Sosuke is just an ordinary 5 year old boy living his everyday life in a Japanese port town. The son of a sailor he spends most of his time in the care of his mother the overburdened Risa either playing around at the beach in front of their cliffside home attending preschool or visiting the retirement home his mother works for to visit with all the friendly old ladies. One day when playing on the beach he encounters a strange jumbosized goldfish which he considers pretty despite her mutant alienlike appearance. This odd fish whom he decides to name Ponyo is actually Brunhilde the runaway daughter of two of the oceans guardians who desperately want her back... Because now that shes tasted the human worldand a drop of human blood her drive to become a part of Sosukes world threatens to tear reality apart and submerge the human world underwater. Can these starcrossed wuvvers overcome the odds or shall a plague upon both their worlds render their meeting fatal? So Ive only reviewed a handful of Studio Ghibli films in my career and while I may have tackled one of their lowerkey titles last year its been a few years since I reviewed a proper Hayao Miyazakidirected film. The budget as such was obviously extremely high and the animation is absolutely phenomenal. Movement is constantly smooth and expressive and Im honestly not sure if they had to employ any budget saving tactics to make ends meet... There are a few decisions I could point at but theyre so obvious and striking that they look more like intentional design choices than anything else. For one example one of the most difficult things to animate is moving water and they rectified this potential problem by drawing the water as giant fish spirits a genius move that most viewers wont think twice about. The only time they employ the infamous runny eggs technique is when animating Brunhilde and her sisters which gives them an appropriately otherworldly feel. Speaking of underwater there are a ton of sea creatures present throughout the film and while it might be a bit disorienting to see life forms from all over the oceanincluding different depths and some that are definitely supposed to be extinct all coexisting together I guess it makes sense since theyre hanging around a sea wizard? But more importantly they all look very cool especially the large prehistoric bony fish who get a generous amount of screen time. As for the people they all look fairly cartoony in design and while thats nothing new from any work directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself there also appears to be kind of an offputting KlaskyCsupo edge to all of it. People mostly look proportionally accurate save for their textbook anime faces at least among the adults... I weirdly find the old ladies far more adorable than the kids... And the children look disquietingly like they were pulled from a nineties Nickelodeon show and then you have a couple of very strange exceptions. The reaction most people tend to have with the title character Ponyo is that shes either adorable or terrifying. Theres not a whole lot of middle ground there. I guess Im on both sides of the fence depending on which part of her transformation Im seeing... Shes cute enough in her full child form but anything below that is unsettling at best like when shes this humanfaced goldfish that only one person finds strange or shes straight up disturbing at worst like when shes popping out chicken limbs. Then you have moments when shes in human form but her face slips just enough to fish form that if I were anywhere nearby Id abandon ship and pray for the jaws of a great white shark to save me from her. Another exception is Ponyos father this weird looking crookednosed dude with gravitydefying hair. I dont know hes not scarylooking but Im not a huge fan of his design. He looks like dyedhair Howl after a three year crack bender. The music is kind of a mixed bag... Theres some beautiful orchestral music from Joe Hisaishi and while Im not sure how to explain this its arranged in a way that even hearing it out of context you just know somebodys having an adventure under the sea. Adding operatic vocals was a brilliant move and I appreciated the inclusion of Ride of the Valkyries as a nod to one of the films many influences Richard Wagner. I guess the closing song would slap for you if you were watching as a kid... Which I guess is all that really matters when you consider just how young an audience this movie was meant for... But to me it sounds like radio Disney trying to recapture the magic of the far more charming and timeless My Neighbor Totoro theme. Its also worth noting that the two lead child actors were the ones who sang the song and yeah maybe not the best decision if they were aiming for any sort of longevity. Totoros theme sounds like its being sung for children by an adult with enough vocal training to make the vapid lyrics palatable enough so that the kids hearing it for the first time can revisit it decades later without cringing and I can not see the Ponyo theme achieving the same kind of timeless nostalgia when its being sung by the child siblings of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Speaking of which thats who they picked to play the leads... Noah Cyrus who at least has the raw enthusiasm