Ponyo

Ponyo is a Japanese animated fantasy film about a small fish-girl who longs to live among humans. She escapes her home in the sea, becomes trapped in a glass jar and is freed on the shore by Sosuke, a five-year-old boy living on a cliff above the water. He names her Ponyo and keeps her with him, and the two form a close bond. Her father, a sorcerer who rules the ocean depths, wants her brought back, while Ponyo uses her magic to return to Sosuke and take on human form, upsetting the balance of the sea.

The film was directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Toshio Suzuki, with animation by Studio Ghibli and backing from TOHO, dentsu and Nippon Television Network Corporation. It is the twelfth of the sixteen features Miyazaki has directed, arriving after Howl's Moving Castle and before Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess. The Japanese voice cast includes Yuria Kozuki as Ponyo, Hiroki Doi as Sosuke, George Tokoro as Fujimoto, Tomoko Yamaguchi as Risa, Yuki Amami as Gran Mamare and Kazushige Nagashima as Koichi.

Made for about 34 million dollars, Ponyo took roughly 208 million dollars worldwide, a strong return for a hand-drawn family film. On IMDb it holds 7.6/10 from around 184,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.8/10 from about 5,000 votes. A critics' rating of 7.9/10 from 174 reviews places it slightly above the audience scores.