This the second issue of “Swords Broken,” a series of blog posts about broken swords. The first post can be found here.
October 22nd, 2024
Astory about psychic communion with giant bugs, colossal flesh golems, and our spiritual relationship to fungus may not immediately cry out to you for any sword-focused analysis. I would agree that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is not really asking you to think about the swords, and the reason I love it so much has almost entirely to do with the bugs, the fungus, and the golems. However, there is a lot of talk in Nausicaä about materials for weapons and armor―the actual substance of swords breaking. We see blades breaking against armor and blades destroying other blades.
It’s all packed into the first 30 minutes of the movie, and it almost feels like its own little fairy tale preamble before we move ahead and hone in on the deep ecology thoughts (and Hayao Miyazaki’s obsession with crazy airplanes).
Above: The ailing King Jhil, sitting up in bed with his sword across his lap, waiting for the Torumekians to come to his chambers. Then: Nausicaä rocking some dude with her hammer thing, caving in his helmet and smashing his gun in half.
First, Nausicaä chips her ceramic blade against the impenetrable, discarded exoskeleton of an Ohmu, one of the aforementioned giant bugs, while trying to harvest a piece of shell. Next, She furiously breaks some of her opponents’ swords and other weapons in a fight against a group of invading soldiers. Shortly after, the renowned swordsman Yupa chastises her for losing control and deescalates the situation himself by taking her sword straight through his offhand forearm and simultaneously arresting the invading soldier with the point of his dagger, warning that it’s made from Ohmu shell and would cut through his armor “like paper.”
This is kind of central to the entire subject of these blog posts, and it couldn’t hurt to dig into it a little. I’m not a materials science expert by any means, but I can summarize the simplified, colloquial version. Please feel free to correct me on this if you know better, or just skip it if you don't care.
We make blades out of metal, mostly―do not ask me what metal is. While we do make blades out of many other materials, such as obsidian (volcanic glass), diamond (fancy carbon), ceramic (various mineral stuff finely reconstituted and fired into a glass-like material, I guess), stone (it’s stone), carbon fiber (no one knows what this is), and so on, to infinity, I think it’s useful to primarily think about metals here, because we’re all generally familiar with the various properties of metal, and how they differ between metals. Metal can sharpen, blunt, bend and spring back, break, tarnish, resonate, et cetera. You know. Metal.
Metal blades these days are mostly made of steel. Steel is iron with some carbon mixed in. A lot of blades have other stuff in them to grant various useful properties, but the fundamentals are iron and carbon.
The proportion of carbon included in a steel determines the two simplest properties that we pay attention to when discussing the material composition of a blade, those being hardness and durability. Hardness can be thought of as acute resistance to damage like blunting, denting or scratching of a blade’s edge or surface, and is achieved by adding more carbon at the expense of susceptability to shattering or chipping. Durability in the broader sense is related to malleability; less-hard metals are often more durable in the sense that they can take forces which would break a harder material, at the expense of bending, blunting, denting, and so on. Clay is perhaps a good exaggerated analogy; wet clay is very durable (malleable, and doesn't shatter), while fired clay is very hard (resists sharper forces up to a point, where it fails and shatters).
For the purposes of application to blades and sharpness, we can broadly say that hardness (more carbon, in the case of steel) allows a blade to achieve a sharper edge and resist bending, while more durability in a blade (less carbon) means that the edge will blunt more quickly, perhaps be more susceptible to tarnish (which blunts) and will more easily bend or dent on the edge―but it will be much less susceptible to shattering or chipping. Phew.
Now, what even is a blade? And what is sharpness? I don’t know. This turns out to be really complicated. See: “SciShow: The Sharpest Object In The World Can’t Cut Anything” (YouTube, CW for a lot of talk about needles and blades in this video, plus food and meat and Hank Green).
So, anyway, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but just to be clear, when you see a sword in a movie chopping up another sword because “it’s such a good and powerful sword,” so sharp or whatever, this is cinematically cool but it’s simply not a real thing. A sword will never cut another sword in half when they strike against one another in open space, and a sword will never cut through plate armor (though you can certainly use a metal tool to shear thin metal under more controlled circumstances). In reality, when you see two swords hit and one breaks in two, it is breaking, shattering due to shock and/or a critical fault caused by a chip or crack, not being cut, and it’s not necessarily the result of one sword being “better” than the other. There are just different properties of different materials that are researched, developed, and applied in a balance for desirable effect in a tool or weapon which is then handled correctly or not. Swords break.
Much is made, in these opening chapters, of the significance of ceramics and Ohmu shell to the people of the Valley of the Wind. We are told that over a thousand years ago, the Ceramic Era came to a close as humanity destroyed itself and the very world, in spite of its many achievements, with its own weapons of war: First, in the height of its refinement, evolving beyond steel to “ceramic” material for weapons and airships, and then, in the depths of its depravity, technologically facilitating the birth of an apparently artificial-biological lifeform embodied in the giant “God Warriors,” collossal abominations which ultimately destroyed the entire world in the Seven Days of Fire. The creation of these false gods concluded the dark estrangement of their supposed masters from power, violence, and thus responsibility, and led to their total annihilation. The rare ceramics are prized for their quality, while the God Warriors are remembered with fear, shame, and revulsion.
