I said it shouldn't feel like that's all there is to it. I read the Nausicaa manga which is full of the authors' ideas and concerns about war, environment, life, death etc. but they are subsumed into and illuminated by the story - they don't trample on it.
It's not an arbitrary demand at all. Anyway, I felt it was a demand needed to be made of this particular work. Godard's Notre Musique is full of empty characters / personas spouting random philosophical nuggets but it worked.
But why write a story at all if you could write a checklist or an essay showing what you think?
I don't agree with your criticism, but its interesting to see a reference to Nausicca, and i think the ease with which Mayazaki (and other Mangaka) imbue their stories with thematic signifigance and profundity without resort to methods which could be construed as literary pretentions is a reflection of how comics are viewed in Japan as compared to the West - they are simply seen as a highly effective medium for transmitting information (the
most effective from a paedogological perspective), so manga has developed to a point where any theme - from the most obtuse and abstract to the most prosaic and ridiculous can be explored without the
medium having to prove itself.
What Moore did with Watchmen and other works (V, Halo Jones, even Skizz) was to almost singlehandedly attempt to push Western comics in the same direction, but given his cultural context is was inevitable that the results would be less 'natural' and more bogged down in expectations of what comics for grown ups should be like (dense, literary, convoulted)... Theres a still a long way to go obviously, and his many imitators have pretty much failed to live up to his achievements IMO (Grant Morrison in particular),but as I mentioned above, you can't really underestimate the importance of his achievement with Watchmen...
BTW - I uploaded the entireity of miraclemen/marvelman a few months back. The link is in the comics thread. All moore fans should read it - its kind of a dry run for Watchmen.