which humanity finds themselves surrounded by a toxic jungle and deadly mutated insects on all sides. Delving into themes which would recur throughout much of his career, it tells the story of Princess Nausicaä, the young woman who sets out to try and understand the nature of the toxic jungle which threatens their existence, at odds with those who would prefer to destroy it all. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind prefigured Miyazaki's later movie Princess Mononoke, with its emphasis on environmental concerns and the degradation of wildlife at the hand of arrogant humans, and on its release in 1984 was recommended by the World Wide Fund for Nature.