Giant Warrior
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
“
|
A Giant Warrior? One of those that incinerated the world in the Seven Days of Fire?
|
„
|
— Mito (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) |
The Giant Warriors (巨神兵 Kyoshinhei, lit. "Giant God Warrior") are giant divine biomechanical lifeforms who first appeared in Hayao Miyazaki's 1982 manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and later debuted onscreen in Miyazaki's 1984 anime film adaptation of the same name. The creatures also featured prominently in the 2012 Studio Ghibli short film A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, which is based on the prologue in both versions of Nausicaä.
A race of giant destructive beings, in A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, the Giant Warriors materialized in the modern day, descending upon Tokyo in the form of spores before transforming into giant humanoid creatures and annihilating the majority of human civilization on Earth in 7 days. In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, after they laid waste to the advanced human civilization that created them, they deteriorated and perished. A millennia later, the empire of Tolmekia, led by Princess Kushana, abstracted a Giant Warrior embryo from the city of Pejite, intending to use it to obliterate the Sea of Decay. However, the Tolmekian airship transporting the God Warrior crashed into the Valley of the Wind. Thus, Kushana ordered her forces to overrun and control the valley. For revenge on the Tolmekians, two Pejite warriors lured giant Ohmu insects from the Sea of Decay into the valley, causing Kushana to awaken the Warrior prematurely. After firing two blasts of its proton beam, the creature collapsed and died.
Name
The Giant Warriors' Japanese name literally translates to Giant God Warrior. While "Giant Warrior" is the most prevalent translation today—used in Disney's English dub and subtitles for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, on the packaging for Figma's Giant Warrior figure, and in Viz Media's 2019 translation of the book The Art of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind―other names have also been offered over the years. These include Giant God-Soldiers in Tokuma Shoten's Nausicaä English Conversation Book,[4] God Warriors in Viz Media's English translation of Hayao Miyazaki's original manga,[5] and Fire Demons in both Manson International's heavily-edited version of the film and Tokuma Shoten's 1993 U.S. translation of the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind picture books.[6]
Development
Hideaki Anno animated the Giant Warriors in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, based on Hayao Miyazaki's original storyboards for the monsters. Anno wanted to draw his own storyboards for a scene in which an Ohmu horde battles a God Warrior who tosses an Ohmu into the air before being crushed by the horde. Unfortunately, he was not able to create storyboards for the scene due to time constraints. Accordingly, Anno requested Miyazaki create storyboards for a scene where one of the Warriors melts.[7]
For A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, Takayuki Takeya constructed several new 180-cm-tall models based on sketches made by Mahiro Maeda.[3]
Design
|
This article or section needs to be cleaned up to meet the standards of Wikizilla. Reason: Add physical appearance from Nausicaä and clean up God Warrior appearance. |
|
The Giant Warrior's spore form resembles an orange glowing powder, it slowly floats in the air.
The Heisei Giant Warrior in its final form resembles a humanoid-like creature. It is brown in color and has 2 green glass-like eyes on its head, 4 yellow glowing spikes on its shoulders, 6 smaller spikes on its back, several small green lights on its chest and belly, and 2 small green lights on its forehead. Its body resembles a human skeleton while its head is more alien-shaped. It has big teeth, when it uses its beam attack its teeth turn upwards, and then the weapon comes out of its mouth.
Its flying form is not much different than its final form, its spikes on its back glow more than usual and they are much longer with rays of light between each spike giving the impression of wings.
History
Showa era
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
A millennium after the entire world was ravaged in an event known in legend as the Seven Days of Fire by towering, radioactive bioweapons known as the Giant Warriors, said to have been descended from "Earth's most evil tribe", humanity's survivors were broken into scattered, warring states at the mercy of a toxic jungle of fungi known as the Sea of Decay, guarded and maintained by an ecosystem of gigantic insects. Littered as landmarks throughout the lands, the massive skeletons of the Warriors became fossilized relics of the age before the calamity. The kingdom of Tolmekia raided the city of Pejite after a lone remaining embryo of a Warrior was unearthed from deep below the city. During the creature's transport back to Tolmekia, the transport ship was assailed by the insects of the jungle, forcing it to crash in the Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom free of the Sea of Decay's poisonous spores due to prevailing winds from the ocean. The embryo of the creature was unfazed by the explosion in the crash, and Tolmekian armed forces commanded by Princess Kushana soon raided and occupied the valley in order to resurrect the Warrior and utilize its ancient powers to incinerate the Sea of Decay. The survivors of Pejite retaliated against the Tolmekian military by luring herds of gigantic Ohmu insects to the valley. The Warrior was prematurely activated by Kushana to destroy the advancing Ohmu, but after unleashing two blasts of its devastating proton beam, the unstable creature melted and died.
Heisei era
A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo
During an average day in Tokyo, mysterious glowing spores descended on the city, with its population speculating online that it is an omen of an impending disaster. The following day, people watched in disbelief as the orange spores assembled in the sky to become an enormous being known as a Giant Warrior. The strange yellow streaks of light on the Giant Warrior's backside retracted into him as it descended from the sky. The Giant Warrior stood staring at its surroundings before opening its mouth to reveal a device that unleashed a horrifying beam, obliterating the city in a matter of hours and initiating the Seven Days of Fire. Shortly thereafter, an army of God Warriors descended from the sky to join their comrade, and proceeded to attack the entire world. Over a period of just seven days, the God Warriors would go on to subjugate the entire world, leaving humanity with little hope of survival.
Abilities
Proton beam
Each Giant Warrior can shoot a powerful purple beam from its mouth called a proton beam (プロトンビーム puroton bīmu).[8] The beam is capable of destroying almost any material, and is shown to melt concrete and cleave buildings in half. The force of the beam alone is shown hurtling scores of gigantic Ohmu insects hundreds of meters into the air, before incinerating them in an explosion equivalent to a detonation of a low-yield nuclear weapon.
Red energy bullets
The Giant Warriors can shoot red energy bullets from their mouths. The red beam is not as powerful as the proton beam and can only be fired rapidly. These energy bullets are typically used in conjunction with the proton beam to destroy larger targets, as demonstrated when the Giant Warrior in A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo first fired an energy bullet to destroy the base of Tokyo Tower, then fired its proton beam through the tower's upper section to cause it to collapse and explode.
A Giant Warrior shooting its red energy bullets in A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo
Flight
In A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, a Giant Warrior can be seen drifting over Tokyo before descending upon the city.
Size changing
The Giant Warriors can change their size.
Spear
In the prologues of both the Nausicaä manga and film, as well the final scene of A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, the numerous Giant Warriors are seen holding spear-like weapons, although they never use them.
Weaknesses
If a Giant Warrior embryo is awakened too early, it will be unstable and collapse after several minutes of battle. The half-formed Giant Warrior in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was only able to fire its proton beam twice before perishing.
Comics
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982-1994) - Tokuma Shoten
Gallery
- Main article: Giant Warrior/Gallery.
In other languages
| ||||||||||||||||
Cantonese Chinese
German
Italian
Trivia
- The appearance of the Giant Warriors' red energy bullets may be based on the Thunder of Laputa superweapon from Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky.
External links
References
This is a list of references for Giant Warrior. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
|
| ||
Comments
Showing 27 comments. When commenting, please remain respectful of other users, stay on topic, and avoid role-playing and excessive punctuation. Comments which violate these guidelines may be removed by administrators.
|
|
|
