Young children's imaginations are pretty surreal, and Miyazaki is good enough at tapping into that creativity to result in a delightful film that is often befuddling for adults.
Ponyo's defining quality, for good and bad, is that it's a movie for five-year-olds envisioned as if a five-year-old wrote it. Young children's imaginations are pretty surreal, and Miyazaki is good enough at tapping into that creativity to result in a delightful film that is often befuddling for adults.