Ponyo and the Sea

Stunning visuals and imaginative narrative make Ponyo and the Sea a must-see.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo and the Sea is a beautiful retelling of The Little Mermaid, following Ponyo, an adorable yet rebellious fish-girl who undermines her wizard-father’s authority and swims ashore in order to explore the world above. Ponyo quite accidentally gets caught in a glass bottle at sea and gets carried to a shore near the cliff where Sosuke lives. Sosuke finds Ponyo (in the form of a goldfish) and puts her in a bucket, and the two children spend a day together before Fujimoto, Ponyo’s father, forces Ponyo to go back to the sea. But Ponyo wants to see Sosuke again, and so she fantastically escapes from his father’s lair, visually bursting out of her marine home.

When Ponyo and Sosuke reunite this time, Ponyo has grown legs, and turned into an exuberant little girl. The two characters come to share their mutual experiences, and grow to love one another. Unbeknownst to the pair however, Ponyo’s escape from her father’s lair triggers an imbalance in the ecosystem, causing a gigantic tsunami to hit Sosuke’s town. In the final act, the purity of their love is tested, and it is up to them to find Sosuke’s mother, and restore the balance of the ecosystem together.

Miyazaki’s animation is as impressive as ever, though perhaps in a sparser style than his past films—having a child-like quality and simple brilliance to them. His bright colors, and the constant ebb and flow of natural forces (wind and water) give wonderful imagery to the film. In Ponyo, waves upon waves of fantastical giant fish splash into the frame, vibrant and pastel sea creatures swim through the sea, and godlike spirits illuminate the screen in gold. The expressions of each character are so vivid—joy, sadness, tenderness, and love all come across these characters. Every detail—from the furrow of their brows, or puffing of cheeks, or swelling in their bodies—contributes to the audience sense of heightened emotion in the visual language. The buoyant movements of jellyfish to the lurking movements of the Fujimoto’s sea monsters all add to Miyazaki’s imaginative visuals. There is movement in every fiber of the film.

Miyazaki’s film successfully brings out the theme of the power of a child’s innocence, and highlights the greater societal problems of environmental preservation. His children are courageous, pure of heart, and worthy of admiration. Ponyo and Sosuke venture out into the flood using their toy boat; they work together and neither ever leaves the other one behind. In the end, their bond, their love, prevents Ponyo from being turned into sea foam. Their love is tested, and deemed worthy.

Environmental preservation is a consistent theme throughout the movie. Fujimoto, a human sorcerer is deemed the preserver of the sea—an interesting metaphor, that a human’s responsibility is to his environment and keeping the “balance” of it. Ponyo makes her first dire appearance stuck in a glass jar that had been tossed carelessly into the sea. The power of nature also comes to a crescendo at the end in the terrific storm.

If the visuals and story aren’t enough, the characters of this film are just so darn cute and adorable! You can’t help but feel the insane urge to pinch and squeeze them. Just seeing the animated reactions of the children in the film is entertaining in itself, but Miyazaki takes it to a whole other level in that he really makes us see the beauty of the world through the eyes of a child. We find ourselves delighting in the simple pleasures and facing the tests of life with an innocent, optimistic courage. Miyazaki’s magical Ponyo and the Sea engages the audience in a film that is bursting through the seams with stunning visuals.