Portal:Studio Ghibli/Selected works/15

Ponyo (崖の上のポニョ, Gake no Ue no Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on the Cliff"), initially titled in English as Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy comedy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli and Toho. It is Miyazaki's eighth film for Ghibli, and his tenth overall. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, Sōsuke, and wants to become a human girl. The film has won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. It was released in Japan on July 19, 2008, in the US and Canada on August 14, 2009, and in the UK on February 12, 2010. The film reached #9 in the US box office charts for its opening weekend.

Brunhilde is a fish-girl who lives with her father Fujimoto—a once-human wizard-scientist who now lives underwater—and her numerous smaller sisters. One day, while she and her siblings are on an outing with their father, Brunhilde sneaks off and floats away on the back of a jellyfish. After becoming stuck in a bottle, she drifts to the shore of a small fishing town and is found and rescued by a small boy named Sōsuke. Splitting the bottle open, Sōsuke cuts his finger in the process.

Brunhilde licks his wound when he picks her up, and the wound heals almost instantly. Fujimoto calls his wave spirits to recover her. After the wave spirits take Ponyo away, Sōsuke is heartbroken and goes home with his mother, Lisa, who tries to cheer him up, to no avail. Ponyo and Fujimoto have an argument, during which Ponyo refuses to let her father call her by her birth-name, "Brunhilde". She declares her name to be Ponyo and voices her desire to become human.