My experience of reading Nausicaa this time round is a bit of a jolt. I collected the old Viz issues assiduously when they came out, and read and reread them, but there were big gaps in my collection and big gaps of time between new issues. When I got these collections over a few years for my son I never got around to sitting down and reading the whole lot until now, and it is really hard to stop once started.

Nausicaa and Asbel escape from the forest only to be captured by a lurking Dorok ship which is part of a trap being sprung on Kushana's southern maneuver. The flotilla is crossing the forest, stopping at a clearing of acid lakes, where it encounters a Dorok force who are torturing a baby Ohmu to draw a mass of the adult insects down on the encampment. Nausicaa is appalled at the reckless cruelty of the trap and escapes, as much to stop the torture as to save the flotilla.

The orchestration of events surrounding the descent of the swarm of Ohmu on Kushana's troops is one of the wonders of all sequential narrative. Complex, tricky, with multiple moving parts, it unfolds with clarity and suspense and a sense of rushing, impending doom and destruction. It's a mesmerising, riveting sequence, all the more so as it shows aspects of Nausicaa's, Kushana's and Kurosowa's characters that make them all desperately compelling. Master Yupa has his own adventures, discovering an even darker side to the trap with even darker implications.