Haven't revisited this movie in a while but since a possible sequel may well be the next thing on Ghibli's plate, I've been thinking about it.

Back in the day, when I thought I had pretty good access to soundtracks, I never managed to find what I would call a "complete" soundtrack for this anime. Instead what I got was something like a two+ CD collection of music which was about 30% actual cues from the movie and 70% music that seemed to have been composed at about the same time and left unused. Conspicuously missing were things like the cue when the Tolmekian ship crashes, the one when Nausicaa and Mito are escaping into the forest, etc.

Was the entire soundtrack ever made available, among the who knows how many Nausicaa CDs that ultimately got released?

I remember reading an old post (video links don't work anymore) by lexwalker about the score and the CDs. Source: http://forums.ffshrine.org/f91/hisaishi-j-%7E-nausica%E4-valley-wind-105459/#post1883815


I have nearly all Nausicaa related albums on CDs already which includes the main Original Soundtrack, Symphony Suite, Image Album, Hi-Tech Series, etc. I can tell you that putting these together don't even contain the actual and complete score. :(

For example, at the beginning of the film part of the cues there can be heard in the Symphony Suite but its different. When Nausicaa was exploring the toxic jungle (before the fossilized Ohmu shell discovered), that whole music is missing. Then Lord Yupa's the journey into the valley of the Winds can be heard on the Symphonic Suite again BUT the ending part of this suite is different. Heck the BGM during Kushana's invasion up to the part when Nausicaa reaches the castle and finds her father dead are also missing. That's just the beginning of many missing film music not found on the official soundtrack....

To highlight what I meant, check this video part 1 (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50jmm_naussicaa-et-la-vallee-du-vent-vost_creation). You can see the very beginning of the music is not found on the official soundtrack but is on the symphony suite album. That cue is short and then continues on to the part you can find on the official soundtrack (almost). See, its different and this is the actual soundtrack. The parts that is never found anywhere in any official albums can be heard when Nausicaa is exploring the toxic jungle, as well as the ending part of Valley of the Winds symphony suite starting at 15:56 and another unreleased one at 17:55.

Then on this video part 2 (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4j6fb_nausicaa-de-la-vallee-du-vent-parti_creation#rel-page-1), the very first music of Kushana's invasion can be heard at 12:16, and then a short one at 12:58. Again not found in any of the official albums....

Those are just a few examples. IMHO a large portion of the official soundtrack is re-composed and not the actual soundtrack itself. :(

Dang. It's really sort of gobsmacking to me that one of the most important animated works from the best-loved anime studio in the world does not have anything at all like a true soundtrack, 30 years after its release, in the year 2014 of the digital age. It defies my sense of reality.

Maybe the eventual production of Nausicaa 2 will bring this lack under the spotlight.