The film Ponyo features a lot of references to children’s stories, folklore and mythology that are only noticed if you delve a little deeper into the meaning of this story. From old interviews and articles, I have managed to put together what Hayao Miyazaki actually took inspiration from to come up with the main character Ponyo and how she was created to be so unique.
“When I work on a new story, I think I’m writing a new story, but when I scrape things away to its core, I realize that there are fragments of these old folk tales or legends that form my stories. It’s not that I’m trying to resurrect an old legend, but naturally it’s there at the core. I think it shows that I’m in the flow of human civilization.” - Hayao Miyazaki
At a conference in Beverly Hills, California, Miyazaki explained that is hard to realise what you are initially inspired by to create such a film like Ponyo as I guess we are constantly being inspired by new and old things around us daily. Miyazaki mentioned "I feel like I'm searching in my subconscious with a fishing net, and I happened upon catching a goldfish in that net. That was the inspiration for starting to make this movie." With such a little pop of inspiration created a starting point for Ponyo’s character and from there the rest of the story fell into place.
The Little Mermaid & Elta of the Caner
Starting off with fairytale stories, the most obvious relation to ponyo is The Little mermaid, which Miyazaki said was the first only words book that he had read. The story of The Little mermaid focuses on a mermaid named Ariel who falls in love with a prince above land and is determined to transform her tail into a pair of legs so that she can be with him; just like Ponyo, Ariel is head strong and set on leaving her life underwater to become human however the consequences of their actions are quite devasting, Ponyo creating a ginormous tsunami and Ariel loosing her voice and turning into sea foam.
Elta of the Caner is a children’s story about a frog and a castle, I wasn’t able to find out much more than that as it seems to be a rather obscure Japanese written book, however Miyazaki explained in an interview that he used the story as the baseline on Ponyo but as he got further in the story had evolved into a whole new one
Kingyo no yūrei & Ningyo
Kingyo no yūrei & Ningyo are both from folklore and mythology and are only speculated to have been inspiration by critics and fans. A Ningyo is very similar to your traditional mermaid however they are seen as ugly beasts rather than beautiful sirens, they are also known to have summoned tsunamis if angered. Kingyo no yūrei otherwise known as Goldfish Ghosts are goldfish inhabited by murder victims. Beginning as normal goldfish legend says that when the blood of a murdered soul combines with the goldish that the goldfish transform into a combination of human and fish, just like Ponyo.
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