13 Nausicaä Quotes in Japanese and English, Explained

Nausicaä says this while trying to calm Teto, the fox-squirrel brought back by Lord Yupa.

Teto is frightened and highly agitated. He bites Nausicaä’s finger, but she does not pull her hand away or punish him. She simply waits until he understands that she is not going to hurt him.

Only moments earlier, Nausicaä had calmed a charging Ohm through her actions. This scene then establishes the same quality through her words. Within a very short space of time, the film tells us that Nausicaä possesses an ability that ordinary people do not.

She can recognize the fear hidden beneath violent behavior.

The line also introduces an idea that runs throughout the film: aggression is often the reverse side of fear.

Looking at Teto’s teeth and aggressive posture, most people would simply describe him as dangerous. Nausicaä understands that he is terrified. Once she says “you’re not scared,” the audience also begins to see his behavior differently.

The Japanese line is especially interesting because it does not state exactly who or what is “not frightening.” Japanese often omits a subject that English would normally require.

Depending on how the line is understood, it could mean:

The subtitle chooses “you’re not scared,” focusing on the change taking place inside Teto. The dub conveys something closer to “there is nothing to fear,” making the line sound more explicitly reassuring.

It is partly a matter of preference, but I lean toward the dub’s reassurance: the Japanese seems to mean that what Teto fears is not frightening, or that he need not be afraid.

Later in the film, she performs a very similar act of perception with Kushana.

Nausicaä says this to Kushana after Asbel’s attack sends their aircraft into the Sea of Decay.

Surrounded by insects and stripped of military control, Kushana attempts to dominate the survivors through threats and extreme aggression. Nausicaä immediately understands what lies behind that behavior.

Kushana is afraid.

The comparison with a lost fox-squirrel deliberately recalls Teto. At the beginning of the film, Teto bites Nausicaä because he is frightened. Here, Kushana reacts to fear in much the same way, despite presenting herself as a fearless military commander.

The film therefore connects a small terrified animal and a powerful imperial princess through the same emotional structure.

Kushana’s fear of insects is obvious in the scene, but the reason for its intensity is revealed later. We learn that an insect took her left arm and that the damage to her body may extend far beyond what we can see.

In that sense, Nausicaä’s line works as both psychological insight and foreshadowing.

The compound “fox-squirrel” translates the Japanese kitsunerisu directly. “Squirrel” is not an easy word for Japanese speakers to pronounce, though the animal itself is familiar.

This is not exactly a profound quotation. Even so, it is one of the lines from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that has remained most clearly in my memory.

Asbel says it while eating the chiko nuts that the children of the Valley gave to Nausicaä.

I cannot be the only person who watched this scene and wondered what chiko nuts would actually taste like.

It is not a grand pronouncement. The oddly vivid wish to eat a boot full is simply what makes the line stick with me.

The subtitle preserves the strange image by using “a whole boot-full.” It is an unusual expression in English, but that is precisely why the line remains memorable.

The dub changes the joke into a more conventional remark about healthy food tasting bad. That version may sound smoother, but the image of eating an entire boot full of chiko nuts disappears.

It is a shame to lose that boot-full image. Both the subtitles and dub call the fruit “chiko nuts.”

This line reveals why Kushana, otherwise so brave and composed, reacts with such extreme fear after falling into the Sea of Decay.

She shows that her left arm has been lost and replaced. The implication is that insects caused the injury and that her wounds are not limited to the missing arm.

For a moment, the film exposes the brutal past hidden beneath her armor.

Even then, Kushana refuses to expose her vulnerability directly. Perhaps her pride makes her express it through a bitter joke instead.

That is very much in character. Even while exposing her wounds, she protects her pride through irony.

The Japanese word ozomashiki carries a stronger sense of horror and repulsion than the subtitle’s simple “worse.” A more literal version might refer to something dreadful or horrifying.

The dub adds the idea of a “lucky” man becoming her husband. That word is not in the Japanese, but it sharpens the sarcasm. Any man considered lucky enough to marry a princess would discover the terrible reality concealed beneath her armor.

