“The Sleeping Giant”

           My piece is called “The Sleeping Giant” and it was inspired a lot by the show Adventure Time and the Studio Ghibli Movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; Both of which are brightly colored animated pieces that are set in post post-apocalyptic worlds.

On the surface, Adventure Time seems more like a whimsical children’s tv show that should belong more in the fantasy genre; The protagonists are a young adventuring hero and his talking dog who often save princesses from the evil ice king. However, as the show progresses, it hints that the world of Adventure Time is our world, but after a nuclear fallout had killed almost all humans. Many of the fun citizens of the world, such as sentient candy beings and talking animals, are mutants created by toxic nuclear sludge. Even the title page (see below), contains images of nuclear warheads and fragments of a destroyed civilization that hint at an apocalyptic event, which characters in the show often refer to as the “Great Mushroom War”. The show fascinated me for blurring the line between fantasy and sci-fi and for using a fanciful façade to hide a darker origin story.

           Ghibli movies, such as Nausicaä, also uses whimsical imagery to tell stories with more serious and darker undertones. Nausicaä is set in a post post-apocalyptic world, where a violent war that occurred one thousand years before the events of the story, destroyed human civilization. Humans have since rebuilt civilizations, but these settlements are more like rustic medieval villages than sprawling megacities like we are used to today. However, there are remnants of a past technological world in the form of airships and guns. The pollution of the soil and air caused by the past humans also resulted in the creation of a toxic jungle with insects that spew poisonous spores. Thus, the people of this world must often rely on masks to breathe when they travel and when they go into the jungle to scavenge.

           Overall, I was inspired by both Adventure Time and Nausicaä, to create a colorful whimsical piece that hints at a lurking danger. The buried robot in my piece is supposed to refer to some kind of past war or event, where humans used giant robots, which resulted in an apocalyptic event. Humans in my piece have since rebuilt settlements, but they live in simple hut-like structures rather than modern homes we live in today. This is similar to how in Nausicaä, the apocalypse has set back humans in terms of architecture. Furthermore, the fact that the new settlements are built on top of the robot creates a sense of danger because if the robot or “sleeping giant” was ever to “awake”, the human settlement would be destroyed. This can also serve as a metaphor for how humans are often ignorant of lurking dangers until it is too late. In essence, the goal of my piece was to create something that could be consumed and enjoyed by children, but still contain more “adult” themes, such as warfare and apocalypse. *

*In hindsight, I probably should have put in more elements that hinted at a war such as broken tanks and planes. Maybe I could add those in the future when I have more time.