Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Posted on 25/03/2009 in Homepage 3, Specials
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is the last awaited movie by Hayao Miyazaki (Oscar winner with Spirited Away, 2002). Produced by Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 by the director Miyazaki and his collegue, Isao Takahata, Gake no ue no Ponyo was just presented in Italy at the last edition of Venice Film Festival.
The movie tells the refined children’s love story between a little fish girl and a five years old child, Sosuke. The fish girl, Ponyo, gets 
stuck in a glass pot and she is rescued by Sosuke on the shore. He takes a great liking to her and promises to protect her forever. Ponyo wants to become human to live with her friend. A dreadful tsunami hits the coast where Sosuke lives. The two friends will overcome a test to restore the world balance.
The movie animation
Inpired by The Little Mermaid by Andersen, the movie is adressed to children so it wants to be very simple and understandable at once by the children. The story is more consistent and immediate than the previous complex movies by Miyazaki (Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away). The movie is realized with 2D, hand-drawn animation, there’s no computer graphic: this level of detailed drawing resulted in an astonishing 170,000 separate images, a record for a Ghibli film. The bidimensional animation gives to the movie a classic look.
The Executive Producer, Toshio Suzuki, says that the movie is realized only with 2D animation because they were no satisfied with the CG on Howl’s 
. For example, the legs of the castle were made by CG. However, it didn’t seem very natural. Hence the latter half of Howl’s doesn’t include any CG. So the visual effects in Ponyo are simple as well, while on the other hand it needs very hard working because of the drawing all it by hand.
The movie production started on 2006 and the seaside village where the story takes place is inspired by Tomonoura, a real town in Setonaikai National Park in Japan, where Miyazaki stayed in 2005. The character of Sosuke is based on Miyazaki’s son Goro Miyazaki when he was five.
The interview to the producer, Suzuki, to know more about the making of
