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Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather emerge from the toxic jungle to save humanity from its warmongering ways through incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Inspired by Mark’s successful family trip to the movies to watch My Neighbor Totoro, the Overthinkers turn their attention to a different Studio Ghibli film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Although it has many more stabbings and weapons of mass destruction than Totoro, both movies do feature at least one adorable woodland creature.

The panel explores the many artistic and thematic elements that makes this movie such a timeless classic: Hayao Miyazaki’s mastery of the canvas, expressed in the deliberate motion of drifting clouds and the kinetic geometry of the wind itself; Joe Hisaishe’s sweeping and stylistically diverse score; the vascular horror of the God Warrior embryo; and the symbolic power of a last bastion of humanity sheltering in a wrecked vessel, under siege from all sides.

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Episode 932: I Have a Relationship… with a TREE originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]