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42 years ago, Hayao Miyazaki gave The Odyssey’s overlooked princess the epic adventure she deserves
With Christopher Nolan's new film adaptation of The Odyssey now in cinemas, Polygon revisits a very different take on Homer's epic: Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Made by Topcraft, the studio that preceded Studio Ghibli, the film drew inspiration from the Phaeacian princess Nausicaä, a minor figure in The Odyssey who helps the shipwrecked hero, and reimagined her as the protagonist of an epic journey across a war-ravaged, ecologically devastated world. The comparison matters because it shows how a 3,000-year-old story continues to inspire strikingly different works, and how Miyazaki used it as a springboard to explore themes of empathy and humanity's relationship with nature that would later define films such as Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso and Spirited Away.
Like Odysseus, Miyazaki's Nausicaä is defined by curiosity and empathy rather than physical strength, navigating hostile kingdoms and the brutal conflict between Pejite and Tolmekia while surviving repeated near-catastrophes. The film also draws on the 12th-century Japanese folktale The Lady Who Loved Insects, informing Nausicaä's fascination with the giant Ohmu creatures she refuses to fear. Where The Odyssey frames Odysseus's trials as tests set by the gods, Miyazaki instead asks whether humanity is responsible for its own suffering: the toxic, expanding "Sea of Corruption" initially appears to be the world's greatest threat, but is later revealed to be quietly healing a planet poisoned by industrial-scale warfare.
In short
- Nolan's Odyssey prompts a look back at Miyazaki's 1984 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
- Miyazaki expanded a minor Odyssey character into an epic protagonist
- Film blends Homer's myth with Japanese folklore and ecological themes later seen in Ghibli films
Explained simply
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic poem about a hero named Odysseus trying to return home after war. Along the way, he meets a princess called Nausicaä who briefly helps him, though she is a minor character in Homer's story. In 1984, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki made a film that used this character's name as inspiration but reimagined her as the main character of a completely different story.
Miyazaki's film is set in a world destroyed by war and environmental damage, where the character Nausicaä must navigate conflicts between warring kingdoms. Like Odysseus in Homer's version, Miyazaki's Nausicaä is driven by curiosity and kindness rather than strength, and must survive dangers and hardship as she travels through this damaged world. Though the film borrows the character's name and some inspiration from The Odyssey, Miyazaki used Homer's story as a starting point for something entirely his own.
The themes Miyazaki explored in his 1984 film—empathy and how humans relate to nature—would shape much of his later work. Rather than blaming the world's problems on the gods, as Homer does, Miyazaki's version suggests that humans themselves are responsible for the destruction around them. This focus on humanity's impact on the natural world became a central concern in Miyazaki's filmmaking in the decades that followed.