Empire Magazine has a surprisingly insightful interview with Hayao Miyazaki which contains his own thoughts on his movies over the last 30 years or so.
Well worth a read for choice quotes like this:
Why did the lead character have to be female? Well, it doesn’t look truthful if the guy has power like that! Women are able to straddle both the real world and the other world — like mediums…..It isn’t the swordplay that Nausicäa is good at, it’s that she understands both the human world and the insect world. No animals feel danger in approaching her; she’s able to totally erase her sense of presence, existence. Males, they are aggressive, only in the human sphere — very shallow! (Laughs) So it had to be a female character.
H/T to Eddie White for tipping me off with his tweet 🙂