Another magical children’s tale brought to life by Hayao Miyazaki – retirement? What retirement?

Seems like quite a while back director Hayao Miyazaki threatened that he would leave filmmaking behind him and retire. That was after Spirited Away had won an Oscar and confirmed his international status as one of the most inventive and even magical animators ever. Of course, since then there’s been Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo and no end of shorts. Fast approaching 70 years of age, Miyazaki shows no sign of even slowing down, let alone stopping.

The daughter of the king of the ocean, Ponyo is no ordinary goldfish – she has all the magic of the sea at her disposal. But when five-year-old Sosuke finds her near his seaside home, a special connection sparks between the two children, and Ponyo becomes determined to become human.

Transforming into a little girl, Ponyo shows up on Sosuke’s doorstep, delighted to make herself at home with her new land-dwelling family. However, her magical powers confined to the Earth begin setting the mystical balance of the world off kilter, flooding the town. Even though the innocent love Ponyo feels for her friend is strong, it will take some help from the greatest powers in the ocean to make things right again.

With a nod to Hans Christian Anderson’s classic fable The Little Mermaid, Ponyo is something of a return to the simpler themes of earlier films, reminiscent of such delights as My Neighbour Totoro, and the pre-Studio Ghibli series that inspired it, Panda! Go Panda! Particularly the sequel Circus In The Rain, which itself featured a flood. There’s even a super-cutesy end theme!

(Though elsewhere the composer seems to borrow heavily from Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain – most famous used in Walt Disney’s Fantasia – to try and match the scale of the action.)

Here with his artists he creates a fascinating world under the ocean, as ancient, extinct fish make a home in the newly submerged town. There’s a deliberate distancing from depicting the sea realistically, the nature of the sea is shown more like a wild animal, with an impressionistic style more reminiscent of Van Goth’s paintings. Then there’s that fascination with hundreds of tiny creatures and ‘blobby’ shapes.

Miyazaki brings a childlike innocence to the piece, there’s no doubt the age group targeted is pretty young. Adults on the other hand will enjoy the beautiful, dare I say ‘old fashioned’ animation, much in the same way as they may have enjoyed The Fantastic Mr Fox (though without that films wryness), and the subtleties of the adult relationships he follows. Despite the contemporary setting, this is a timeless tale with a self-conscious lack of technology.

Superb animation from the world’s greatest living animator!

DVD details

Distributor:Optimum Home Entertainment (UK)

Though Optimum may have baffled most of us waiting so long after the US to release Ponyo theatrically in the UK (perhaps due to the complications of Disney owning the rights in the States and creating the English dub?) this feature packed two-disc release goes some way to make up.

There's an alternative sketch board angle on the main feature, as is pretty usual with the Optimum releases, and a whole stack of featurettes around both the original production and the Disney produced dub, including an interesting but all too brief chat between John Lasseter and Miyazaki, and a quite bizarre music video for the main theme.

Both the original Japanese soundtrack and Disney/John Lasseter produced English dub are included.

Related and associated posts

This entry was published by Andy H on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Anime / Live-Action Manga, Films, Japan, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Comments to “Ponyo”

  1. [...] who has a impressive career as key animator on some of Ghibli’s best known work, including Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, as well work for others like [...]

    Arrietty / The Borrowers UK review | easternkicks.com September 14th, 2011 at 7:05 pm

  2. [...] best music for Joe Hisashi, who is best know for his work with Studio Ghibli head Hayao Miyazaki on Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away, and Takeshi Kitano on Hana-bi, Kikujiro and Sonatine. And [...]

    Villain UK DVD movie review | easternkicks.com December 3rd, 2011 at 10:04 am

  3. [...] UK (formally Optimum Releasing) . A real return to form after the likeable but not quite classic Ponyo and disastrous Tales Of Earthsea, Ghibli head Hayao Miyazaki worked on the screenplay from Mary [...]

    Arrietty on UK Blu-ray and DVD | easternkicks.com January 9th, 2012 at 10:29 am

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