Ponyo

Hayao Miyazaki began his career with the 1971 anime series Lupin III, based on Kazuhiko Kato’s manga series. Since then, Miyazaki has been the creative force behind more than 20 animated works. Princess Mononoke finally brought him to the attention of the West in 1997 after years of success in his native Japan. He is probably best known for the enchanting Spirited Away, which became the first anime film to win an Oscar® in 2002.

While he has flirted with computer-generated imagery in the past, Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo, marks a full-blooded return to hand-drawn animation. While not his best film, Ponyo still is a visually lush work of simple beauty.

Ponyo tells the tale of the titular fish creature who gets herself trapped in a jam jar and is washed up and discovered by 5-year-old Sosuke. After Sosuke cares for her, Ponyo discovers she has magic powers (and a sudden urge to eat ham). When Ponyo is returned to the fish kingdom, she decides to use her magic to escape and become human so that she may be with Sosuke. But with this shift in the balance of nature comes consequences.

The story allows for some gorgeously animated scenes of visual imagination, particularly the underwater scenes crafted as bizarre seascapes populated with magical creatures and the scenes featuring the swirling storms that put our heroes in peril. The pixelless worlds that Miyazaki creates are lush and hypnotic visions of beauty and extend beyond any narrative shortcomings that may exist to raise the experience of the film towards a purer aesthetic pleasure.

Ponyo is a delightful and thoroughly engaging film embracing the joy of imagination and the energy of delight. The imagination works best at its simplest – hence its richness in children – uncluttered and honest, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Such fantasy remains the strength behind Miyazaki’s work.