Development
Nausicaä has her origins in Miyazaki's aborted anime adaption of Richard Corben's Rowlf, a comic book about princess Maryara of the Land of Canis and her dog Rowlf.[6] Miyazaki found similarities with Beauty and the Beast. The similarities inspired in him the desire to create a character to highlight the theme of "devotion, self-giving". Finding Corben's princess "bland", Miyazaki imagined "a young girl with character, brimming with sensitivity, to contrast her with an incapable father". Named "Yara" (ヤラ) by Miyazaki, short for Corben's Maryara, this character was a young princess left "bearing the crushing weight of her destiny" when her sick father abdicated, bestowing the burden of the kingdom on her and forcing her to bridle her personal aspirations. Miyazaki's Yara is initially portrayed with a dog "which always accompanied her from a young age and especially cared for his mistress". This pet dog is found in many design sketches of Yara but is omitted when the story develops. Canis valley eventually becomes Valley of the Wind and the pet dog is replaced with a fictional fox squirrel. Miyazaki intended Yara to wear short pants and moccasins, exposing her bare legs "to effectively show vigorous movements and a dynamic character", but he had to abandon that idea as it did not make sense to expose her legs in the harsh environment that began to evolve as he developed the setting for the story.
The transition from Yara to Nausicaä came when Miyazaki began to develop his own character, after the project to adapt Corben's comic fell through. The character went through a few intermediate phases in which the name was retained. Miyazaki had taken a liking to the name "Nausicaä" and he used it to rename his main character.
The name comes from the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa of the Odyssey, who assisted Odysseus. The Nausicaa of the Odyssey was "renowned for her love of nature and music, her fervid imagination and disregard for material possessions".
Miyazaki has written that he identified particularly with Bernard Evslin's description of the character in Gods, Demigods and Demons, translated into Japanese by Minoru Kobayashi. Miyazaki expressed disappointment about not finding the same splendor in the character he had found in Evlin's book when he read Homer's original poem.
Another inspiration is the main character from The Lady who Loved Insects, a Japanese tale from the Heian period, one of the short stories collected in the Tsutsumi Chūnagon Monogatari. It tells the story of a young princess who is considered to be rather eccentric by her peers because, although of marriageable age, she prefers to spend her time outdoors studying insects, rather than grooming herself in accordance with the rules and expectations of the society of her era. The princess questions why other people see only the beauty of the butterfly and do not recognize the beauty and usefulness of the caterpillar from which it must grow.[17] Miyazaki notes that the lady would not be perceived the same way in our own time as in the Heian period. He wonders about her ultimate fate, which is not explained in the surviving fragments of the incomplete texts. Miyazaki has said that Evslin's Nausicaa reminds him of this princess, stating that the two characters "became fused into one and created the story".
Miyazaki also said that Nausicaä is "governed by a kind of animism".[18] Miyazaki felt that it was important to make Nausicaä female because he felt that this allowed him to create more complex villains, saying, "If we try to make an adventure story with a male lead, we have no choice but to do Indiana Jones, with a Nazi or someone else who is a villain in everyone's eyes." Miyazaki said of Nausicaä that "[She] is not a protagonist who defeats an opponent, but a protagonist who understands, or accepts. She is someone who lives in a different dimension. That kind of person should be female, not male." When asked about Nausicaä's "vision and intellect far greater than other people's", her "distinguished fighting skills", as well as her leadership, including taking "the role of legendary savior", Miyazaki said that he wanted to create a heroine who was not a "consummately normal" person, "just like you or everyone else around you".
Nausicaä's affinity with the wind was inspired by translations of European geography books from the Middle Ages, where mastery of the wind was described as "witchcraft" and was feared and respected. Mills were described in these books as being used for "pushing sand dunes or grinding grain", which left an impression on Miyazaki. Inspired by the Earthsea cycle of Ursula K. Le Guin, Miyazaki coined the term kaze tsukai (風使い) as an alternative to Le Guin's "Master Windkey", which was translated into Japanese as "one who controls the wind" (風の司).
Miyazaki had intended to make Yara more pulpy than his other female characters, a feature of sketches of her created between 1980 and 1982. However, he realized that he could not draw Nausicaä nude without feeling like he should apologize, changing his idea of the story to be more "spiritual".[19] When Miyazaki draws Nausicaä in poses which are a little "sexy", like the cover of Animage in March 1993, where Nausicaä smiles while wearing a torn tank top, he cautions that "Nausicaä never takes such a pose"; however, this does not prevent him from drawing her like this, saying, "Well, if I hadn't drawn her as beautiful, there would have been some problems. I thought that I should settle down and draw her consistently, but every time I drew her, her face changed—even I was overpowered."[19] He felt that over the 14-year run of the manga, rather than Nausicaä changing as a character, instead Miyazaki felt that he understood her better.[19] When Miyazaki is obligated to draw Nausicaä smiling for covers or character posters, he finds it difficult because "it does not match the character of [my] heroine". He does not like "representing Nausicaä as too radiant or with the attitudes typical of a heroine", and imagines that instead of this, when she is alone, she has a "serious ... calm and collected" (but "not surly") attitude. He regards her "sombre and reserved" nature to be offset by her femininity. Miyazaki believes that characters like this, "far from being fulfilled ... are the most altruistic."
The kana Miyazaki chose to write Nausicaä's name in, ナウシカ (na-u-shi-ka), follows the spelling used by Kobayashi for the translations of Evslin's work. Miyazaki prefers it to other transcriptions of Nausicaä also in use, ノシカ (no-shi-ka) and ノジカ (no-ji-ka, ji pronounced ). In English, the Greek name is normally pronounced, but in the soundtrack for the film it is.
Helen McCarthy considers Shuna from Shuna's Journey to be prototypical to Nausicaä,.[20]
