Honestly, for as much as I like Miyazaki's skill as a director, his movies never really managed to move me as much as they seem to have moved other people. I find his style to be plodding and meandering, more focused on delivering a meta message that goes "beyond" the movie than anything else, and that just ends up hurting the movie it's being delivered through as it has to make accommodations. His best movies are really the ones that focus less on him, the director, telling me, the audience, something and on characters experiencing character growth as part of the plot. Generally speaking, it's a bad thing when you can tell the author's hand at work behind the scenes in a movie, and in far too many of Miyazaki's movies, you really can. Far too many are less movies as just... Well, Miyazaki.