Haven't seen Ponyo yet, but on the basis of advance word and Howl's Moving Castle that's not blasphemy. Howl was a great visual spectacle, but didn't have an engaging story or characters - just cause a filmmaker is using a fantasy setting, it doesn't make it a good idea to throw logical plotting and coherent character development to the wind. Especially in that kind of movie, aimed mainly at young people (we're not talking about David Lynch or some arthouse director here!) What else is supposed to hook the viewer into the fantasy world, if not the story and characters? How can we relate to them if things just seem to just unfold randomly and don't follow the 'rules' we expect a movie to adhere to? His storytelling powers may on the wane as he gets older, it wouldn't be unusual.
You sir, are spot on.
This is exactly my point with some of his work, it's just those little things I find myself asking, like in (Ponyo) "how on earth would a mother leave her 5 year old son alone in a house in the middle of a flood, with a little girl he'd just met and yet she has no interest in finding out where her parents are, or where she came from ?!"
....and it seems to happen over and over in his cartoons; people just go through the motions and no-one stops to say "hang on, doesn't anyone find what's going on a tad odd ?!!".
The young Sophie Hatter in Howl gets a curse put on her by the Witch of the Waste, and she just decides I'll go hitching a ride with Howl as their cleaning lady ....no-one asks erm, who are you ?!! how did you get in here, what are you doing here ? they just treat it with total indifference, meh, ok, so she confronts the Witch of the Waste later on, and yet the reaction is totally not what you'd expect if you know, someone had placed a curse on you
It's just the little things like that. I know it's fantasy, and again the art, sound, setting, scenery is sometimes breath-taking, but for me these little irrational reactions of his characters are now really starting to get in the way of the story/plot for me, and in turn it's making me care less for the film, but just to treat it as a visual wonder and take it at no more than that, and that's a shame.