Why is no one mentioning My Neighbor Totoro? (Or has it been mentioned and I just missed it.) Another Miyazaki gem is Castle Of Cagliostro if you can find it.
I second Satoshi Kon. I was going to mention Paranoia Agent and Paprika but I didn’t know he was involved in those. I’ll also mention Mamoru Oshii who did Patlabor and Ghost In the Shell and Katsuhiro Otomo who did Akira and Metropolis (a remake).
I just finished watching Paprika; it’s quite good.
Argent Towers, if you’ve not seen Princess Mononoke, I recommend it. I thought I hated anime (having been friends in college with a lot of anime-geeks and subjected to entirely too much of it), and then I saw Princess Mononoke and had to admit that you could make freakin’ incredible movies within the genre. It’s head and shoulders, IMO, above any other anime I’ve ever seen, including Miyazaki’s other works.
Daniel
And another vote for Whisper of the Heart. It really is just about the most heart-warming movie I’ve ever seen.
My Neighbor Totoro is definitely one of the best movies ever made, though. Period.
Thanks for the suggestions, folks. To sum up, your suggestions are:
Plague Dogs
Watership Down
Iron Giant
The Triplets of Belleville
All the other Studio Ghibli films
Makotai Shinkai films (in particular: Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days)
Satoshi Kon films (in particular: Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers)
Mamoru Oshii films (in particular: **Patlabor **and Ghost in the Shell)
Katsuhiro Otomo films (in particular: Akira and Metropolis)
Is that about it, or are there any more hidden gems out there?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re loking for in saying “like Miyazaki”, but several times on this Board I’ve suggested an unjustly forgotten piece of animation:
The Adventures of Mark Twain by Will Vinton. Vinton is the guy who came up with the term “Claymation”, and he produced a lot of shorts. This is, I believe, his only full-length film. It’s great. I’m a big Twain fan, and this comes closer to the spirit of Twain than most movies based on his works. It adapts parts of lots of Twain works most people aren’t familiar with, has a good sense of huimor, and even teary-eyed scenes. James Whitmore does the voice of Twain.
Vinton’s other stuff is harder to come by. His Festival of Claymation gathered a lot of his stuff together, and was shown in art theaters. A VHS release was woefully incomplete, probably because of legal issues – they didn’t include any of the commercials (California Raisins, or the Domino’s Pizza “Noid” ads) or music videos (Vantz Can’t Dance). His short Dinosaurs is on it, though. It was also available as a stand-alone tape, and it’s priceless. I stopped in the Connecticut Dinosaur Museum a few months ago, and they showed it there. It got applause. (Even though it’s so old that it predates the Meteorite theory of the dinosaur’s demise). They also released a California Raisins tape. You can see his effect work in the movie Return to Oz. He also did the effects for the Disney attraction Captain EO, but good luck finding that.
If you’re looking for obscure cartoons, try this one on: Jeannot l’Intrepide, a French sort-of retelling of Jack the Giant Killer. It was released (briefly) in the US as Johnny the Giant Killer, and made it onto Saturday-morning TV, where I saw it in the early 1960s as a kid. Made in color in 1950 (!).
http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/20482-Johnny_the_Giant_Killer.html
If i was doing a kids film featuring Mark Twain stories i’d definitely include the one he wrote after his wife had died, two daughters had died, his last remaining daughter had taken a restraining order out against him and he was pretty down on the whole “humanity” thing in general. 
Not that i’m dissing the film or “Mysterious Stranger” - its brilliant
Actually, although the manuscript was published after Twain’s death (a heavily altered by Thomas Bigelow Paine version), Twain had been working on the book long before the trials you list. The original manuscripts have been published, and it’s now back in print:
BTW – MilliCal has seen this and likes it. Even The Mysterious Stranger part. A little darkness is good for you – rreally touching animation isn’t all Sweetness and Light.
I would also add Paprika as well. I haven’t actually watched it so I can’t tell you if the movie is actually good, but it is visually impressive.
I’ve watched it. My opinion is that it’s visually impressive but that’s about all. It might be fun to turn off the sound and project it on the wall during a party for decoration.
If you like the way Miyazaki’s films make you feel, go with something moving and beautiful like Isao Takahata’s “Only Yesterday”. (The scene were the ladies are picking tea leaves and the early morning sun breaks over the mountains is just beautiful.)
And along the same lines as the wonderful “Whispers of the Heart” is “Umi ga kikoeru” (“The Ocean Waves”) from 1993, another sweet adolescent love story.
Nausicaa might be my favorite Miyazaki movie, even though it’s older so not as technically impressive. I love it.
Mamoru Oshii’s made good atmospheric animated movies (other than Ghost in the Shell, which is usually what’s associated with him - there’s also Jin-Roh and such), though not as lighthearted as Miyazaki’s by any means. I’m still trying to get my hands on the one about an egg (Angel’s Egg?) to watch it.
Hey, I just watched that last night. I thought the premise seemed really corny (an animated film about a high school love triangle?), but it turned out to be an interesting trip through a slightly alien culture. I liked the disjointed nature of their relationships; felt a bit like reading a story by Murakami (who I love).
Just saw this. Outstanding. Beautiful and well-designed, from the extracting of the bare essence of the story (it could easily have been a 2+ hour movie) to the design of her mech and space scenes and the detail in their communication method. I’m gonna be on the lookout for anything else Mr. Shinkai does in the future. Thank you.
It is; much. I’m searching for a review I wrote of it, and will post it if I find it.
It’s not as wildly imaginative as Miyazaki’s best, but it’s a brilliant, important movie.
ETA: but in general, No; there are no other films like Miyazaki’s; he’s definitely in a class by himself.
Steamboy too, neato engines and themes of loyalty and duty.
All my favourites have gone (and I’ve just had to buy Triplets of Belleville, since I’m online and it was there).
One of my enduring favourites is The Last Unicorn.
The screenplay was written by the book’s author, Peter S. Beagle.
According to IMDB trivia the studio that animated this was later hired to make Nausicaa.
Great voice cast (Alan Arkin, Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee), and I love the score.
Ok for kids, I think, but NOT as lightweight a film as you may first think if you haven’t read the book.
I agree, a definite classic. The animation style had such an eerie feel to it when I was a child, but now I quite like it. There were once talks of making a live action version, but it seems those plans will be in development hell for eternity.