required to play a character like Ponyo is still really screechy and hard to listen to. Frankie Jonas sounds twice Sosukes agewhich they both were at the time and Ill give Noah some extra credit for at least sounding the right age and his performance is a bit bland... But then again so was his character. I know it sounds harsh to criticize the acting abilities of children but its not impossible to find good child actors and I firmly believe if Disney had held actual auditions instead of trying to cash in on the name recognition of a couple of famous pop singer families the final product would have been far better off for it. The rest of the cast is also predictably full of celebrities but none of them really stand out except in a distracting I know that voice kind of way. Matt Damon only has a few lines but hey you got THAT name to slap on the DVD. Tina Fey does a decent job as Sosukes mom and while it was super sad to hear Betty White and Cloris Leachman playing two of the old ladies they did manage to steal the show in their handful of scenes. The inspiration for Ponyo wasnt just The Little Mermaid although thats probably the one youve heard the most. The classic Hans Christian Anderson fable has been adapted to anime form before as well as a far more iconic Disney version around a decade later. I dont think Ive ever seen it adapted this loosely or in such a broad imaginative way. Hayao Miyazaki took cues from all kinds of literature around the world from Buddhism to Norse Mythology and even some spiritual Japanese mythology allegedly the inspiration for Ponyos goldfish design. Theres also a hint of Romeo and Juliet but you could argue every retelling of The Little Mermaid contains those elements whether intentional or not. With one of the most legendary directors in anime history leading the project and with this much highbrow influence and no shortage of disposable income behind it this was a fairly ambitious title. The end product however is the most WTF movie that Studio Ghibli has ever released. Now dont get me wrong Ponyo was successful. It was produced with an estimated 34 million dollar budget and it made its money back with a worldwide gross of over 200 million. It won a bunch of awardsalthough the Globes and Oscars didnt even give it a nomination and it was a hit both critically and commercially... So why has it become so divisive over the last few years? One thing Ive noticed while reading reviews for the film is that even when people are giving it positive scores they still make a ton of caveats and there are more reviews than I can count that cite issues with the plot the pacing even the main characters with the films main saving grace being that Ghibli magic. And that Ghibli magic is there dont get me wrong but Im kind of weird insofar as the fact that Im immune to the Ghibli magic. The Ghibli movies I like are the ones where I can point to a specific thing I like about them like the stories and characters rather than anything emotionally potent. And Im sorry I dont like Ponyo all that much. The first thing I should address is that unlike most Ghibli movies this is aimed explicitly at younger audiences. I know that shouldnt be a criticism as hey theyre kids movies right? Well no most Ghibli movies are good because theyre accessible to kids but still perfectly serviceable for adults either due to clever writing heavy themes of nostalgia or both. There are other Ghibli films aimed just as young but they tend to lean towards being widely despised like Earwig or heavily comedic like The Cat Returns. Ponyo kind of reminds me more of Spirited Away than those two at least in the feel that I get from it... The feel that Hayao Miyazaki had a grand idea in his head he wanted to put it to film primarily for the benefit of some children he knew and that he probably made the story up as he went along and didnt have a finished script or even a finished outline ready until late in production. Im not a huge fan of this approach as it creates a lot of strange details and hanging plot threads that never get addressed and Ponyo is full of both. Like for example Sosukes mother is kind of the worst. I get that parenting alone is hard my mother took care of me by herself while my dad was in the navy but she also watched over me and kept me safe. Risa lets five year old Sosuke climb down a steep wet rocky cliff by himself to play on the beach inviting any number of serious injuries should he slip and fall. She powerwalks ahead of him while he struggles to keep up while shes buying groceries she drives like a psycho and leaves him unattended during a storm... She lets him bring a strange sea creature he just found and is keeping in a bucket in the car with him as well as to school instead of doing what any other parent would do and tell him to leave it home. She acts like a spoiled brat over her husband having to work late... Which I guess is a product of Miyazakis unplanned writing since this plot point is never resolved... and while Ive gotten tired of that trope where kids dont understand their parents having to work to support them seeing the roles reversed to the point where the fiveyearold is the emotionally supportive one is NOT better. But its not just her the vast majority of exchanges and reactions in this