Nausicaä: Sub, Disney's Dub or Warriors of the Wind?
The Nausicaä film has two English dubs: the cut 1980s Warriors of the Wind and Disney's complete 2005 version. What each is and what ANN said.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind has had two English dubs, and they are not the same film. The first, released in the 1980s as Warriors of the Wind, was cut and renamed; the second, Disney's 2005 version, is the complete film with a Hollywood cast. Against both stands the Japanese track with English subtitles. This page sets out what each version is, who is in it, and what Anime News Network's reviewers said.
The short answer
Watch the complete film, in either language, and skip Warriors of the Wind unless you want it as history. Both ANN reviewers who graded Disney's releases gave the dub and the subtitled version the same grade, A−.
Warriors of the Wind
The first English version came from New World Pictures, which ANN's user-edited encyclopedia lists as licensing the film under the Warriors of the Wind title, with a producer credited for the “1985 dub.” ANN's reviewers do not mince words. Theron Martin, in his 2005 review, says it was “so heavily edited and rewritten that it cannot rightfully be called the same movie.” Todd Ciolek, in his 2014 review, calls it “the carelessly abridged Warriors of the Wind cut” and describes it as “the one where Nausicaä is renamed ‘Zandra’ and a third of the plot is gone.”
Game Rant's 2022 history of the dub puts the cut at “roughly twenty-six minutes” and says it left a film of ninety-five minutes; ANN's encyclopedia lists the original at 116 minutes, so those figures do not quite add up, and we do not settle the exact length. Game Rant also writes that when Miyazaki saw the result, he vowed not to license more of his films unless the companies promised not to cut them. ANN's user-edited encyclopedia says much the same: that Miyazaki and Ghibli were horrified by the changes and that Miyazaki afterward required a “no edit” clause in his contracts. Neither is a first-hand account.
The Japanese track
The film premiered in Japan on March 11, 1984, according to ANN's encyclopedia. Ciolek names Sumi Shimamoto as Nausicaä and Gorō Naya as Lord Yupa; the encyclopedia adds Yoshiko Sakakibara as Kushana and Yōji Matsuda as Asbel.
Disney's dub
Martin's review describes Disney's 2005 DVD as “the first true adaptation of the original, uncut movie into the English market.” Its principal cast, as named by Martin and Ciolek, with the Japanese voices from ANN's encyclopedia:
| Role | Japanese | Disney English |
|---|---|---|
| Nausicaä | Sumi Shimamoto | Alison Lohman |
| Lord Yupa | Gorō Naya | Patrick Stewart |
| Kushana | Yoshiko Sakakibara | Uma Thurman |
| Asbel | Yōji Matsuda | Shia LaBeouf |
| Mito | Ichirō Nagai | Edward James Olmos |
| Kurotowa | Iemasa Kayumi | Chris Sarandon |
What the reviews say about the two tracks
Martin found the Hollywood cast committed throughout and named Chris Sarandon's Kurotowa the highlight. Ciolek thought Patrick Stewart “a good Yupa,” said Uma Thurman gives Kushana “a detached sense of savagery,” and found Shia LaBeouf “tolerable as Prince Asbel”; Lohman, in the hardest role, “slips only when forced to hit the film's most melodramatic highs.” He allows that some will prefer the Japanese voices. Both graded the dub and the sub A−.
On the script, Martin says the dub “follows the meaning of the original script closely, though it can stray quite a bit in exact wording.” His main example is the name of the forest, the Sea of Decay in the subtitles and “toxic jungle” in the dub, a change he thinks may be more accurate. He also notes that the giant insects are “ohms” in the dub and “ohmu” in the subtitles.
How the English lines differ
Wikiquote's Nausicaä page gives one line of Obaba's in both versions, labeled by the page itself: “The air is full of rage” as the subtitle and “The atmosphere is saturated with anger” as the dub. Those are transcriptions, not the releases, so treat them as a guide to the gap rather than as official text. Our best Nausicaä quotes use the same transcription, and our page on subtitles, captions and dub dialogue covers why versions drift.
Releases
Disney's DVD arrived in 2005 and its Blu-ray later; Ciolek found little missing from the Blu-ray beyond some slack translation in the credits, and joked that all it lacks is Warriors of the Wind. In 2017 GKIDS took over North American home video: ANN reported a Blu-ray and DVD re-release of Nausicaä on October 31, 2017, with English subtitles provided by Ghibli. We have not checked where each version currently streams.
Which to pick
Take the complete film. Take the dub for Patrick Stewart and Uma Thurman and a script that, by Martin's account, keeps the meaning while changing the words; take the sub for the original cast and, on GKIDS's 2017 discs, Ghibli's own subtitles. Warriors of the Wind belongs on this page as history, since by Game Rant's account and ANN's encyclopedia it shaped Miyazaki's insistence on uncut releases, not as a way to see the film. For the film's ending in either language, see the ending explainer.