風の谷のナウシカ
Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Volume 6

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Charuka and Chikuku are looking for Nausicaä amongst the sea of dead Ohmu, who are sprouting Sea of Corruption plants, though there is little poisoned air, nor sign of the sentient mold. The two, along with their escorts, are in the flying jar and land in a village about to be consumed, which has Wormhandlers who are looting the place. Chikuku finds Nausicaä’s mehve and causes problems when he attempts to protect it from the Wormhandlers.  The only thing that saves them is the arrival of Forest People, whom the Wormhandlers respect. Putting a bubble over the flying jar top, Selm leaves with Charuka and Chikuku and explains how the mold and the Ohmu ended up consuming each other, leaving things for the Sea of Corruption to emerge.

As other Forest People explain things to the Wormhandlers, Selm leads Charuka and Chikuku to a spot in the new Sea of Corruption where Nausicaä is. She is encased in serum and is alive as the Ohmu kept her alive rather than let her sacrifice herself. They barely escape with her as the sun comes out and the Sea of Corruption forest immediately grows to full size. When they land where the Wormhandlers and other Forest People are, the Wormhandlers beg to be allowed to keep Nausicaä since they consider her their deity. The Forrest People are forced to use their powers to keep the Wormhandlers from taking Nausicaä and allow Charuka and company to escape.

On board the Dorok ship, Yupa discovers how the heedra are controlled and causes them to riot, allowing Yupa to escape. Emperor Namulith gets word of this while at the same time, the spirit of his younger brother, Miralupa, appears. Namulith smirks and tells how he’ll change things, but Miralupa sees the flying jar with Nausicaä’s mehve in tow, thus he leaves. His presence is noticed by Selm, who tries to deflect him but fails. Chikuku attempts to protect Nausicaä but Miralupa is intent on possessing Nausicaä. Selm has the flying jar land as Nausicaä’s spirit is elsewhere while Charuka sees Namulith’s declaration of the end of the priesthood in a bloody fashion.

Elsewhere, Mito is with the recovering Kurotowa and leaves to get some water. The horseclaw Kui takes off and Kurotowa follows. Kui waits for him and allows him to mount before taking off again, where they find Nausicaä, Selm, and Chikuku. Kurotowa gets briefed on Nausicaä’s predicament while in Nausicaä’s mindscape, Miralupa attempts to take her over. When Nausicaä becomes aware of Tito, she repels Miralupa, forcing the darkness that shrouded his body to be dispelled. She takes the corpse-like Miralupa with her and arrives at a Sea of Decay, where Selm is waiting for them.  Selm is amused that she wants to take Miralupa with them even though she knows whom he is.

With Selm as guide, the group travels through this Sea of Decay in Nausicaä’s mind, traveling on the Ohmu that Nausicaä had saved. Selm takes them to the end of the forest, where Nausicaä sees that the giant plants of the forest are sparse and small, as they were in her lab back in the Valley. Continuing on, she sees grass, birds, regular insects, and the like, seeing a purified land. Miralupa, now saved by Nausicaä, leaves her and vanishes happily in the newly purified land. Nausicaä decides to leave because humanity will only pollute and destroy this land, but she figures that in 1000 years, humanity might be ready.

Nausicaä  wakes up and finds Kui, Chikuku, and Kurotowa sleeping. Selm says that the daikaisho has ended and he’ll be returning to the forest. He invites her to come and live with him, but she turns him down. Selm leaves and Wormhandlers arrive as Chikuku, Kurotowa, and Kui awake. Mito and companion are chasing Kui’s baby, and arrive as well.

At the Vai Emperor’s palace, the Emperor gets reports of the continued death and destruction. He chastises his two sons for not taking advantage of the insectoid attack to attack the Dorok capital and knows that the Dorok will now come after the Torumekians out of desperation. He sends them away and decides to lead an attack on Shuwa.

In the Valley of the Wind, a new wind-rider named Tepa, is sent up on a tethered glider to view the winds, which are strange. Tepa recalls her training with Nausicaä and sees a damaged ship in the distant night sky, but a flying insectoid collides with her, severely damaging her glider. She recovers and gets to the ground safely, to the praise of the others who promise to make her a mehve like Nausicaä’s from the engine of the former king’s machine. The people fly insectoid kites and open up the bug whistles while dispatching folks to help the crashed ship, which is filled with Dorok refugees.

