Film

Warriors of the Wind

Name: Warriors of the Wind
Genre: Adventure, Animation, Fantasy
Released: 1984
Cast: Sumi Shimamoto, Ichiro Nagai, Gorō Naya, Yoji Matsuda, Yoshiko Sakakibara

Action

This is the notorious 1985 export cut of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — trimmed by roughly twenty minutes, retitled, and sold as a scrappy monster-fighting adventure rather than the ecological parable it actually is. The visuals still soar and the momentum still works, but the ambiguity, the philosophy, and much of the world-building were left on the cutting-room floor. Watch it as a curiosity and as the reason Miyazaki later demanded uncut releases of everything.

TMDb rating

4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love hand-drawn worlds where ecology and wonder carry the story, the sort of fable that trusts a gentle heroine and a strange, sprawling landscape to do the work.

Skip it if you need tight plotting and sharp modern pacing, since this is a 95-minute film with a slow, episodic rhythm and an English voice cast that can feel stiff.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a leisurely hour and a half, with long stretches of quiet looking and thinking before the action arrives; it rewards patience over momentum.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Princess Mononoke1997

Miyazaki's own return to this exact battlefield — forest gods against industry — but rendered with more blood, more ambiguity, and no easy villains. It's the film this one was trying to be before the scissors got to it.

But It's darker and more violent than anything here, with a body count that might shock viewers expecting family-friendly fantasy.

Castle in the Sky1986

Made right after this one, with the same team and the same appetite for flying machines and doomed technology, but told at full length and without a single frame cut.

But The pacing is gentler and more old-fashioned — less monster action, more airship romance.

The Secret of NIMH1982

American animation from the same era grappling with the same question: what do we owe the natural world we've poisoned? Gorgeous, eerie hand-drawn artistry throughout.

But Slower and more melancholy, aimed a bit younger despite its genuinely dark edges.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Warriors of the Wind

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Godzilla1954

Both imagine nature's fury as a direct, monstrous consequence of human war — giant creatures born from wreckage humanity made, forcing a reckoning with what was unleashed.

The film that invented the modern monster-as-metaphor decades before Miyazaki's insects. Somber, haunted, and far more about grief than spectacle.

But Black-and-white, slow by modern standards, and mournful rather than thrilling — closer to a funeral than an adventure.

Watership Down1978

Rabbits instead of insects, but the same sense of a world at war with itself and creatures caught in the crossfire. Unflinching, beautifully drawn, and genuinely frightening in places.

But Traumatized a generation of children — it's bleaker and more violent than its cuddly reputation suggests.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest1992

The most direct descendant of this film's ecological message, minus the ambiguity — a rainforest, a toxic menace, and a girl trying to save both. Colorful and unmistakably of its moment.

But Its environmentalism is broad and cartoonish where this film's was troubled and philosophical.

Spirited Away2001

Another girl navigating a world of spirits and consequences she didn't create, but here Miyazaki gets the uncut, unhurried canvas this story deserved. Dazzling and strange.

But It's a different shape of story — no war, no army, more dreamlike wandering than epic quest.

The Iron Giant1999

A different shape of the same fable — something enormous and feared turns out gentler than the humans around it. Warm, funny, and quietly devastating by the end.

But Its scale is much smaller and its tone more sentimental, closer to fable than epic.

Kiki's Delivery Service1989

For anyone who loved this film's sense of flight and independence more than its war — this is Miyazaki at his warmest, no apocalypse required.

But Almost nothing else survives the comparison; it's a low-stakes coming-of-age story, not an adventure.

Ponyo2008

The gentlest possible echo of this film's themes — the sea rebelling against what humans have done to it — filtered through a children's fairy tale instead of a war story.

But It's aimed squarely at young children and lacks any of the original's stakes or dread.

Koyaanisqatsi1983

A wordless documentary literally titled "life out of balance" — the same vision of humanity and nature at war, but stripped of plot and character and shown as pure image and rhythm.

No story, no dialogue — just breathtaking imagery of nature and industry colliding, scored by Philip Glass. It will change how you watch this film's toxic-jungle sequences.

But There's no narrative at all; if you need characters or plot, it will feel like an art installation, not a movie.

Mad Max1979

Same post-collapse wasteland, same tribal factions scavenging a poisoned world, but reimagined as lean, grimy action cinema instead of hand-drawn myth.

Strip away the animation and the philosophy and you get this — a scrappy, low-budget vision of a world that's eaten itself, with car chases instead of giant insects.

But It's cheap, mean, and violent in a much more exploitative way — no gods, no redemption, just survival.

People

Production

Michitaka KondoExecutive Producer
Tooru HaraExecutive Producer
Yasuyoshi TokumaExecutive Producer
Shigehiro SuzukiOther
Isao TakahataProducer
Mamoru KanbeProduction Assistant
Nanako ShimazakiProduction Assistant
Naoyuki OshikiriProduction Assistant
Kiyoshi SakaiProduction Manager

Warriors of the Wind

Where to watch

3 more

Checked 8 November 2026. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Age rating

PGin United States

Ratings come from the people who assign them in each country, and they do not mean the same thing in any two. We show the one given where you are.

Released: 1984
Genre: Adventure, Animation, Fantasy
Status: Released
Runtime: 95 min