Ponyo

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki

2008

****

Although 2008's Ponyo had the widest distribution in Ghibli's history at the time and was met with critical acclaim across the board, it is still never considered as one of the studios best. I think this is somewhat unfair, as I believe it is one of the studios last real examples of magic. All of Ghibli's films are beautiful but no other theirs is as cute as Ponyo is. Ponyo, the main character is utterly adorable as a little goldfish who wants to become a little girl. She is the daughter of a once human wizard who turned himself and his family into fish after becoming detached and fearful of the human world. One day Ponyo decides to go on an adventure and hitches a ride on a jellyfish but becomes trapped after an incident with a trawler. She is eventually saved by a little boy on the shore who gives her name and keeps her as a pet. Once Ponyo's father discovers she's missing, he asks the wave spirits to find and fetch her, which they do, leaving Ponyo and the little boy Sosuke both heartbroken. Ponyo then argues that she wants to be a human girl because she loves Sosuke and due to her magic she begins to transform into a girl and swims back to shore. She finds Sosuke to his great surprise and everything is good until the universal balance of things is disrupted. This is where the film's wonderful mythology and fantasy come in to play, as before it just seemed like a very cute version of The Little Mermaid.  Ponyo seemed to be a rather personal film for Hayao Miyazaki, as he drew nearly all the waves and water in the film as well as Ponyo herself and the character of Sosuke was modelled on Miyazaki's own son when he was of that age. A record 170,000 separate images were drawn during production. While there are other Ghibli film's higher on my favourites list, when it comes to Ghibli characters Ponyo is certainly in my top five, somewhere between Totoro, Jiji (Kiki's Delivery Service) and Seita and Setsuko (Grave of the Fireflies). Whereby I usually love most Ghibli films, Ponyo is the one I adore.