>>23254To be honest, Porco and Mononoke are closer to what his movies are actually about than people on the internet really seem to realize.
Miyazaki has kind of become the Wes Anderson of anime - his style has been meme'd and caricatured by people who haven't really engaged his work and probably haven't even seen much of his stuff. Most people act like all of his movies are just wholesome, comfy slice of life - when really, only Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service are really consistenty like that.
Miyazaki's movies certainly have a pastoral vibe and have extended "cozy" sequences, but everyone forgets that those scenes are often followed by imagery of either mass destruction and violence or weird, fucked-up organic corruption. Everyone acts like Totoro is emblematic of the man's filmography, while forgetting that this is the same guy who made Porco Rosso, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa, The Boy and the Heron and Princess Mononoke, all works that have either heavy themes, extended sequences of apocalyptic or unsettling imagery - hell, we're talking about the guy who got his start directing Lupin the Third
Miyazaki ain't no wholesome director. There's a real darkness in his work that the internet keeps whitewashing thanks to cinematically illiterate hipster-weebs