Nausicaa even gets shot! They literally opened fire with a machine gun on her. I'm not saying the violence makes it good but it's done well.
I really like Nausicaa's design too. The animation was also top notch, both the fighting and Nausicaa herself, especially her hair. This is an aesthetic movie so you can break it up into a bunch of cool GIFs for avis and sigs (very few movies have this many GIF worthy scenes).
I saw it dubbed. The dub was very good. It sounded like they had all theater people voice the roles. They even had Patrick Stewart (I recognized his voice halfway through the film). The main actress gives a realistic performance, she doesn't sound forced at all or like she's playing a part. I like that kind of style more, I find most anime actresses overact.
Unlike most Miyazaki movies this isn't about a little girl. Nausicaa is at least a teen but could be early 20s or even much older considering how she just interacts with a bunch of elderly people and little kids. And that leads into one of the only flaws of the film. There's way, way too many old guys that all seem the same (it's kind of gives an almost Snow White and the 7 Dwarves impression with all these guys). And they take up too much screen time. The movie would be perfect if they could trim a lot of that out and focus more on Nausicaa.
The music was good and so was the story but it's the beautiful animation and character design that I liked the most. Btw there is literally an evangelion in this movie (robot with a flesh skin and then melts into a skeleton just like a dead evangelion); this sequence was also directed by Anno himself.
It's my new favorite Miyazaki film. It had a strong beginning and a really good end but the middle was kind of boring. My old favorite Kiki's I felt started a lot better than it ended but this movie has a strong beginning and ending. It was cool to see Nausicaa load and shoot a gun in the opening scene. It really sets the tone for the rest of the film that this is going to be hardcore.
