Just trying to keep track of alliances. Are the 蟲使い more like mercenaries than having loyalty to any particular group? Ordid they swap sides after the big loses with クシャナ?
Yeah, basically mercenaries. A bunch of different enclaves with no central government to speak of, and so different enclaves can be hired by different individuals.
I like the groupings in this part of the story. The section with Asbel, Ketcha and Yupa was only short so far, but they are an interesting combination. Nausicaa on Kushanna’s ship is great and that she’s still wearing her Dorok clothes (on a Torumekia ship) says a lot, I think.
This was a great week for Kurotowa. He is really starting to shine as a character, IMO. His stand-off with Kushanna is great, then in the fight he is so quick to turn on the army (これよりわが艦は軍の指揮下をはなれる!!) and then he almost becomes a hero going in to rescue Nausicaa (そういえばなぜおれは…!? ). His reaction to the babies is definitely not heroic though… (この先そんな子は何百もゴロゴロしてるんだよ).
Plenty of good stuff this week
One mini language question, page 35
When they set down at the village Kurotowa shouts 永居は無用だぞ. I guess this is something along the lines of “there’s no use staying here long”, but I can’t find 永居 as a compound anywhere. Or am I misreading something here?…
Also, it took me some time before I figured out that フギャア is the sound of a baby crying
So, fun fact: page 41 was the last page released before the manga went on hiatus for thirteen months while Miyazaki worked on the Nausicaä film. About three months into the hiatus, he posted this apology to readers. (The translation is taken from a book called Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind: Watercolor Impressions, I believe. My search-fu isn’t turning up a version in Japanese…)
That’s really interesting. Do you know if that was the content of the letters or just Miyazaki’s worries?
Nowadays there seems to be some sort of general agreement to not speak openly negatively about an anime/manga (excluding review spaces like on Amazon), so I’m curious if this kind of criticism was common in its time or what.
Other apologies he’s written imply that fans are generally more positive, but I imagine there were at least a few flamers even back before flaming was even invented. Human nature, ya know?
Unrelated note, it bugs me a bit that Nausicaä is aiming her sextant directly at the sun on page 19. Well, it’s not like she’s gonna need her eyesight for the remainder of the story.
Though I confess I don’t know at all whether or not that’s normal sextant usage.
Sextants do have filters to avoid the blindness issue, but this instrument doesn’t look very sextant-like as well as being pointed in the wrong direction. I think with a sextant you look through the eyepiece at the horizon, and the mirrors bring the image of the sun down to that level; I suppose in theory it could be done the other way around. Also Nausicaa is using it while they’re flying over a massive cloud layer, and it seems unlikely that the horizon is in view. Presumably this is Ceramic Era fancy tech
). His reaction to the babies is definitely not heroic though… (この先そんな子は何百もゴロゴロしてるんだよ).
