But I had remembered liking it. The glider, the giant bugs, etc.
I spent several years casually trying to find it. But “big ass bug anime” is kind of vague. Eventually I just started looking through catalogs of the timeframe from various distributors and studios.
I don’t know how or when, but eventually I was doing a deep dive on Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and read the description of Naussica. Looked up screenshots. And there it was, that one bit from my childhood.
I found it again when mail order Netflix first came out in my early 20s. It was like rediscovering my childhood and completing a character arc.
Some of that is explainable but the pegasus, dude on the pegasus, and Dr Doom ... makes absolutely zero sense. I guess this is the rock opera version we never got. Maybe Dr Doom somehow sorta kinda was supposed to be Princess Kushana..?? I think the squid guy is a firewarrior, but so is the "sandworm" -- some kind of fever dream Ohm/Gorgon/Firewarrior mix. But why is a tiny adult fire warrior riding a baby giant fire warrior? lololol
I can only imagine the requirements gathering session that lead to this debacle.
Legendary.
[1]: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/00/fe/12/00fe121ffa3600cfb14bbbe1c...
Edit: Dear haters, I <3 <3 <3 Warriors of the Wind and all things Nausicaa, incl. the quirky cover. I even love your downvotes, it means you read this and cared enough to click the button, which hopefully means you are defending the cover. So I love you too!
I'm... appalled by that cover. I wasn't familiar with it. It's bizarre how all the elements of Nausicaa are technically there, yet it looks completely different (in a bad way). Nothing at all like the actual artwork of the movie!
I remember as a skinny 80s kid, walking barefoot into a videostore near the beach in Spain where I lived. No internet, TV only had 4 channels, and aside from the gift of Dragon Ball on TV nothing else that interested or inspired me.
Then out of hundreds of videos I saw this, I had no idea who Ghibli, anime, even was and had few friends as I was autistic.
Yet I could tell from a couple of pictures on the cover it had themes of flying and war beautifully painted.
I ended up watching that, in the late 80s on a crt , in my swim trunks, and although we had next to no money, and plastic furniture in the house ( ironically we lived in the spanish "malibu")... just my family were common workers... I ended up spending a couple of dollars to rent it out a number of times.
Thank you Miyazaki and Studio Ghlibli for your work, it elevated souls in far reaches.