Kushana shouts this at the Giant Warrior when its incomplete body fails to function as she expected.

Admittedly, the most obvious problem is that Kushana awakened it far too early and then became angry when it failed to perform properly. She is a remarkably strict commander, even toward an unfinished apocalyptic weapon.

The most interesting word, however, is “tribe,” “clan” or “lineage.”

In the film, Kushana speaks as though the Giant Warrior belongs to a naturally existing race and is a descendant of the beings that destroyed the old world.

Readers of Miyazaki’s manga know that the Giant Warriors were artificial beings created by the humans of the old civilization to act as judges.

That difference suggests that the passage of time since the Seven Days of Fire may have distorted how the Giant Warriors are understood.

The word “tribe” invites us to imagine a natural lineage; the manga reveals something made by human beings instead.

The dub’s use of “designed” is intriguing in light of the manga: it gives particular force to the idea that the Giant Warrior was made rather than born.

These are the first spoken words in the film.

Together with the images and the opening text, the line tells us almost everything we need to know about the state of the world in the shortest possible time.

Human settlements are dying. The Sea of Decay is expanding. This is not an isolated disaster but a process that Lord Yupa has witnessed repeatedly.

It is a fine example of Miyazaki’s ability to establish a world without stopping the story to explain it.

The name “Sea of Decay” is a direct rendering of Fukai: “decay” conveys corruption or rotting.

The dub’s “toxic jungle,” by contrast, leaves little to the imagination.

I rather miss the restraint of “Sea of Decay.”

Lord Yupa says this after Nausicaä discovers that the Tolmekian soldiers have murdered her father and attacks them in a state of uncontrollable rage.

He stops her by sacrificing his own arm to block her blade and then holds both sides at a standstill.

I still have no idea where Yupa came flying from in this scene.

Nevertheless, it is one of the few moments in the film where we truly see the legendary swordsman behind his calm, scholarly appearance.

The Japanese begins with sōhō, meaning “both sides.” Yupa is ordering both Nausicaä and the Tolmekian soldiers not to move.

This is important. He is not simply joining Nausicaä’s side. His immediate objective is to stop the violence itself.

The subtitle’s “Stay where you are” is natural English, but it removes this explicit neutrality.

The subtitle also translates the material of his sword as “insect shell,” leaving out the fact that it was carved specifically from an Ohm’s shell. The dub retains the reference to the Ohm more clearly.

There is another brief sword fight involving Yupa later in the film, but I would gladly have watched far more of “Yupa the swordsman.”

The final part of this prophecy is completed by Nausicaä, but I have included the whole passage here as Obaba’s quotation.

It is one of the most memorable pieces of dialogue in the film. At the same time, its origin is surprisingly unclear.

The opening tapestry hints that something like it may have happened before, but there is no decisive explanation.

The larger difficulty is that the prophecy is fulfilled with astonishing precision.

Nausicaä appears in blue clothing on what looks like a golden field, reconnects humanity with the natural world and becomes the figure who offers hope of purification.

I consider Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind a masterpiece. Even so, this is perhaps the one part of the film that remains slightly vague for me.

Ending this part of the story as a miracle is what leaves it slightly hazy for me.

That is probably an unfair complaint, mind you. It does not change my conviction that the film is a masterpiece.

Two points in the dub caught my attention: what I heard as plaid, and the word “planet.”

One is the wording I transcribed as “plaid in blue.” I am not confident of that hearing. “Clad in blue,” meaning dressed in blue, would fit the context; “plaid” describes checked fabric, such as the pattern on a Scottish kilt.

The other is “planet.” To me, that word suggests a view of Earth from space, or a sense of the solar system.

Wouldn’t “earth” have been more appropriate here?

This line did not make my personal top three, but I suspect that almost everyone who has seen the film remembers it.

There is something satisfying about its rhythm. It is the sort of line that makes you want to find an opportunity to say something equally dramatic yourself.

Kurotowa speaks it after hearing that Kushana may have died. For the first time, a man of common birth can imagine himself taking control of the operation.

The Japanese expression udatsu no agaranai describes a person who never succeeds, advances or rises above an unimpressive position.

