Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki might consider his single greatest work to be not one of his films, but rather the thousand-page manga epic Nausicaä that he labored to complete between 1982 and 1994. In Nausicaä, genetically engineered weapons have burned civilization to the ground, leaving behind the seeds of a new global ecology that has made humans aliens on their own planet. A thousand years after the holocaust, Nausicaä's eponymous princess-a girl both soldier and scientist-seeks to reconcile the last remnants of her still-warring species with the monstrous biological order overtaking Earth. Although this movie adaptation represents an early draft of the story-one Miyazaki would change considerably as the manga evolved-it was and remains a stirring, sweeping epic of war and adventure, and one of the best science-fiction films made anywhere during the 1980s.

This subtitled version of Nausicaä is recommended for ages ten and up.