film making a jawdroppingly little amount of sense. Sosukes reaction to the ocean growing literal eyeballs to stare at him is just Weird... One of his classmates who Im pretty sure we never see again calls Ponyo boring which is not the word Id use to describe her. It doesnt seem to matter whether shes kept in salt water or fresh water. When Sosukes father sees a child running on waves in the open ocean his only reaction is that she looks Sosukes age. The only person in the entire film who has an appropriate reaction to how bizarre Ponyo looks is an old woman who only freaks out so she can warn everyone that her appearance will cause a tsunami which... I guess must be something from Japanese mythology? Maybe? Its also the only connection we get between Ponyos ambition to become human and the stakes of the story which... Well lets just rip the bandaid off as quickly as possible given Japans recent history with natural disasters hasnt aged well. Seeing people chilling in boats seemingly not caring that theyve just lost their homes and all their possessions is incredibly hard to watch even for a dumb American like me. But my biggest issue with the movie isnt the overcomplicated plot or the ramshackle pacing like it is with a lot of people. My biggest issue with Ponyo and I cant believe more people dont have a problem with this is the fact that its a love story between two toddlers. And I dont mean some cute guppylove story oh no Ghiblis done that kind of thing really well before. This is a love story with lifelong implications. Ponyo falls in love with Sosuke because hes the first human she meets and he gives her ham. Sosuke... Thinks shes pretty I guess? Their confession of love and Ponyos decision to live as a human are supposed to save the earth and prevent her from turning into sea foam but like theyre five. What they have is barely an infatuation should really just be called a close friendship at this point and its not going to last forever. You ever heard of the Westermarck effect? When two people are raised in close quarters through their formative years they become romantically and sexually desensitized to each other. Considering the fact that Ponyo doesnt know anybody other than Sosuke and his mother and their town just lost a ton of housing due to the flood I dont think shes going to have anywhere to stay other than his house and by the time theyre teenagers theyre going to have formed enough of a sibling dynamic that unless theyre both significantly messed up in the head theyre going to look elsewhere when they start dating. What happens then? Will the flood come back? Will Ponyo turn into sea foam anyway? Yeah I can forgive the overly complicated plot but even if I saw this as a kid the actual prospect of Sosuke and Ponyos romance would have bugged the carp out of me. I couldnt even watch The Santa Clause back then because I was like wait if the adults dont believe in Santa but hes real who do they think buys the presents they didnt buy? Again I was a weird kid I noticed shit like that. There are a few things I like in it... Like I said before the old ladies are fun and it does warm my cold shriveled heart to see them running around towards the end. I like Ponyos mother she seemed really nice. I actually really enjoy the morse code scene which is the only scene that legitimately got a laugh out of me. The animation is amazing the underwater landscape is beautiful and the eclectic array of marine life probably would have been my favorite part of the film if it had come out when I was a kidSeriously those dinosaur fish are the fucking coolest but overall it doesnt do anything for me. I guess its partially because it wasnt a part of my childhood so I dont have the same appreciation for it that a lot of people have but there have been a lot of modern day childrens media that Ive enjoyed as an adult so maybe its just not for me. Ponyo has been widely available in the states for nearly a decade across countless different physical releases but is currently available from Gkids. I feel like Id have a lot more tolerance for this movie if it wasnt a love story and the focus was instead surrounding a powerful friendship between worlds but even then their connection would feel almost entirely incidental and random. I dont dislike Sosuke but there really isnt anything special about him even from a narrative perspective. It may sound like Im asking for something unreasonable but the thing is Im not. What this movie reminds me of far more than The Little Mermaid is Lilo and Stitch which did the entire concept of a lonely girl in a depressing family situation coming across an alien creature way way better. Lilo was a weird interesting believable child character and Stitch had to learn how to behave and accept love from her. They had an amazing dynamic which was way stronger than this epic worldsaving romance between two drooling tiny tots. Changes like that might not make the movie good but at least for me it would go down a lot smoother and I might be able to just ignore all of the other weird bullshit. If this movie was an important part of your childhood or if it just speaks to you in a way it doesnt for me I dont want to take it away from you but for me this is one of Ghiblis weaker efforts. I give Ponyo a 4/10.