Review: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Dub)

Medium: Anime Film
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy
Director: Miyazaki
Studios: Madhouse
Release Year: 2009
Licensed? Yes (Disney)

In his last film, Hayao Miyazaki pushed the limits of hand-drawn animation’s courtship with computer animation to produce the visual overload of Howl’s Moving Castle. In his latest, childlike fantasy, Ponyo, he returns to his roots with a new twist: hand-drawn pastel backgrounds that look more like colored pencils than ink. It’s Miyazaki returning to his basics with a simple story, a simple moral and colorful fish.

Ponyo is a tale set by the majestic, busy and tranquil sea, one placed somewhere between Porco Rosso and Finding Nemo. This is a very simple fairytale about a goldfish’s quest to become human and live with her human friend, Sosuke. The mood is like Totoro without the long stretches of silence; Ponyo flows like most of Miyazaki’s works, ebbing and rising between action, wonderment-filled close-ups and visual jabs.

Following the thread of Pinocchio, The Frog Prince, and Ergo Proxy's Pino, Ponyo is a bedtime story about a goldfish who escapes the sea to become human. Her father, a hermetic wizard who pours food coloring through a bubble into the ocean (wizards don’t have many hobbies), represses her, forbidding her to grow up while he tends to his work of saving the seas from man’s pollution. Once Ponyo escapes, she is rescued and named by our main character, Sosuke. Their journeys run side-by-side as Ponyo’s physical transformations are reflected in Sosuke’s internal changes such as coming-of-age, “[becoming] the man of the house,” and saving his mother from a bubble.

Yeah, there are a lot of bubbles in this movie.

The voice acting here is superb. No review would do it justice, so here’s a paragraph fan-gushing. Tiny Fey lends a very cool mom voice to possibly the most casual mom in anime history, Lisa. It’s a very natural and I'm honestly surprised to hea such a brilliant comic actress play such a meaningful role. Lisa and Sosuke are always living in close proximity to each other, waiting for Sosuke’s father to get home from his boating job. Night after night, they are let down. There are great moments of Lisa mom-raging, rejecting her husband, then turning the coin and cuddling with her son to make them both feel better. Liam Neeson play Ponyo’s father, Fujimoto, a wild red-headed magician whose sunken cheeks and blush make him look like a dehydrated drag queen. Not to say that Qui Gon Jin can’t play a dehydrated drag queen! Cate Blanchett plays the Sea Goddess (of course), and her deep voice rolls so well off the character’s lips it’s hard to call this movie a dubbing job. Yes, Disney did cast Miley Cyrus’ sister and a Jonas brother to play the leads, but to be honest they carry the movie beautifully.

Miyazaki has his standard “humans mucking up nature” theme early in the movie, but oddly enough it dampers out quickly since Ponyo is the character who ends up accidentally endangering the world, and only Sosuke’s love can set nature back in balance. The true moral is spoken by the mother and repeated by Sosuke: “We never judge someone by their looks.” Sorry, sleep-deprived sea wizard, will you still be my friend even though you hate humanity?

All Miyazaki preset notions and critiques set aside, Ponyo is simple, colorful, and very reassuring about the loss and (more importantly, the creation) of friendship and setting your own course in the sea of life.

It was quite an interesting experience to see an audience receive this film. The silent comedic moments produced as many warm laughs from the children and their parents as the slapstick moments. Looking around the theater, I saw fathers holding their daughters closer, little girls clapping their hands in excitement, and little boys trying to sneak out to see District 9. What’s really going to make Ponyo a children’s classic is its very specifically targeted audience: children. If nothing else, this is a wonderful film for the mid-twenty-something generation to show to their spawnlings and create a whole new sense of wonderment for the next generation, in the same way Totoro did for many of us.

great.

