Essay Research

Notes from the Ponyo (2008) DVD special features

Creating Ponyo Notes

“Small children started to pop up around me, especially at my work. Many people I know had new-born babies. It just hit me that I needed a movie for these kids, but not another Totoro. That’s my reason to make Ponyo; it’s a movie for five-year-olds.”  

“If a five-year-old looks at the sea, it could look like a living creature. So I animated this thinking the sea has life and that it’s a living thing.”

“I think five-year-olds are much more perceptive than they are able to describe. So the movie was for kids of that mysterious age.”

“I often think about the relationship between nature and me, a human. I exist within nature but also there’s nature in me that is somehow connected with Mother Nature.”

“We neglect the fact that we are products of nature. We suppress that by following society’s rules. We possess primal powers and desires and that is nature.  So I wanted to release them, and Ponyo is someone who has been released.”

“Good boys try their best to keep their world. But somehow, many people assume they can’t. I wanted to introduce a boy who is true to his world. So we’ve got a girl who is rather wild and primitive, and a boy who earnestly embraces her for what she is.”

Hayao Miyazaki 2008

Creating Ponyo, Ponyo: 2 Disk Special Edition, DVD, 2008, Studio Ghibli DVD