All The Feelings That The Movie ‘Ponyo’ Made Me Feel

A compilation of questions, reactions and emotions

This article contains spoilers for Ponyo.

I’m on a mission to watch all of the Studio Ghibli movies again this year. There’s just a different experience when you watch animated movies as a child, understanding the superficial storyline, compared to what you truly grasp as an adult.

For one, when I read Handmaid’s Tale in 10th grade, it was just a dystopian novel. As an adult watching Handmaid’s Tale, too many elements of that plotline are similar to how reproductive health is controlled that it wasn’t just some outlandish dystopia written for interest, it was too-close-to-life that it made my heart race.

Anyways, for clear mental health reasons, I reasoned that rereading and rewatching dystopian-type novels and movies was not the way to go during the pandemic, and quickly shifted to more “fluffy” movies.

Ponyo is one of them.

And boy, was I kind of wrong about things.

A really bad summary of the movie by yours truly

In this movie, a five-year-old boy lives with his mom in a lighthouse, and his dad is a sailor. This kid meets a little human-looking fish — Ponyo, who was the child of an ex-human-underwater-magical-being and an Ocean Goddess, and Ponyo wants to be human.

Ex-human-underwater-magical-being has every intention to use magic to reignite some kind of environmental change to bring back ocean life and make it “an era of water” rather than “an era of land”.

There was a test of love involved, and a happy ending. Ponyo ends up getting to stay human with the five-year-old boy by the magic of love.

The Art is Incredible

The art in all Studio Ghibli movies are incredible, but of them all, I think this one is my favourite. This may be in part due to the fact that this is the most recent Studio Ghibli released, compared to the animation quality of the 80s (though those movies were pretty good too)!

But the art in this one resonated with me the most. It told a story that perhaps I hadn’t really noticed in others, particularly since a lot was unsaid. There was the surface narrative of a boy and Ponyo going out to search for his mom after a tsunami and flood, but underneath all of that were incredible illustrations of underwater life — some from prehistoric eras.

All of these details happened in the background because the focal point of the story was how Ponyo used her magic to enlarge the kid’s toy boat and how they were sailing on the boat to find everyone. The fish were just in the background.

Yet that was enough to drive the message home. There was such a beauty lost to the ages, but also lost to our harm on the planet.

Amidst all the cuteness, I thought.

I don’t understand the baby scene

What the scene was: Ponyo and her bae are sailing and they finally bump into someone else — a family of three involving a tiny, crying baby. Ponyo wanted to share her sandwiches, now devoid of any ham (as she’d consumed it all) to the baby, because she could understand the baby and wanted to feed it, but the mom had to repeatedly be like

No, the baby cannot eat solid food yet. But, I can eat these sandwiches to produce milk for him.

Anyways, as they leave this family, the baby cries even louder and Ponyo hops off her boat, runs across the water and smushes her face in the baby’s face, and the baby stops crying?

Then, she runs back to the boat and they sail off.

What did this mean?

Would could this mean?

Am I just thinking too hard about this segment?

Was it just a weird moment for me because babies, particularly crying babies, make me uncomfortable?

I’m not sure. Someone please explain this to me!

Somehow, in all of this time, I’ve become the angry mad scientist adults of classic movies

You know how when you’re a kid watching movies, you imagine yourself as that 10 year old anime protagonist, or the 14 year old princess ready to be married off to some kingdom? And you buy into the “magic” of “love” or whatever they try to sell you?

Specifically, you think be adults are the evil ones trying to use reason, telling you that love-at-first-sight doesn’t exist and that you do, in fact, have to pay taxes.

But then, when you rewatch these movies, you start realizing just how old you are when you talk back to the TV and say “no Ariel, you’re not in love, you’d just met him, girl?” You realize you’ve become the old, angry fart that poops on every little magical moment in the world?

That’s me. I realized I’d become the old, angry fart.

In Ponyo, there’s a character that’s described as previously human, but under some magic, he lives in the water with his demi-God fish children. His one life goal is to extract the essence of the ocean to create a revolution of Water life, taking down how humans took over the world and made it filthy.

There aren’t a lot of characters in this story but if I were any of the characters, I would be him? I would be angry about the environment? If I had magic, I’d try to use it too? If I birthed a child who used my life’s work to become something I deemed as frivolous, I’d be at the very least frustrated about it too?

At one time, I may have been Ponyo, thinking that love would conquer all and that I wanted only love to survive, and to be anything and sacrifice everything to have that love.

At another time, I may have had the resourcefulness and curiosity to explore and understand the world more, like the little boy.

But of them all, I’ve become the old, angry fart

In my defense, he wasn’t exactly the typical villain, but rather an ongoing antagonist. But perhaps I only see it this way because I relate to him, somewhere deep down.

If these spoilers don’t bother you, I highly recommend that you watch it!

It’s weird, I’ve been so accustomed to the norm we set that if we see a spoiler than it’s no longer worth it to watch a movie or show.

But I watch things for the narrative. For the art. For the music, sometimes. I might know the ending, or some key plot point, but I’d still be curious about how they got there and what they chose to do to tell that story.

In a way, spoilers pique my interest more than take it away.

And in a way, maybe this will pique your interest too? Perhaps what I grasp from the movie will be different and in your enjoyment of this movie, you’ll be able to share with me numerous other things I’ve missed.

I think that’s the beauty of storytelling. Each person takes away a different part, but also enough that overlaps that we connect to one another.

So if you watch this in the future, or if you’ve seen it before, let me know what you love most about it! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I’m so behind on reviewing the movies and TV shows that I’ve watched! I began doing this because I realized so much of my tv watching was auto-pilot, soon to be forgotten after I consumed it. On the other hand, if I talked about it some way, the best parts of it remained lovingly in memory and provided more value to my life than just passing time. So I’m committing to getting back on the wagon to review what I’ve watched! I’m tracking what I watch and write about here:

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