A thousand years hence one of the few remaining places on Earth where people can survive is the tiny kingdom known as "The Valley of the Winds". Surrounding the kingdom is the "Sea of Decay", a toxic wasteland which manages to support an ecology of creepily poisonous plants and armour-plated monsters. Or so it would appear. Nausica((auml)), the young princess who's next in line to the throne, is fascinated by the flora and fauna outside the Valley, and senses they hold the key to human survival: she is the only one who realises, and only just realises in time, how much of a disaster the impending war with a nearby kingdom is likely to be.

Like many Westerners, my introduction to the works of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki was the 1997 film Princess Mononoke. I never really cared for it. ("Princess Monotony", my wife called it. I wish I'd thought of that.) It wasn't until a few years later I discovered that Mononoke was a retread of an earlier film that had made Miyazaki's reputation (and fortune) in Japan; and it turns out that Miyazaki's first film about a princess whose close connection with nature prevents catastrophe ((ndash)) but cannot prevent tragic loss ((ndash)) was made with more passion and purity than his later one. At times it's heartbreaking ((ndash)) but it's by no means depressing, and I defy you to walk away feeling empty.