The animation is top notch, for one. In re-watching Ponyo, I realized how much we are missing in focusing on computer animation instead of hand-drawn. It has taken hand-drawn animation almost a hundred years to reach this place, while computer animation is still a teen. Computer animation is wonderful, but it still has a long ways to go to establish a set of symbols we recognize as human emotion. Miyazaki, however, has taken the step that Disney never did to make characters that are so real we feel that we know them. This is certainly found in the writing and the voice acting (even the dubbed vocals!), but especially in the drawing. It is not because they are more realistic looking, but because we grew up with this kind of animation, and Miyazaki, adding in expressions found in manga and older anime, has given us a visual language we can truly connect with.