NAUSICAA "video-single" CD review (THE ROSE, 9/91)


  The following review of the "Nausicaa: Seven Times of Fire" video-
  single, written by Jerry Driess, is from page 7 of the July 1991 issue
  (Vol. 5, #28) of THE ROSE (the bi-monthly fanzine of Anime Hasshin):


VIDEO/CD REVIEW
NAUSICAA: SEVEN TIMES OF FIRE
by Jerry Dreiss

     Video singles are a rare format.  These five inch discs are a cross
between laser discs and compact discs, holding up to five minutes of
video plus twenty minutes of digitally recorded music.  The video can be
played only on combination CD/laserdisc players[1], but the additional
music can be played on a regular CD player.

     Tokuma Japan Corporation has released one such video single for
Hayao Miyazaki's NAUSICAA.  It features Jo Hisaishi's title music to this
great film.  The music is beautifully recorded.  The sound quality is
extremely good on this disc.

     Unfortunately, the video portion is a let-down.  It is not actual
animation from the film, as I had hoped.  Instead, the makers of this
disc reshot the title artwork with a video camera.  This art, as you may
recall, was a mosaic depiction of the holocaust that destroyed the world.
It featured primitive paintings of the giant God Soldiers destroying
cities, the creation of the fungal forest, and the prophesied blue-clad
savior who, on a sea of gold, would deliver her people.  To give the
feeling of animation, the disc's makers used several video tricks,
including pans, zooms, and split-screen images to tell the legend
sequentially.  While the intention is to give the images some drama, the
effects diminish the understated beauty of the original images.

     A further drawback to this disc is its short length.  It clocks in
at only 3 minutes and 12 seconds, of which 32 seconds are taken up by
credits.  The actual artwork was used in the film for only a minute.
Unlike most video singles, this disc does not include any additional
audio-only tracks.

     While it is an interesting collector's item (video singles in
general are rare, and ones of Japanese animation ever rarer), I found the
disc not to be worth the 1,200 yen (approximately $13.85).  Collectors
and Miyazaki completists should know that this is just the first of four
video singles of his films.

[1: CDV players are not widely available in the US.  The most common
version is made for the Sega game system as an optional piece.  Japan and
possibly Canada sell CDV players.  -- Lynn Savage]