Film Review - Ponyo (2008)

Figure 1. Ponyo (2008) - Movie Poster

Ponyo is a 2008 Japanese animated film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the plot follows Ponyo, a goldfish that befriends a human boy, Sosuke and Ponyo wants to become a human girl to be with him. The story centres around the Themes of friendship and magic, as Ponyo does everything in her power to be with Sosuke, changing into a girl, controlling the sea and even almost causing the moon to crash into the earth. Even with life threatening situations the themes of Ponyo seem to present it in a more childlike and soft way making more fairy tale like.

Figure 2. Ghibli Studio's Animation Process

The animation used was traditional animation, Traditional animation is where the animators sketch the shots on paper then separately ink and colour the frames on transparent paper and the overlap them to shot and put into a sequence, this helped convey the smooth bubbly animation and soft cheerfulness that a children's perspective has. If the medium was changed it would lose that bubbly-ness that the traditional animation gives it.

Overall the movie was received very well grossing over $153.1 million in Japan for its first release and over $201,750,937 worldwide. In 2009, Ponyo won five awards at the  Tokyo Anime Awards. The awards included "Anime of the year" and "Best domestic feature", The film also won the awards for Animation of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Music.

Ponyo was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, In an interview with SyFy Miyazaki Claims that his inspiration was relative to the little mermaid but it was also a combination of other inspirations "I feel like I'm searching in my subconscious with a fishing net, and I happened upon catching a goldfish in that net. That was the inspiration for starting to make this movie." (H,Miyazaki;2012) and also goes on to talk about another children's book involving a frog, this at one point was adapted into the film production. Overall there was a handful of Inspiration of Miyazaki's Ponyo but it's interesting to see what adaptations are like between Western and Eastern Studios and how they are displayed.

Bibliography -

Castro, A 2012 - LEDGENDARY ANIMATOR MIYAZAKI REVEALS PONYO'S INSPIRATIONS Online at: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/legendary_animator_miyaza Accessed: [08/02/2019]

Illustrations:

Figure 1 - Ponyo (2008) Hayao Miyaxaki - [Movie Poster]
Figure 2 - Ghibli Studios Behind the Scenes [Still]