You are talking to someone who's seen Final Yamato at least three times, so no, I don't have a problem with slow-paced anime*, I had a problem with the fact that Sky Crawlers didn't do anything new.
I recall something about Oshii apparently trying to say that was what attracted him to the project, as the reliance on common anime tropes made the story function as a commentary on the creative state of the anime industry, but while it's a technically competent film, I don't think it has anything to contribute to the pantheon of anime classics, and that's why most fans don't have much to say about it.
* I saw Sky Crawlers at an all-night anime marathon attended by a number of people who didn't realise there were subtitles on all the films - the organisers had given out a lot of tickets willy-nilly as promotional prizes - and who got completely lost during Sky Crawlers because they kept talking to each other rather than reading the subtitles to keep up. They'd already necked their complementary energy drinks around midnight, so about an hour into the film they started falling asleep and everyone else got to see the rest of it in peace.
