ahh, technical difficulties...

We watched the beginning of Nausicaa today--until the DVD failed us. There are scratches on it more typical of being left reading-side-down and left to scrape against something, rather than much use. Which is sad.

But this was my first time rewatching it, and the gorgeousness of some of the images is just fantastic. Miyazaki's way of thinking outside the frame...

It's interesting, too, to see in his first original film, basically, all the characteristics of a Miyazaki film.

A strong, somewhat enigmatic woman of ideals. A woman in power with a compelling air on the other side of the conflict. Monster-movie monsters that become sympathetic, and a detailed attention to the life of common people in the created worlds.

And that ecological world-building like in my favorites, Mononoke, Spirited Away.

Also some style characteristics used later in similarly themed Mononoke--flashback sequences with a dream-like horror to them.

***
Having given up on this DVD, I went to watch Black & White, which the mysoju.com version was not loading, and I went to dramacrazy.com and...

There's a GORGEOUS version. And it's the one that's not subtitled. The others are all in 240p definition. T____T

Practically inhumane, I say.

I speak two whole words of Mandarin, and I think my tones are wrong...