Perhaps it is because of the manga, of which this is an adaptation of about the first, perhaps fifth (too lazy to go in the other room and grab it), and then extends the storyline far far far far beyond what is here, but I am always suprised at the wow factor this pre-ghibli Miyazaki movie gets from people (the studio this was released under became Ghibli not too long after this was released). Personally I find Porco Rosso to be his best movie by far.
That said, I have to state a few basic points
•In response to people who think the characters, story and world all lack depth, subtext and overall context: this movie is almost a beta version of the developed story of Nausicaa, which is really the story of the manga (which was releasd over a period of about 12 years 1982 to 1994), one small example for me is that while the movie Nausicca is by no means a bad character, I quite literally fell in love with her as portrayed in the manga and I am not talking some kind of crush, I dont think I can name a character in fiction who I like more, how she acts and how she develops and what she has to do, its all a couple orders of magnitude above what is here. A less subjective example is the character of Princess Kushana, who is far less of an antagonist, who ends up literally developing the traits of Nausicaa, almost in a way that a young girl might develop into a woman that takes in a lot from her mother and truly is a character I have the deepest respect for.
•This movie, or rather the original English language hack job (not talking just bad dub, I mean altered plot due to heavy editing, butchering of the script, altered music in a prominent scene, everything... and also the reason there was something like 15 years before there was another official eng version of a Miyazaki movie, and why Michael Eisner got a katana as a present from Miyazaki) was by far my favourite movie when I was about 7, almost 30 years ago now, quite literally is the reason I later became an anime fan, and was the very first thing I ever searched on an internet search engine (from back in the time when modems still used baud as their advertised speed) and even then, with the utter garbage this movie was turned into, it was still something incredible to me. (and I think this movie is but a child in comparison to the manga, even in the parts where you can see the stories being very similar in the earlier parts of the manga)
•The music is incredible and has stuck with me since forever, by far it is this movies single greatest asset. This was true for me to the point where after a span 7 or so years had passed, and I just happened to see Princess Mononoke at a friends house right at the time of its American dvd release, and being before the days of casual internet use like today, with most anime I had seen since then being really bad bootlegs and even the occasional VHS fansub using like 6th generation copies and the first thing I thought of when hearing the music of Princess Mononoke, was that old butchered copy (known as Warriors of the Wind btw)
•I did not actually get to see the real version of this movie until after I had gotten a (now out of print, 4 vol, Viz, perfect collection) copy of the manga, which I had to have gotten in 2002 and it was about a year after that I finally saw the original subbed version of this. This cannot but negatively affect my opinion of the movie.
•This movie is one of the real gateway drugs to anime that doesn't involve over 9000 episodes to charge up an attack and while I do talk *beep* about it in comparisons with the manga, this movie would have had to be Record of Lodoss War ova length to get that manga story in... as well as get released 8+ years later, which in turn would mean I never would have seen it as a kid all those times and by extension that would have truly changed a lot of the fiction that I like.
•Again, I really am still surprised at the wow factor this gives people, even with that nice shiny disney release with capt picard as lord yupa, due in large part I think, to people simply being unaware of the manga.
•I am also even more surprised by people who while not outright hostile to this movie, dislike it for reasons like the lack of character depth, motivation and and all but total lack of development, who haven't even heard of the manga.
•Final bullet since this is really sounding like an ad for the manga, when my intent is more an endorsement of Nausicaa in general. The manga is simply, my all time favorite work of fiction ever.
All that said, I am left wondering about a couple of things in relation to the 2 Nausicaas. a) Do people who love the story here but want more (which is delivered in spades in the manga) simply not know of it? not have access to it? (the only copy Ive ever seen in a store is the $60-$70 perfect collection I bought, so I can understand that one easy) do they not like static images? do they think this movie only works due to the length of the story and that more would be bad? I truly am curious about this.
In regards to how highly people rank this amongst Miyazaki's films, are they just not aware of things such as Porco Rosso?
In regards to its ranking amongst the later Ghibli movies, including non-Miyazaki, are they not familiar with things such as Whisper of the Heart or Iblard Jikan?
Or is it just a simple matter of pure love at first sight? (which was my exact response when I was a kid)
(sorry for the wall of text, I was bored and the people I usually talk to about anime are even more addicted to the style than I am, and happens in places usually dedicated to anime rather than the nice broad more holistic approach to visual media that you see here >_>)
addendum: "few" lol
edit: I added an S to Whisper and it annoyed the piss out of me
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