Meanwhile, Nausicaä gets the Wormhandlers to take off their masks and convinces them of her living status. She takes off with Chikuku to convince the Dorok not to invade Torumekia while the Wormhandlers decide to follow her to the ends of the earth. She discovers where Namulith is executing priest and reaches out mentally to Charuka, who’s tied to a boulder to die a slow death in front of the people. He finds courage at Nausicaä’s being alive as Kushana voices her disapproval of Namulith slaughtering the intelligentsia of Dorok.

Nausicaä arrives at the scene just before Dorok ships carrying the God Warrior in an artificial encasement arrive. She frees Charuka as Chikuku telepathically tells the people his true identity as the descendant of the former king of the Dorok before Namulith and his brother deposed him a hundred years earlier. Chikuku then broadcasts Nausicaä’s plea for peace and the dangers of the God Warrior. Namulith orders Kushana to have her honor guard ready as he dispatches the heedra to get Nausicaä. Mito arrives in the gunship with Kurotowa and attacks.  Nausicaä eludes the heedra as one of the Dorok ships gives her cover fire, the ship being filled with the Mani tribe along with Asbel and Ketcha. Asbel has the God Warrior’s control stone and tosses it to her.

Charuka arranges for the people to get out and spare as many ships as possible while Nausicaä arrives on Namulith’s now damaged ship. Nausicaä and Namulith fight with swords as Nausicaä keeps his heedra at bay. She tells him she’s going to send the heedra and God Warrior back to where they came from and to where his brother has now gone. He counters, saying that while the God Warrior was in the case, it was dormant. Now, it is alive and uncontrollable, thus her actions have doomed what’s left of the world. The heedra swarm Nausicaä, but Yupa arrives to help her out.  Further, the now revived God Warrior comes to Nausicaä’s aide and takes her into his hands, destroying one of Namulith’s ships.

Nausicaä realizes why the God Warrior is doing these things and gets it to stop, saying she’s OK. She produces the control stone to give it to him, but it crumbles in her hand. However, the God Warrior considers Nausicaä to be his mother.

Meanwhile, the injured Namulith returns to the inside of his ship and discovers his men slaughtered as Kushana and her guard have taken over key parts of the ship. Kushana is astonished at his injuries, so he reveals that he has a heedra body now. Collapsing in a chair, Namulith says that despite everything, things are going exactly as the Master of the Crypt predicted so he decides to let Nausicaä handle things from here on.

As always, this volume of the manga is densely packed with a lot of things going on.

Even though it was a vision, I’m guessing that the revived world that Nausicaä saw is in fact what is happening to the planet. So, somewhere, the Sea of Decay (Corruption) has done its thing and things are returning to normal.  However, I roll my eyes at Miyazaki-sensei’s “maybe in a thousand years, humanity will be ready.”  Sorry, Miyazaki-sensei, humans are humans and whether one thousand years or one million years, humanity won’t magically become holy beings living at one with nature and each other. I know that’s the “heaven on Earth” dream of some who believe in collective salvation or that humanity will progress to a point to where they are like gods.  Evil is evil and will always remain among us and within us.

In 1000 years, even in Nausicaä’s world, people will still do the same things.  Its weird that Miyazaki-sensei seems to believe this 1000-year theory when his own story shows how despite everything, humans keep doing the same things over and over, as they’ve always done throughout history (because history is the past and for most folks, their notion of how things are are based on their own lifespan rather than history as a whole).

Miyazaki-sensei does like the salvation of characters, which I don’t have a problem with.  Miralupa gets “saved” by Nausicaä in the end.  How nice for him, eh?  Live a life of doing horrible crimes but after death, score a “get out of jail free” card just because.  At least Charuka was still alive and had changed while still living, thus I’m all down with his shift in alliance and “salvation.”  However, even with Miralupa, I didn’t mind that he was saved but I do admit to rolling my eyes just a bit.

I’m glad that Nausicaä was reunited with all of her former comrades on her journey.  Considering that there’s only one more volume of manga, it makes sense for this to happen before going into the final part of the story.

I liked how Kushana took advantage of Namulith’s distraction in battling Nausicaä to take over his ship.  I’m interested to see what her next move is and look forward to her being reunited with Kurotowa.  It will also be interesting to see if she’s forced to fight her father.

Finally, it is very interesting that the God Warrior considers Nausicaä to be his mother.  I know this fits in with the whole notion spreading through the Dorok and the Wormhandlers of Nausicaä being a deity.  However, now that Nausicaä has control over this sentient weapon, what will her next move be?  Obviously, she’s not a war person, but would she allow the God Warrior to fight in self defense?  Would it fight anyway just to protect her even if she begged it not to?  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

So, another good and densely packed manga.