Nausicaa is a princess and all, but she isn't one from a fairy tail. She's more hands on and actually takes part in the village. This might be due to the fact that she's living in a post apocalyptic era, where they can die any day from something so simple as spores from plants. It's all due to people polluting the earth and causing wars, but some may say it's simply the animals becoming stronger than the humans. It's later revealed that the reason the animals have gotten so strong, is so that they can protect the fresh water from being contaminated by the humans again. It's the earth's way of self-preservation; it means to kill off an unneeded and harmful species, which in this case is the human species. We don't benefit earth in many ways, we do more harm than good with all of our technology. The planet would do just fine without humans, but we've tried so hard to survive that now we're blind by the fact that we're meant to coexist in the circle of life.
Nausicaa herself understands this, and tries to save her village and the rest of the human race, but at the same time tries to save all of the toxic forest and the Ohms, way before she finds out about the fresh water. San tries to only save her kind, which are the animals of the earth, and kills humans in the process. San later realizes that harmony can be obtained and starts to get a viewpoint like Nausicaa. They both have the goal of being the mediators between humanity and nature.
Nausicaa has to save her village from the Ohms, but instead of using the monster to kill all of the Ohms, she finds a more peaceful method that saves both species. She gets the baby Ohm from captivity and offers it up to the Ohms in return for their rage quieting, and she also destroys the monster before it can cause any problems. San tries to stop all the rage inflicting the gods, and gets the help of humans to stop it, especially from Ashitaka. In the end she decides upon living in harmony with the humans and nature by being a mediator even after the Spirit of the Forest dies.
In the end they both save their people and nature, and opening the humans' eyes to the need of coexistence with nature. But honestly, how many ohms do you think those Ohms make when they scream?
Princess Mononoke was very nostalgic for me, because I remember watching this on TV back in my childhood, and now that I think about it, I'm surprised they even aired this on US television! The main reason I loved it back then was for the carnage and awesome magical things going on in the film, but when I watched it this week with a different perspective, it was even more amazing!
There was much evil going on in the film, from the gods turning into demons to the people who cause the gods to turn into such monsters. With evil, there's good; and vise versa. The gods were originally good and protected the land and the humans worshipped them, but as humans got more powerful, they started to relinquish their dependance on the gods. The humans started to use their intelligence to create weapons that could kill gods, and this type of action enraged the gods who have ruled the lands for hundreds of years. Humans were going against the order of nature, and against the Forest Spirit.
There was one human in particular who displayed much compassion for the outcasts of human society, but showed none for nature and its inhabitants. Lady Eboshi is one who buys the contracts of prostitutes from brothels and takes in lepers. She gives them all they want to eat, as long as they work for their stay which isn't easy. On the other hand, she invades mountainsides for iron, destroys forests for wood to keep her iron forge burning, digs up mountainsides and forests to get iron from the sand, and kills any obstacles including animals to get to the iron ore. She's constantly trying to create stronger weapons to get what she wants, so she has the lepers create the detailed weapons for her in the background. This is good and bad, because she's giving them a purpose and somewhere to live, but at the same time she's taking advantage of them because they have nowhere else to go.
Another example would be Jigo, a traveling monk who Ashitaka (main character) meets on his way to see the world with "eyes unclouded". He gives Ashitaka help with money and also gives him a meal and information. Jigo is revealed to be a hunter who has been given pardon by the Emperor of Japan to kill the Spirit of the Forest or "Nightwalker". He takes advantage of Lady Eboshi and uses her troops to be meat shields against the animals of the forest. He is evil to both humans and nature, but only shows partial compassion to humans. He gets Lady Eboshi to kill the Nightwalker and takes its head, but fails his mission when Ashitaka and San stop him.
It must be something about relations between race and compassion. One feels more compassionate to one's own race rather than another. That can be between different species of animals and even nationalities of humans. It's just how humans work, it's complicated.
