Hayao Miyazaki born in 5th of January 1941 in Tokyo in Japan, is an internationally famous Japanese animation director who produced wondrous and adorable animations that attracts a wide range of audience. Despite the fact that his productions were categorised in children’s genre, many adults and other age groups enjoyed watching his films because of their entertaining plots, realistic characters and breathtaking animations. In Miyazaki’s animations, he typically merged reality and whimsy seamlessly together which this made the fantasy worlds he created seem like they were replications from reality, also established the aspect of ‘Magical Realism’. Often Miyazaki introduced animations that express dark and complicated messages behind yet he subverted this ordinary phenomenon as he focused on simplicity in his animation ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’. Miyazaki created an extraordinary world in ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ through a simple, fantasy-driven concept design, vivid characterisation, captivating visuals and vibrant colour palettes.

 

 

Miyazaki and his team, Studio Ghibli is known for their authenticity in producing Japanese animation. The director began his career by the hand-drawing technique and he tried to incorporate computers for a more convenient process but he stopped using these digital device after he produced 3 films that involved computer animation to embellish the hand-drawn images. Eventually he closed down his computer-graphic department in the studio because he realised that “by using computers, what we were doing is that people who could draw by hand, the computer somehow entered in their heads. So they were starting to draw to fit the computer images, and I thought that was the wrong way to go.”. Miyazaki stated this through translators’ words. ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ was a film that Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli produced completely by hand after Miyazaki realised the disadvantage computer brought to their team and that he felt like the traditional hand-craft method allowed him to be more subtle and expressive. ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ world-widely demonstrated hand-drawn animations’ visual power of creating 170,000 separate pictures throughout the 100-minute running time. In the process of making 'Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea', Miyazaki preferred to draw all the waves himself as he enjoyed experimenting different ways to draw the most significant feature of the film.  Miyazaki draws his storyboard with watercolour, 2B pencils and sometimes colour pencils. He shows delicacies even in his drafting and often writes notes on the side of his storyboard or ideas for himself and other members of the studio. His drawing style is very simple in terms of lines and colours and that no extraneous lines can be seen to be confusing. Hence, Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli had experimented with both the traditional and digital method of producing animation and finally they decided to stick with the delicate hand-drawn method.

 

 

‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ explores the style of Minimalism as the story was very straightforward yet was enough to express the fantasy within. This film was loosely based on ‘The Little Mermaid’ by Hans Christian Andersen but the final plot was further developed by Miyazaki as he reshaped the classical features and replaced it with his deep love for the environment. ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ illustrated the adventure of a young boy who lives on a peaceful cliff away from the urban city and builds a relationship with a goldfish princess, Ponyo who desired to become a human. Sosuke, the young boy protagonist was challenged as he was to decide whether to continue to support Ponyo to become a real human or to stop Ponyo as her transformation has disrupted the order of nature; delivered catastrophic effects to their village. Sosuke also had to take on adult responsibilities while his mother was missing and he had to find her across their village which had been covered by about 12 metres of water. When the entire villages was under such deep water, Ponyo and him noticed prehistorical marine lives were swimming on the sunken streets which this signifies the disruption of natural order. Moreover the moon moved closer to the planet and caused the sea-level to rise rapidly. Nevertheless, with the help of this gold-fish princess who stole magical powers from her father, Sosuke and Ponyo was able to escape from this drowning house with a toy boat that Ponyo had enlarged with her power. Thus, Ponyo formed a bridge of communication between the reality and whimsy with the use of magical power she took from her parent and delivered the human world with fantastical elements of ancient sea creatures and astonishing occurrence.

 

 

 

Numerous magical creatures has been introduced to the audience after Ponyo had disrupted the nature’s order and everything started to become unbalanced in reality; human world. An example of that would be the merge of the waves and fish as one of the scenes where Ponyo desperately tried to reunite with Sosuke. She wants to see him so badly that she turned from a goldfish to a human girl independently in an outstanding sequence, her movements were exceptionally smooth and she completed the moves while she was sprinting on the wave-fishes. Miyazaki displayed the characteristics of the magical creatures through the powerful waves' appearance as two creatures were combined into one; the strong waves were in formations with massive marine life and water splashes/droplets were shaped in smaller sized fish. Miyazaki gave characters and human-nature to the waves indicating that these waves are individuals and that they have their own thoughts,  this also enormously captivates the audience’s eyes to Miyazaki’s mesmerising visuals. Thus, Miyazaki imaginatively mingled the nature of fish and waves together and introduced his special interpretation of the environment, also explored a threatening idea of environmental devastation such as tsunamis through the effect of merging creatures in which the idea became less haunting and more suitable for young audience.

