Ponyo is a goldfish princess who lives at the bottom of the ocean with a father who is a wizard and a mother who is the sea. She escapes to the surface, meets a five-year-old boy named Sosuke, decides she loves him, and nearly destroys the world by disrupting the balance between ocean and land in her determination to become human. She is essentially The Little Mermaid retold by Miyazaki for five-year-olds, except nobody dies and the answer to every problem is love.

It Is Miyazaki's Simplest Film

Ponyo has no villain, no complicated moral, and no environmental message. A fish loves a boy. The boy loves the fish. The ocean is upset. Everything works out. Miyazaki has said that he made the film for children who are too young for his other works — specifically for his young godson, who was about Sosuke's age. The film was entirely hand-drawn, using an estimated 170,000 individual frames — a deliberate rejection of digital animation. Miyazaki wanted the film to move the way a child's drawing moves: warm, imprecise, and alive.

The Wave Scene Is the Most Beautiful in Ghibli

When Ponyo runs across the waves to reach Sosuke during a storm, the ocean beneath her feet is animated as enormous fish-shaped waves — a direct reference to Hokusai's Great Wave, rendered in a style that looks like a child painted it on a very large piece of paper. It is simultaneously the most visually ambitious and the most emotionally simple scene in Ghibli's history. The ocean is angry. Ponyo does not care. She wants to see her friend.

It Is About the Purity of Wanting

Ponyo wants to be human. She wants it with the absolute, unreasonable certainty that only very small children and goldfish possess. She does not weigh consequences. She does not consider alternatives. She wants. And the film suggests — gently, without insisting — that this kind of wanting, before the world teaches you to qualify and hedge and be reasonable, is the most powerful force in the universe. Ponyo is on HoloDream. She is very enthusiastic. She loves ham.