It is the sort of grand remark I would like to find an excuse to make myself.

The moment restores something youthful to a character who had previously seemed cynical and vaguely middle-aged, even though Kurotowa is only twenty-seven.

His period of supremacy lasts for less time than Akechi Mitsuhide’s famous “three-day rule.” On the other hand, the fact that it ends so quickly may ultimately save his life.

Kurotowa himself would probably not consider that much of a consolation.

Kurotowa says this when the Giant Warrior’s body splits and begins to collapse.

It is one of the most memorable lines in the film. It also appears, at least at first glance, to contain a fundamental contradiction.

If the important fact is that the Giant Warrior is rotting, then one might expect Kurotowa to say that they were too late.

If the important fact is that they awakened it too early, then one might expect him to say that it was still immature or incomplete.

Instead, he says both:

I still have not resolved this discrepancy. Does anyone have a convincing explanation?

“Rotting” is a direct rendering of kusatte, the state of decay that makes the Japanese line so puzzling.

The dub’s “falling apart” avoids the puzzling reference to rot and describes what is happening more straightforwardly.

For that reason, I think the dub may be the more straightforward description of the situation, even if the subtitle keeps the memorable strangeness of the Japanese.

One of the Valley’s elders says this after being captured by Kushana’s forces.

The line places Nausicaä and Kushana side by side as two very different kinds of leader.

Kushana sees the elder’s damaged hand as evidence of the horror of the Sea of Decay. Nausicaä sees the same hand and tells him that it is beautiful because it belongs to a hardworking person.

The hands are not clean, smooth or conventionally attractive. They have been worn down by labor and damaged by disease.

Those words make me want to see and speak about other people as Nausicaä does.

This line has been embedded somewhere deep in my mind for a very long time.

It makes me want to become the kind of person capable of saying something like that to another human being. It also makes me want to be the kind of person who could receive such words and continue to treasure them.

I suspect that I have wanted to live that way for years and have never quite managed it.

The scene also reminds me how words spoken kindly can stay with the person who hears them.

Viewed in isolation, this line can now sound slightly preachy.

Even so, the idea behind it seems to have been carved into me at an almost unconscious level.

The contrast is between the speed of destruction and the slow work of nurturing a forest.

The reason the elder’s words do not feel like an empty slogan is that the film has already shown us the difficult reality from which they emerge.

The film shows them living with the harsh reality of the Sea of Decay.

Their preference for water and wind is not a fashionable opinion adopted from a safe distance. It is a philosophy formed through labor and survival.

A person eating ice cream in a heated room during winter can easily deliver a speech about living in harmony with nature. Without a reality behind the words, however, such a speech may sound like little more than activism performed for its own sake.

It is the reality behind the words that makes them persuasive.

The Japanese verb sodateru means to grow, raise or nurture. The subtitle uses “sustain,” emphasizing preservation rather than the slow act of raising a new forest.

The final sentence is wonderfully modest. He does not declare that the Valley’s people are morally superior. He simply says:

“We prefer water and wind.”

These are the final words of Lastelle, the princess of Pejite, after Nausicaä pulls her from the wreckage of a Tolmekian transport ship.

Even as she is dying, Lastelle does not ask Nausicaä to save her. Her final concern is the destruction of the cargo carried by the aircraft: the Giant Warrior.

That she uses her last strength to think about preventing a catastrophe rather than preserving herself reflects the pride and responsibility of a princess.

Immediately before the line, Nausicaä looks at Lastelle’s chest and stops speaking.

As a child, I did not understand what Nausicaä had seen.

Looking at the scene now, the implication seems clear: Lastelle’s chest has been crushed or terribly injured by the wreckage of the transport ship.

If that reading is correct, even breathing must have been extraordinarily difficult. The fact that she is able to leave any final message at all is almost miraculous.

That makes the content of the message even more striking. Her final words are not about herself. They are about preventing the Giant Warrior from being used.

“Cargo” means the goods carried by a ship or aircraft. The dub also uses it in “You must burn the cargo.”

That this is what Lastelle thinks of in her final moments still commands my respect.