The beloved Japanese icon of animation: now reduced to nothing but fodder on the website of a guy who 'doesn't get anime'... what could go wrong?
Now that I've completed this journey (with a final podcast wherein I ranked his most recent movie as his best), I'll offer two brief closing thoughts: A) I didn't do this work justice. Connecting with this genre (or, style is perhaps the better word) does not come naturally to me, but I think I'm in a better place to at least appreciate it going forward now. B) Miyazaki's Top 5 is an unimpeachable tier of art that you could shuffle around in any order and not be wrong. I personally found what his likely to be his last film the most compelling entry, but perhaps that's recency bias on my end.
up to THE SECOND filmography ranking:
12. The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
11. The Wind Rises (2013)
10. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
9. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
8. Castle in the Sky (1986)
7. Porco Rosso (1992)
6. Ponyo (2008)
5. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
4. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
3. Princess Mononoke (1997)
2. Spirited Away (2001)
1. The Boy and the Heron (2023)