I really enjoyed the first season / series. I feel the earliest episodes often had a great cinematic feel to them, and would in their short runtime take time to show long, wide shots to establish atmosphere.

I felt as the show went on, it became more and more silly, and I lost interest. I'm not sure how many episodes I ended up watching and at what point Miyazaki and Takahata left.

The movie is they directed was also very good.

I did enjoy the dark themed, somewhat recent spinoff "A woman named Fujiko", which is also recommended by a sibling comment.