--- description: Does Japan's movie master have his first U.S. hit? title: Ponyo: A Hit from the Creator of Spirited Away? image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc09b3dcc78550eb/698a47b5d0753331cce6f30f/360_aponyo_0824.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Ponyo: A Hit from the Creator of Spirited Away? by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) Aug 24, 2009 4:00 AM CUT  The red-haired Ponyo bonds with her savior — or abductor — Sosuke, in the film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki The red-haired Ponyo bonds with her savior — or abductor — Sosuke, in the film by anime master Hayao MiyazakiDisney Enterprises by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) Aug 24, 2009 4:00 AM CUT An exhibition of the most rapturous watercolors is currently on display at U.S. movie theaters. Ponyo, the latest film from anime master Hayao Miyazaki — Academy Award winner for his 2001 film, Spirited Away — begins deep in the sea near a Japanese coastal village, and the underwater vision is both subtle and spectacular. Instead of relying on the usual cartoon bubbles and wisecracking fish, Miyazaki waves a wand and establishes his location with a pastel palette, the gentle undulating of flora and anemones, and Joe Hisaishi’s haunting score. You’re treated, aurally and visually, to a subterranean symphony. Animated feature is the official name these days, but the old tag cartoon suits the sort of CGI movie — your Shrek, your Ice Age — that goes for big laughs extracted from outlandish situations. Nothing wrong with that; cartoon comedy is an honorable, entertaining and often artful confection and has been since the days of Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop and the sublime Daffy Duck. But animation can go deeper, have higher stakes. You see that impulse in parts of nearly every Pixar picture: the first sections of WALL-E and Up have an ambition, a gravity that stretches the format close to that nexus of graceful motion and deep emotion where just about every Miyazaki movie serenely resides. “He celebrates the quiet moments,” says Miyazaki’s No. 1 American fan, Pixar creative boss John Lasseter. “It’s so rare — especially in Hollywood, where everything is bigger, louder, faster and more of it — to be brave enough to let it just quiet down.” That’s Miyazaki. Rather than being stocked with high-energy slapstick, his films proceed at a dream walker’s pace. They’re not dialogue-heavy; they’re image-buoyant. Fish out of Water In his native Japan, Miyazaki, 68, is perhaps the most respected director working in any film form. Still making movies in 2-D, hand-drawn animation, he creates a frame-by-frame storyboard — 180,000 drawings for Ponyo — that his crew of animators brings to life with minimal help from computers. He is also one of his country’s biggest star names. His 1997 Princess Mononoke was Japan’s all-time box-office winner until it was overtaken by Titanic; then in 2001, Spirited Away topped Titanic, and it remains the country’s top grosser. Ponyo took in $164.6 million in Japan. Now, with an English-language version supervised by Lasseter and released by Disney, it could become Miyazaki’s first U.S. hit. The story is a hybrid: a loose retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s fable The Little Mermaid crossed with souvenirs from Miyazaki’s youth. “We used to have tin toys that would float in the bath,” he says, “and I thought it might be good to revitalize some old-fashioned toys like that. So I started thinking of a goldfish.” The young fish, named Brunhild, is swimming with her sisters in Miyazaki’s sea when she escapes this seeming paradise, floating up to the surface and getting her snout stuck in a jar. A 5-year-old boy on the shore yanks her out. He is Sosuke (voiced by Frankie Jonas, the youngest of the Jonas brood, in the U.S. version), and he decides to call his new pet Ponyo. Sosuke has cut his finger. Ponyo (voiced by Noah Cyrus, the 9-year-old sister of another Disney cash kid, Miley) heals it with her touch, and in briefly tasting his blood, she starts to become human. She also develops a taste for the food humans like. Mmmm, ham! — more savory than plankton. And in one of the film’s many lovely vignettes, she enjoys her first sip of honeyed tea. Ponyo is accepted into the household by Sosuke’s mother Lisa (Tina Fey), who works in a senior center; the boy’s father Koichi (Matt Damon) is a fisherman whose job keeps him at sea for nights on end. Absent parents, absent children: Ponyo is all about the yearning for a complete family. Ponyo’s anxious dad Fujimoto (Liam Neeson) is a king of the sea, with an aging rock star’s gaunt face and flowing seaweed hair. Can he let Ponyo desert the water for life on land? Her mom is even more imposing: Gran Mamare (Cate Blanchett), a magnificent sea goddess who will finally calm the tsunami of trouble Ponyo has stirred up. Depth Perception The notion of a tsunami engulfing a village has to be startling to Asian viewers, who surely recall the devastation wreaked by the December 2004 Indian Ocean disaster. But in the movie, it’s as if Sosuke’s town has just gone through a cleansing car wash. “Rather than the tsunami destroying the town,” Miyazaki says, “I took it as her own sense of life overflowing, and that helped to revitalize the town. None of the buildings were destroyed in the flood. You can see them all beneath the water. That’s magic.” Miyazaki’s recent films have boasted an epic sweep, a teeming cast of characters and a two-hour-plus length that proved more daunting than endearing to some viewers. Ponyo is closer in tone to his kid-friendly ’80s movies: Castle in the Sky, about a pair of orphans in pursuit of a floating island; My Neighbor Totoro, in which two girls meet some agreeable forest spirits; and Kiki’s Delivery Service, about a 13-year-old witch who starts her own business. All are artistic triumphs and certified delights — close kin to Lasseter’s CGI wizardry and Nick Park’s stop-motion Wallace and Gromit films. These are Miyazaki’s animation amigos: “My comrades in arms,” he says, “in trying to keep good quality and commercially viable animation going.” When you see Ponyo — and you must — be prepared for a movie that doesn’t abide by Hollywood rules. This is a tale for children (yes, of all ages) who are ready to be coaxed into another world through simple words and luscious pictures. Miyazaki knows the secret language of children; he dives deep into the pool of childhood dreams and fears and, through his animagic, takes children down to where they can breathe, and feel, and be free. — Reported by Lev Grossman / San Diego  ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6689196/ponyo-a-hit-from-the-creator-of-spirited-away/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6689196/ponyo-a-hit-from-the-creator-of-spirited-away/"},"headline":"Ponyo: A Hit from the Creator of Spirited Away?","datePublished":"2009-08-24T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-27T17:02:49.901Z","description":"Does Japan's movie master have his first U.S. hit?","url":"https://time.com/archive/6689196/ponyo-a-hit-from-the-creator-of-spirited-away/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc09b3dcc78550eb/698a47b5d0753331cce6f30f/360_aponyo_0824.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcc09b3dcc78550eb/698a47b5d0753331cce6f30f/360_aponyo_0824.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_aponyo_0824.jpg","caption":"The red-haired Ponyo bonds with her savior — or abductor — Sosuke, in the film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki","creditText":"Disney Enterprises","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6689196/ponyo-a-hit-from-the-creator-of-spirited-away/","name":"Ponyo: A Hit from the Creator of Spirited Away?"}}]}] ```