Humanity clings to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain. It is protected by large mutant insects, including the massive Ohmu. Most of the world is covered by the Sea of Corruption, a toxic forest of fungal life and plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth is still heavily polluted and the seas have become poisonous. The story is set in the future at the closing of the ceramic era, 1,000 years after the Seven Days of Fire, a cataclysmic global war, in which industrial civilization self-destructed. See also: List of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind characters The manga and film versions of Nausicaä are also credited for the foundation of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio for which Miyazaki created several of his most recognized works. The manga and the 1984 film adaptation, written and directed by Miyazaki following the serialization of the manga's first sixteen chapters, received universal acclaim from critics and scholars for its characters, themes, and art. Since its initial serialization, Nausicaä has become a commercial success, particularly in Japan, where the series has more than 17 million copies in circulation.

It was serialized with an English translation in North America by Viz Media from 1988 to 1996 as a series of 27 comic book issues and has been published in collected form multiple times. It was serialized intermittently in Animage from February 1982 to March 1994 and the individual chapters were collected and published by Tokuma Shoten in seven tankōbon volumes. The setting and visual style of the manga was influenced by Mœbius. The development of Nausicaä was influenced by the Japanese Heian period tale The Lady who Loved Insects, a similarly-named character from Homer's Odyssey and the Minamata Bay mercury pollution. After working on an aborted adaptation of Richard Corben's Rowlf for TMS and the publishing firm Tokuma Shoten, he agreed to create a manga series for Tokuma's monthly magazine Animage, initially on the condition that it would not be adapted into a film. Prior to creating Nausicaä, Miyazaki had worked as an animator for Toei Animation, Nippon Animation and Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), the latter for whom he had directed his feature film debut, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979).

It tells the story of Nausicaä, a princess of a small kingdom on a post-apocalyptic Earth with a toxic ecosystem, who becomes involved in a war between kingdoms while an environmental disaster threatens humankind. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ( Japanese: 風の谷のナウシカ, Hepburn: Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984).

Nausicaa box