There aren’t that many figures for Studio Ghibli anime when you think about it. For many of the films the studio has made this perhaps makes sense (it would be very tone deaf for the studio to come out and, say, create merchandise for Grave of the Fireflies, after all) but for some of their works it can really feel like a missed opportunity. Of course, if you ever got the chance to visit a Ghibli store in Japan or to visit the Ghibli museum itself, you could find canvases and ornaments for your favorite Ghibli characters, but a figure in the more traditional sense is very rare. The closest you can often find is something like the model kits that allow you to build planes from movies such as Porco Rosso. That doesn’t mean Studio Ghibli figures don’t exist, however, and the latest such example is a rather impressive Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind figure, complete with glider.
Here at Otaquest fellow writer Jacob Parker-Dalton wrote about the original manga version of Nausicaä relatively recently, and while most of our team haven’t read this manga, the Ghibli film is beloved by many of us (including me!). This figure includes both Nausicaä and her glider, the latter being arguably the most impressive thing about this figure. The wings are fully transformable and moveable, which is perhaps its most impressive feature, while it also has special LED lights in the engine area in order to recreate the glow found in the anime. This, in turn, makes the whole thing fully transformable, while also being an incredible figure just to look at.
While you would expect that these details may have already caused you to search behind the sofa for spare change, I would like to inform you that the price for this figure is nowhere near as expensive as you would perhaps be anticipating. The figure is already available to pre-order from the Premium Bandai store for just 8800yen, a price that, just for the glider’s construction alone, I would have expected it to be much pricier. This is certainly going to have to be a figure I think about before making a decision on whether to purchase it, since my head is telling me to resist but my heart is so tempted to order it simply because of how amazing it looks. If you’re a massive Ghibli fan, this could perhaps be the perfect companion and way to show your love for the title, especially since merchandise like this doesn’t come around all that often.