Ponyo

Editorial

Japan's venerable animation master Hayao Miyazaki's latest feature begins with a flame-haired wizard dandy dropping what might be magical potion into the vast, open sea. Enigmatic and slightly sinister in appearance, he's the kind of character we might have found in the director's previous dark fantasias Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, but what he summons — a bubble-shaped fish girl rising to the surface — marks the beginning of a very different film indeed. And what do you know? It's another masterpiece.

Ponyo's is at heart a simple story — that of a friendship between a (fish) girl and a boy — rendered in gentle watercolours and told very much from the perspective of the kids. But this outline is only a portion of Miyazaki's universe, where a straightforward childhood tale allows the breadth of his extraordinary imagination to flourish in new ways.

His underwater kingdom is a shimmering delight: a teeming, colourful city populated by an array of dazzling fish and manta-ray submarines, a piscatorial utopia in waiting that the proud Mr Fujimoto — who distrusts life on earth — has sought to foster and protect.

While much of the story and animation thrives on the sweetness — but never the cuteness — of the friendship between Sosuke and Ponyo, the film's details reiterate the darkness and soul of Miyazaki's vision that is never far from the surface. Fujimoto's ability to contort water into ominous fish-shaped waves that crash to shore is quite eerie and, at times, terrifying, while other sequences in which sea creatures swell into the city and swim alongside freeways and buildings are pure, spectacular poetry.

One note: be sure, if you can, to see the Japanese-language version  — or deal with Cyrus and Jonas siblings on the voice-track.

Alex Lucas