Above: In a glimpse of the Seven Days of Fire, the Kyoshinhei, or God Warriors, loom over a burning city with glowing lances. Then: Dessicated remains of the colossal Kyoshinhei slowly absorbed by sand dunes in the desert between the Valley of Wind and the Sea of Corruption.
Ohmu shell, on the other hand is a natural substance superior in strength to steel and even ceramic, and it is notably derived from a creature that dwells in the Sea of Decay, a vast fungal world that is gradually covering the whole of the habitable Earth. That these people would brave the toxic forest and the wrath of the Ohmu, a multitudinous horde of creatures deserving of fear and respect, shows their resiliency and humility. That they would continue in this way of life without attempting to return to humanity’s old ways shows their principled dedication to living in accordance with the natural world, even when it is impossibly cruel.
I’m not sure how consciously the use of ceramics is supposed to be a cultural, moral thing that Nausicaä’s people adhere to. They describe a neighboring land, with whom they are on friendly terms, as being “industrial.” And the technology used by the invading Torumekians in contrast looks cruder, grayer, superficially steelier than everything in the Valley of the Wind. Wind power is iconically an alternative to burning fuel. I don’t know. I should read the whole manga.
In the 1982‒94 manga (which ran for five more volumes beyond the vol. I & II events adapted for film), there is a somewhat different situation, initially, between the people of the Valley of the Wind and the Empire of Torumekia. Basically, in the movie there’s this empire that finally shows up one day while chasing some refugees and asserts dominance over TVOTW. In the comic, however, the people of TVOTW are already essentially vassals of the Empire, having some time ago signed a treaty with the vastly more powerful Torumekians. I’ve just barely looked into the first volume for the purposes of this blog post, but as I understand it the series gets much further into the political details of the growing conflict.
Above: The Torumekian Battle Standard flying over the Valley of the Wind. The flag shows a two-headed red serpent over black with a golden sword standing vertically in the center, hilt up. The way this is animated, the flag waving in the wind repeatedly shows the sword breaking in half over the rippling folds of the fabric. Probably not intentional, but... swords broken babeyy...
In the initial confrontation of the manga, there is another broken sword. As in the film, Nausicaä has thrown herself against the Torumekians' overstepping, trampling of fields and defiling of the valley with fungal spores. A fight ensues, and Yupa steps in to warn both sides against starting a war, putting a temporary halt to the fighting. The Torumekian commander and princess Kushana asks to see Nausicaä’s sword, which has a rare Ohmu blade. She admires it and then swiftly cuts it in half.
Above: The last four frames of page 62 of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Vol. I, where Kushana breaks Nausicaä’s sword.
I found some people discussing this on Stack Exchange:
...the fact that Kushana destroyed the sword is never mentioned again. What I don’t understand is, why is the act of Kushana breaking the sword not more significant? Apparently the sword was made of ohmu shell, which is supposed to be tougher than the ceramic blades used by most soldiers (evidenced when Nausicaa chips her ceramic blade on an ohmu shell in one of the first scenes of the book). Furthermore, ohmu shell swords must be incredibly rare, considering that Kushana (who is the princess of a large empire) would be carrying an “inferior” ceramic blade. Wouldn’t that sword be like a family heirloom or something?
The only explanation that I can think of is that the scene is purely intended to set up what a badass Kushana is and that Nausicaa is not upset because it is a small price to pay to get the Torumekian forces to leave peacefully.
Some others reply to say that, yes, it was a show of dominance, breaking the sword with ease as symbolically breaking the strength of the people, as if to say “make no mistake, I won this encounter,” or threatening to crush them in the future if they continue to cause problems for the Empire.
Above: Full page 62 of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Vol. I.
There is some confusion about why Nausicaä herself doesn’t much react to the breaking of the Ohmu sword. I think the cool thing about this scene is specifically her cool approach to its conclusion. She is a ferocious fighter, but she has also begun to cultivate an awareness of when to step back, when to wait, and when to act. Minutes earlier, Nausicaä’s father, the king Jhil, told her to compose herself in reporting to him some terrible news, as a leader should inspire such steadfast and resolute spirit in her people, or something like that. Now, Yupa has just told everyone off for being hot-headed and escalating toward needless violence. Seconds after the intensity of her interrupted duel, having heard Yupa’s impressive speech, Nausicaä has quickly internalized it and is totally chill watching her sword destroyed. As the above commentary put it, a small price to pay for peace. I gotta read these comics now.
This attitude of surrender (in the right time and place) carries through to the end of the film, where it leads to a really beautiful moment of salvation that no one but Nausicaä could have found.