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Trailer for Ghibli's Ponyo released to Apple website

It's been a long time coming, but Disney has at last provided a dubbed trailer for Ponyo, the newest Hayao Miyaki-directed Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) film released in America by the massive Hollywood studio. Fans who have been paying attention to the movie over the past year will no doubt notice Disney's name change, from "Gake no Ue no Ponyo" or "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" to, simply, "Ponyo." The new name will definitely be easier for mainstream viewers to remember, though I'm sure many fans like myself will still think of it by the original name.

The trailer, available only on the Apple website, showcases the star-studded Hollywood voice cast, which includes such big names as Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, and Tina Fey. And of course, who can forget the contributions of notable relatives-of-famous-yet-insignificant-pop-stars Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas? I'm SO EXCITED!!

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News Briefs - Ponyo dated, new FUNi and ADV shows on Hulu and iTunes

Wow, I blink and all the news flies past me. In the last couple weeks, we've seen some nice expansion of the anime industry with video distribution and theatrical plans announced for a whole slew of new shows. First off is today's announcement from Disney of a release date for Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea, the newest anime movie from award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Disney will release film in a currently unspecified number of theaters on August 14, 2009, the only week when it will face no major box office competition in the animation category. I haven't gotten a chance to see Ponyo yet (seeing as I don't live in Japan and didn't indulge in fansubs), but it looks like a movie that can really sell to the American family audience. Make sure you support Ponyo by going out to see it this summer!

In celebration of Hulu's first birthday, FUNimation has announced three new titles that will stream on the website, now the second-most-popular video streaming site (behind only YouTube). Those three titles are the baseball anime Big Windup (a.k.a. Ookiku Furikabutte), the sci-fi Heroic Age, and the full-length film Origin: Spirits of the Past. Clarissa of the Anime World Order podcast is a pretty big fan of Big Windup, and Uncle Yo recently gushed over Origin in an Ani-Gamers review, so I'm excited that FUNi has given us a chance to watch these titles for free.

On the topic of GDH (Gonzo Digital Holdings, the studio behind Origin), FUNimation has finally solidified a new deal with the struggling studio, which cut its anime production in half just a few months ago in response to economic and industry pressures. The company has been attempting to reap a profit from streaming its shows for free on websites like CrunchyRoll, but most reports are saying that the endeavor has not brought in much money for Gonzo. Oddly enough, the move to CrunchyRoll was seen by many as a betrayal of FUNimation, which has so often handled the American distribution of Gonzo's properties, but was now out of the loop as the studio dealt directly with video distributors.

In response, the apparently forgiving (or just smart) folks at FUNimation have agreed to pair up with GDH and take over North American distribution for all of its properties. That includes video streaming sites, presumaly meaning that FUNi would regain its place as the middleman between GDH and CrunchyRoll, which Hulu would probably also see an increase in Gonzo titles hosted on its service. The first titles to be taken over by FUNimation are The Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter, the first series that GDH ever broadcast simultaneously.

I think that it is simply amazing that Gonzo took such a risk in moving to a simultaneous broadcast, streaming video model, and despite their losses, were able to hold out until this new development. Now FUNimation has followed in GDH's footsteps and even supported the studio, and the entire anime industry (FUNi pretty much controls the whole thing) is finally participating heavily in the video distribution market – the true future of the industry in this blogger's opinion.

Finally, AD Vision, once the most preeminent anime distributor in the country, now nearly license-less and struggling to maintain relevance, has put some of its Anime Network titles on the iTunes store. While I don't think that this will have a big effect on the company's fortunes, it should be able to provide some income from their anime properties, since the sales through the iTunes Store are almost pure profit. The titles now available for download are Angelic Layer, Mahoromatic, Pet Shop of Horrors, Saiyuki, and Tsukihime.

And with that, I think that I can confidently say that the anime industry is finally moving in the right direction, with video streaming, simultaneous broadcasts, and direct downloads all options for those who want to watch their anime for free or cheap online (and without fansubs). Now that's change we can believe in. (I couldn't help it!)

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