Tokyo Blog

Gake no Ue no Ponyo will be the eighth film by anime virtuoso Hayao Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli. Apparently, this time (and it’s obvious from the posters you see in Lawson’s combini), the animation style will be based on watercolours, a bit like the previous Ghibli offering ‘My Neighbours, the Yamadas’. It’s in production now, in fact, looking at the date, it should be in post-production at least – the film comes out in Cinemas across Japan on July 19th this year (2008).

It sounds pretty trite when I write it like this, but the film is about a Goldfish Princess called Ponyo who really wants to become a human, in chasing her goal she meets and befriends a young boy called Sousuke (who’s character is based on Hayao Miyazaki’s son Gorou when he was 5 years old – Gorou has since directed feature-length anime ‘Gedo Senki’ for Ghibli). I’m sure it will be a great film. Hayao Miyazaki doesn’t seem to be able to put a foot wrong, especially in the latter part of his career. So it looks like this year, I’ll get to experience a very important Japanese cultural event: A nationwide opening of a Miyazaki film at a cinema in Tokyo, with all the queues and crowds that normally come with it. Tanoshimini.