Magic Captured on Film

To even begin I have preface by saying that this film has what all animated movies ( save Pixar ) lack. It contains three dimensional characters with minds of their own, and the story unfolds organically as apposed to the formulaic norm we have been getting since the death of Walt Disney himself.

If you have any qualms with animated movies you need to get over them or be damned for all eternity! But seriously, there is no logical argument against them. This state of mind prevents you from viewing some of the most beautiful and thought provoking films of all time.


This film, much like Disney Pixar's Up deals with mature issues.
In these films, both deal with single parent families. Both deal with
loss, with Up being about human loss and Ponyo a loss of innocence,
though the innocence lost in Ponyo is not a sad event it is still, very
much so, a moving one.

Sosuke, the boy in the film, lives on a cliff by the sea, he is ( like any
other boy ) naturally intrigued with the world around him, and as
such, is delighted when he saves Ponyo from asphyxiation
and his mother allows him to keep her ( she, at that point is thought
of as a sort of goldfish) . She falls in love with him and the rest of the
film is spent dealing with the fallout due to her magical powers, though
through no fault of her own. Because she is a fish her dad ( Fujimoto )
refuses to allow her human contact though, he once was a human
himself. He is against humanity for theirdestruction of the environment
and he wants to recreate the world.

Like every great film of it's kind, Ponyo focuses on
love in it's purest form, the love of a child. She
and Sosuke have a love that transcends
everything that comes their way, including a
typhoon and her constant transformation between
fish and human form.

Ponyo lives up to the Miyazaki standard, never once
failing to astound our senses with it's masterful color
pallete and perfect pen strokes.