Mehve (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Japanese: 風の谷のナウシカ Hepburn: Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a 1984 Japanese animated epic science fantasy adventure film adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his 1982 manga of the same name. It was animated by Topcraft for Tokuma Shoten and Hakuhodo, and distributed by the Toei Company.

 

Taking place in a future post-apocalyptic world, the film tells the story of Nausicaä (Shimamoto), the young princess of the Valley of the Wind. She becomes embroiled in a struggle with Tolmekia, a kingdom that tries to use an ancient weapon to eradicate a jungle of mutant giant insects.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

As far as the work of Hayao Miyazaki goes, this is where it all started for me. Okay, arguably for him as well… and probably a great many of his fans worldwide. But that doesn’t make Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) any the less special for me.

Nausicaä wasn’t quite my first foray into anime. Depending on how you define it, that honour goes to either Science Ninja Team Gatchaman [Japanese: 科学忍者隊ガッチャマン] or Battle of the Planets as we called in back in the 70s when I was a kid, or Super Dimension Fortress Macross [Japanese: 超時空要塞マクロス] or Robotech as we called it back in the 80s when I was a slightly bigger kid. However, it was the first time I saw anime in its original Japanese language and uncut form.

I doubt I’ll ever forget that glorious Saturday afternoon I spent at my first local comic convention. It was incredibly tiny by today’s standards, but I did get to meet both Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee before they were (really) famous. However the standout for me was the “anime corner” where a few wide-eyed enthusiasts huddled together to watch crappy VHS copies of some anime movies smuggled back from Japan. In those pre-internet days, Japan seemed as far away as the moon, and with the import costs of ordering a VHS tape – if you could even find a mail-order vendor – was astronomical. As such, it was standard practice for anime clubs to pass around VHS copies to defray the costs.

That day we watched two movies: MegaZone 23 (Japanese: メガゾーン23) – part 2, which scared the beejezus out of me… sex! blood! mayhem! sex!; and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which left me breathless for completely different reasons… majestic! thoughtful! some BIG insects. I’ll talk more about them in my Ohmu project.

The build:

But who can forget that glider? Who wouldn’t want a personal flying machine as beautiful and stylish as Nausicaä’s Mehve? Fast forward to 2017, and I knew that the Mehve was going to hold a place of honour in my Ghibli build project. It was almost destined.

One day while rifling though a box of spare kit parts in Tokyo (coincidentally I suppose. It’s amazing how much closer Japan feels when you live and work in Seoul and you travel for business) I happened across a pair of white wings. I think they were off some early boxing of the St. Croix MiG-3 mould, but to me they looked just like Nausicaä’s Mehve.

In retrospect though, that was probably a bit of a hinderance. Because they looked SO much like the Mehve to me, I basically crafted the project to fit the donor parts rather than the other way around. On my first attempt at a 1/72 scale Mehve, I used the Nausicaä figure from the Bandai Valley Gunship kit and just eyeballed it. As a result, the glider was both over-sized (probably closer to 1/48) and the wrong shape. The wings didn’t really give me that great, sweeping “gull wing” curve. So although it looked neat, it wasn’t really what I was going for – and it didn’t take long for some of my mates over at Scalemates.com to call me out for it… albeit in a gentle way.

So it was back to the drawing board – literally. This time, instead of just eyeballing it and using “good enough”as my measuring stick, I sat down and drew some plans. I used the 1/20 scale Bandai tooling as a guide and then set to work literally bending some plastic to my will.  Unfortunately, I was still trying to cheat a bit.  I knew I needed a bend in the wings, so I used some already-bent wings leftover from an Academy 1/144 F-4E Phantom II.  But, sure enough, after getting a little ways into it, I realized that the bend was in the wrong place.  So I scrapped that one two, and decided to just bite the bullet and put the gull-wing bend in myself by doing some careful cutting and glueing.

Once I set out on the right track, it wasn’t too difficult to get the rest of the shape right. All that practice certainly helped, and all it took was some generous putty and some serious sanding. Once that was done, I just needed to scribe in some panel lines, paint it all white and add a few little accessories.

In the end though, I was much happier with the result.  Let me know if you agree!