Nausicaa
Aah, Nausicaa. The manga to end all manga's. Drawn by Hayao Miyazaki over a period of 13 years between the making of films, building of a studio and being the father of two children.
He claims to have made the story up as he went along, stepping away from it and coming back to it over and over until he finally finished it. In the early stages, the story is pretty cliché, with a heroine (Nausicaa), a love interest (Asbel) and a villain (Kushana) neatly lined up. But Miyazaki must have got pretty bored with this set-up soon after, because before we know it, the boundaries between good and evil become blurred. The motives of many of the characters, including Nausicaa, become more complex and what emerges is a truly epic tale. In the end, Asbel has to make do with another girl, as the now far more complex Nausicaa has outgrown the old fashioned hero Asbel.
When Miyazaki started off on this tale, he was still very much a Marxist. Towards the end, he had given up on big ideas that try to reshape the world. The interesting thing is that this shift in his thinking is clearly visible in the story.
And then there are the drawings. Ah, those drawings. Loose, yet precise. Epic and intimate at the same time. If only they wouldn't make us feel so inadequate.