In 1984, Hayao Miyazaki painted a forest that was poison and also, quietly, a sanctuary. The Sea of Decay in *Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* is rendered in hand-inked watercolor cels — a cool teal-green gloom lit from within by drifting spores and shafts of amber light, home to the towering, gentle Ohmu.
This design system distills that understory: a dim, glowing jade-teal ground that is never paper-white, warm gold used sparingly as tentacle-light, and a rust-red held in reserve for the single moment an Ohmu's calm blue eyes flare in alarm.