 

 

 

Ponyo was doubtlessly a magical creature as she behaved like a messenger between the reality and fantasy, her wish of becoming a human wasn’t destructive at all, but in terms of her behaviour she destroyed things and hurted people from both worlds. It is true that she had an unforgettable adventure and bonded closely with Sosuke yet at the same time, she caused him a whole lot of trouble as exactly what Ponyo’s father, a misanthropic wizard had explained, "She's torn a hole in the fabric of reality. She's too young to understand.” Ponyo brought magical powers into the human world without permission and didn’t think about the consequences that she delivered to humans. Miyazaki proposed an undercurrent of environmentalism as the idea of ‘humans are a destructive force to the natural environment’ and what Ponyo did was corresponding to the idea; she messed up the correct order of nature because of her desire to be a human.

 

 

 

Miyazaki has always been very unpleased with the way humans treat the ocean as he stated,  "I saw how people have polluted the sea, and came back home angry. I don’t think we’re born with a natural tendency to protect the environment. I think it’s something we learn if we’re educated and brought up to have the manners to care for the world. At some stage in our lives, the greed factor became stronger, and that has led us to the horrible situation we’re in now. A change is necessary, and I believe my films convey that.” in an interview. A very clear message from Miyazaki’s ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ is expressed; the ocean is a individual world, certainly not somewhere for humans to dump rubbish like what Ponyo’s father said ‘humans treat the ocean like their empty black souls’. Miyazaki’s choice sharing his opinion in an animation was an effective way to warn and educate younger audience that if they make the ocean or any part of the natural world ‘angry’ then humans will get ‘punished’ by the powerful nature. Hence, Miyazaki included the current concerns of the environment in the world into his own animation such as ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’and present it in a highly whimsical way in order to raise awareness from all-age-group audience.

 

 

 

This also highlights the aspect of ‘Magical Realism’ as Miyazaki displayed environmental issues from our world and presented it post-apocalyptically in his fantastical animations; allow the audience’s imagination to ‘flourish’ in such way that everyone encounter something real. Additionally, Miyazaki as an environmentalist is quite dark as he seriously purposed in an interview that ‘he looks forward to the time when Tokyo is submerged by the ocean and the NTV tower becomes an island, when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises’, this image is extremely familiar with numerous scene in ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ which means that this animation gave audience an opportunity to explore the world Miyazaki awaits. Therefore, Miyazaki as an environmentalist’s perception of the reality is revealed in the film ‘Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea'  , he also included numerous factors of fantasy from his post-apocalyptic thinking.

 

 

 

Miyazaki present more fantasy elements in the film ‘Ponyo’ through the colour tones. This technique was practised to contrast the reality we live in and the world that Miyazaki created. The use of colours in Miyazaki’s films are often bright and pastel, this is thoroughly illustrated in the character design of Ponyo. Miyazaki used different shades of blue for the colours of the ocean and marine lives however the goldfish princesses, Ponyo and her siblings are designed to have bright salmon coloured dress-liked tails in which contrasted vibrantly against the dark shades of blue. Another example would be the peaceful scenery illustrated by Miyazaki, a verdant green was chosen to colour the scenery above water in which delivers a sense of nature and serenity before the land got destroyed. The reality we live in, juxtaposes with the calming atmosphere as most of us lives in a place where it is filled with dull-coloured buildings and our lives are always in hurry; most of us barely have time to entirely enjoy and relax in life, which these phenomenons displays a massive contrast between the reality and the world Miyazaki had created in ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’. Therefore, Miyazaki used vibrant colour palettes to create a sense of fantasy when it is compared with the dull reality we live in. 

 

 

 

In conclusion, Miyazaki created a world beyond reality in one of his greatest film, ‘Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea’ through various aspects of ‘Magical Realism’, post-apocalyptic imagery, creative characterisation and concept design. His skilfulness in producing hand-drawn animations had also helped him to develop such vivid and beautiful fantasies based on his own reflection of the reality we live in.