`Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea` is utter nonsense

01.10.2008 by Patrick W. Galbraith

Audiences the world over are highly anticipating “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” (Gake no ue no Ponyo), the first new film in four years by renowned animation director Miyazaki Hayao. After a string of films employing digital techniques, Miyazaki, who has vocally criticized mechanization of animation, and Studio Ghibli deliver a fully hand-drawn, visual tour de force. Funding was abundant and the frame count is high, another hallmark of Miyazaki’s crusade against the often fragmented, still “limited anime” pioneered for Japan television. Movement is even more fluid than “Spirited Away.” As is by Ghibli standard, the environments and backgrounds are sumptuous and the creature designs breathtaking. Composer Joe Hisaishi even returns with an all-new cinematic score. All things considered, Miyazaki is sure to have another global hit on his hands. An original story, “Ponyo” has already made a strong showing at the Venice International Film Festival and is breaking box office records in Japan, earning $91 million in its first month of release, and surpassed 10 million viewers and $134.6 million as of September 28. That said, this is likely the least significant work by Miyazaki in decades, an utterly unchallenging and low-stakes showing that skirts the issues the great and socially engaged director has been struggling with since “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” in 1984. It is destined to be a forgotten addition to his extensive library, but taken in perspective there is a major shift in Miyazaki’s trademark style of which supporters and detractors will want to take careful note: Miyazaki is thematically returning to otaku anime.

Miyazaki has abandoned the pseudo-European settings and narratives that dominated his early career and works. What interests the great man now is not the romance and grandeur of a past Europe (what his son Goro tried unsuccessfully to capture in the throwback “Tales from Earthsea”), but a nostalgia for the pastoral vision and family of a Japan he dreams is once was. Like “Spirited Away,” he again sets the story in slightly familiar Japan of the near past and collapses the narrative with mythological themes and popular folk literature. This time it is basically a Japanese “Little Mermaid.” The beginning of the film is inspired – utterly silent for nearly 30 minutes as the wonder of a lush undersea paradise unfolds before the viewer. Here especially but elsewhere in the film as well the warm and fuzzy feeling of hand-drawn animation is demonstrated to the fullest, and the screen looks like a living, breathing storybook. From clouds of jellyfish to monstrous fish forms to miniature character fish in dresses that look like 1920s Disney characters with black eyes and squeak like Mickey Mouse, the classic Western “The Little Mermaid” animation simply pales by visual comparison. The pastel and earthy tones of the drawing above the sea is put in immediate contrast with the immediately vivid and lively sea environment. The centerpiece of the opening is a flying submarine vessel with a magician feeding the sea creatures, the “father” figure of the little fish-in-dress characters. One of the larger fish-in-dress characters escapes from the submarine, is caught up in a drudge with waste materials and washes up on the shore of a village. She is rescued from among the rubbish by Sosuke, and quickly becomes infatuated with the boy. Sosuke's father (who he seldom calls that way) is away on a boat out in the ocean and seldom comes back to their home on the cliff by the sea. His mother (who he never calls that way), a working nurse and terrible driver, was his only company before the fish. Sosuke names her “Ponyo” and shuns everyone else in society to befriend her and care for her. Ponyo’s father, it turns out, is a human who gave up on dirty, vile human and their polluting ways and went under the sea to protect the environment with magic he ingests and spreads to the creatures. He wants to protect his daughter and so comes to save her ad succeeds getting her back with some very scary multi-eyed sea sludge magic.

After she is gone, Sosuke learns that if a fish of that type comes onto land to be with humans, a great flood will consume the world. Ponyo acts out, grows legs and arms and ingests all of her father’s magic, meaning she is a god that can reshape the world, just like her mother, the massive and beautiful spirit of the sea (looks very much like late Tezuka Osamu characters, but with the added trait of being the size of a building, brilliantly colored and refracted by the waters above her). Ponyo does just that, coming onto land to the house where Sosuke lives and sinking the entire world besides that under floodwaters filled with unusual, massive creatures. As the moon descends and the tides rise, there are a number of standout, surreal scenes, such as a graveyard of overturned ships jammed against a wall of water under the giant moon, when Ponyo’s mother makes her first grand appearance, and a sunken nursing home where old women blissfully play. The people of the sunken village suddenly appear in boats calmly and happily crossing to the “hotel on the mountain,” a metaphor for death completely beyond the two children who play isolated in this post-apocalyptic, Amazon-like primal water world. Her father tries to prevent further damage and Ponyo’s magic runs out, but ultimately Ponyo has to make a choice to become human or fish. She tells her mother she wants to be with Sosuke, her father declares the disaster has been prevented and suddenly the movie ends with a celebration scene reminiscent of the last episode of “Evangelion.”

