The first film that I saw from the Japanese animation film studio, Studio Ghibli, blew me away. It was in 2001, and the film was Spirited Away. Since then I have become somewhat obsessed with looking for releases from Studio Ghibli and the director of Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki. When I got the chance to get a copy of the latest flick from Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli last week, I was overjoyed. The film was Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.
Like all of the Mizayaki flicks I’ve seen, Ponyo took me to a dream world that only Mizayaki can create. The story is simple, it is about a little girl fish (or a mermaid) who meets a little boy living in a house on a cliff by the sea. The girl fish (Ponyo) escapes her father who will not allow her some freedom and ventures to a place near where humans live. A boy named Sousuke discovers her after she gets stuck in a bottle near the shore and brings her to his home to become his pet. Ponyo falls in love with the boy and shows him that she can talk. But just as Ponyo’s and Sousuke’s friendship becomes deeper, Ponyo’s father catches up with her and brings her back to their home underneath the sea. But Ponyo wants to become human and with her mind power, she is able to grow her own limbs. She escapes again and is reunited with Sousuke.
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea gives us many of the kind of things that only Mizayaki can give us: stunning visuals, intricately drawn underwater scenes, realistic movements of the characters, and the meticulous manner in which every little detail in the movie is presented. But compared to Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo on the Cliff somehow left me a little disappointed. I don’t know, but I guess I just expected too much from Mizayaki. The storyline of Spirited Away is more solid than Ponyo on the Cliff; I could not get over the power of the dreaminess of every frame of Spirited Away. Probably if I hadn’t seen Spirited Away, I would say that Ponyo on the Cliff is by far one of the best animated films I have seen.
