Ponyo

In Hayao Miyazaki’s 2008 film, five year old Sosuke finds a fish trapped in a jar on the shore. Ponyo, as he names her, is the sorcerer Fujimoto’s daughter, and the magic she pours into the sea to become human unbalances nature and floods the town. There is no villain to defeat. Fujimoto is not after conquest; he fears the imbalance and wants his daughter back, and the crisis is settled by a condition Ponyo’s mother Gran Mamare sets, not a fight. Nobody drowns; the retirement home residents breathe underwater. Miyazaki kept computers out. In his words, Studio Ghibli dissolved its computer graphics section before production began, because working with computers made people who could draw by hand draw to fit computer images. The waves were redrawn frame by frame instead of sliding painted cels, and he calls the trick never letting the squiggly lines stop. The setting comes from Tomonoura, where Miyazaki stayed in 2004 and 2005; Ponyo’s birth name, Brunhilde, points to Wagner. The film was named Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Film Prize, where Joe Hisaishi took best music. A good fit if you notice the sea redrawn in every frame and want water as a character. Not for a viewer who needs an escalating threat and an enemy to beat.