Aside from the incredible presentation, interesting about all this is the complete absence of a coherent narrative, emotional risks, character development and engaging of larger themes. Gone is the eulogy for the society, culture and environment of the past that inspires and moves the hearts of the young and old alike. All that remains, actually, is a simplified story about a lonely boy and the fish girl with a crush on him. They play as the world comes down around them, and the director seems to see no problem with allowing this reckless and selfish behavior. He does not call for youth to save others and grow as he did with “Kiki’s Delivery Service” or “Spirited Away.” Miyazaki does not even ask his characters to go beyond their immediate selves, as he did so successfully in the eulogistic story of innocence lost in “My Neighbor Totoro.” That, too, was an original story with hand-drawn art and elements of a bedtime fairytale, but with the critical difference of fantastic elements coinciding closely with real events with real consequences in the lives of the two little girls, who tragically must eventually must face reality and grow past the innocence and freedom of a youth with spirits such as Totoro. Scenes when Satsuki and Mei wait for their absent-minded father in the rain and escape into Totoro fantasy, or cannot face their hospitalized mother and so turn to the gods of the forest, or leave the squalor of postwar Tokyo for the pastoral dream of Saitama, are moving precisely because they are juxtaposed with the minimalist narrative of two little girls growing up and adjusting to feelings and roles they don’t yet understand or want.

Miyazaki’s focus on the grand themes of a generation, on environment, war, the destruction of society, sharpened by his experiences in postwar Japan, anti-government movements and myriad environmental disaster is the elephant in the room and goes unrecognized throughout. Ponyo’s father is in point of fact right about how destructive human can be, as is frequently demonstrated in the film by scenes of massive corporate and private pollution, but his concerns are not answered. He just gives his daughter up and shakes Sosuke’s hand. It is almost as if the great director has finally grown tired of trying to grapple with these things and so instead indulges himself in emotional masturbation. “Ponyo” asks nothing of Sosuke, who does nothing and does not develop at all. Sosuke has an almost unhealthy attachment to Ponyo – he repeats “I will protect you three or four times in the course of the film – and his reliance on her youthful energy and magic mirrors his unhealthy dependency on his mother. Dressed as a captain and piloting a toy made into a full-sized boat by Ponyo’s magic, Sosuke seems to be growing up as he greets the other adult “survivors” and makes his way to the sunken nursing home thinking his mother might be there, but then the boat shrinks and he becomes a weeping child lead on by Ponyo. The film does not take the fantastic elements and impose them on reality, but leaves them as storybook clippings with impact or meaning. There are only two-dimensional “kyara,” no complete characters.

The movie is like an extended promotion video insofar as it is just pretty pictures matched with nice music to evoke a visceral emotional response, but this indulgence of affect cannot be called anything but moe. Yes, “Ponyo” seems to be Miyazaki’s first attempt at moe – indulgent play among depthless characters in a cute setting without context or meaning. Further, this is a classic example of sekai-kei anime, a genre beloved among otaku wherein the private emotions of characters are literally equated with the fate and well being of the world at large. That is, if Sosuke loves (in a prepubescent understanding of that word) Ponyo and she leaves the sea to become a human, then the world ends. Everyone in the town seems to be aware of this, and many, many people have died in the flood that ensues when Ponyo does recklessly decide to be with Sosuke, but the happiness of these two kids is more important than the fate of the world. At one point Ponyo’s father, the only rational character in the film cast as a villain and given a bogus seiyuu for vocals, comments that a prepubescent girl should not be given the responsibility to decide the fate of the world based on capricious emotions and a fragile state of mind. He is promptly shushed as some evil fishmonger without a heart. Indeed, that so many come out of the theater commenting on a sense of “darkness,” “uneasiness” or “dissatisfaction” surrounding is directly related to the absolute terror of a world without reason, consequence or context. There is a fear, but not one that is spoken; it is knowing something is terribly wrong with this selfish, interior worldview, but completely agreeing with the creator that it is better to just ignore such concerns and enjoy in this happy fantasy. The whole film reads like a storybook anyway, and it has the kinetic energy of a kid telling other kids about what kids do, but as an adult viewer it seems a little wrong at times. It is like a sickness in the film that all negative emotions are suppressed, all harsh realities ignored and only a peace and ease among people who have transcended to some weird place beyond worldly concerns remains.

