You can easily see what I mean if you compare his feature length films to classic Disney features like Pinocchio or Fantasia, or the 1940’s Warner Brothers cartoons, in which hand-drawn cartoon animation reached its peak in terms of the number of drawings per minute of animation (even to the point of creating in-between frames in which two drawings would be shot together to give the illusion of blended super-fluid motion).

I’m not talking about the number of frames per minute, which hasn’t changed (24), but the number of unique drawings per minute of animation. The technique for modern hand-drawn animation is to let one drawing repeat for two or more frames. When this effect is exaggerated to save money, as in television animation, it is called “limited animation”.

Most anime come in somewhere between full animation and the TV version of limited animation, except for short bursts of more fluid passages.

I absolutely love Miyazaki’s movies; and while I think his stories and characterization, atmosphere and emotional content can outdo Disney, he has never matched the Disney classics in terms of overall fluidity of motion. It is simply not a priority for him or the other Japanese animators.