Indeed, many viewers have commented that Ponyo comes off as a bit of a stalker, and scenes of her chasing after Sosuke on top of surging black storm waves are simply nightmarish. As cute as she may be struggling to learn to be human and fragmented Japanese such as “Ponyo loves Sosuke,” her snuggling down alone with him in a blackout to eat instant ramen is beautifully rendered but ultimately unsettling, as outside hundreds lay dead or dying because of her. Sosuke’s unnaturally strong attachment to this fish-girl child as his surrogate mother, possible girlfriend and only friend (he completely ignores all the other girls in the movie other than his mother) makes him seem pretty otaku himself. As a child, Ponyo of course feels no connection and no remorse, but the viewer is invited to also turn off his or her brain and just enjoy the warm and fuzzy time with Ponyo, and that is just messed up. That Ponyo changes shape (think Sophie from “Howl’s Moving Castle”) from a cute little girl in a diaper to a grotesque, hunched and twisted frog-like beast that bears a striking resemblance to Miyazaki’s old-lady witch characters makes her seem even more unstable and frightening. The frequent Miyazaki panchira on his little girl shojo characters seems somehow wrong, where it didn’t before. It is only when she becomes a deformed fish in a skirt, a soothing yuruchara exterior with a tsundere attitude, that she (it?) and the viewer can finally feel comfortable. That is because Ponyo seems very familiar indeed as an otaku anime character in this iteration.

As terrifying as this sounds, after watching this film one cannot help but think Miyazaki has completely become disengaged from reality and interested in only pleasing himself, or simply that he has returned back to the otaku days he was supposed to have left behind when he decided to make wholesome family movies with “Totoro” in 1988. That No Face character pandering to little Chihiro in “Spirited Away” trying to get her love and affection? That is Miyazaki, trying to pander to this “Ponyo” creature that is so saccharine sweet it rots. In what realm of the imagination can this film without depth or conflict be a satisfying experience for anyone over the age of six? Were it Miyazaki’s stated intension to target children, fine, but it is not. His objective is a "revolutionary" film that challenges conventions such as beginning, middle and climatic end. The packaging and critical acclaim says high budget film, not tripe for drooling preschoolers. Miyazaki talks of himself as the only true animation auteur in Japan making films for families that parents and children can watch together; he criticizes the empty motion of indulgent otaku anime producers and consumers. By his own estimation, Miyazaki has de-evolved. Unlike classic shorts from the nineties such as “On Your Mark,” there is no bigger picture in “Ponyo” to link the images up to, and the result is dissatisfaction. One goes in expecting Shakespeare and gets instead “Moetan,” flat characters seductively placed in narrative stasis.

The movie ends with the “climatic” Sosuke-Ponyo kiss, and then jumps suddenly into a jerky and rushed end roll with a stanza or two of that dangerously addictive, candy-coated, ear-worm “Ponyo” theme. It feels like the ending of a contrived “Sazae-san” episode, television anime of the sort Miyazaki hates, not the conclusion of a 100-minute feature film. The song itself comes off as Miyazaki’s parting shot for fans and attempt to brainwash critics with the vocals of an innocent child and unpolished guitar accompaniment. Perhaps that is how Miyazaki has come to see himself, the aged father giving children the voice to sing and bringing happiness to the world. Unfortunately what proceeds the credits makes at least this viewer fear for the future of children growing up on this drivel. Miyazaki was supposed to be the last one fighting to insert depth and thoughtfulness into a post-millennial world reduced to surface and primal affect - otaku and moe entertainment being the obvious example. Miyazaki has finally lived up to his word and retired, but from exhausting social engagement rather than film making. Like so many today, he has retreated into himself, and not even the most stringent of critics can be pleased to see it.