Ponyo

Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on the Cliff, initially titled in English as Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. It is the eight film Miyazaki directed for Ghibli and his tenth overall. The film stars the voices of Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazuhige Nagashima, Yuki Amami, George Tokoro, Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Rumi Hiiragi, Akiko Yano, Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Tomoko Naraoka. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, Sosuke, and wants to become a human girl.

Deep under the surface of the ocean, a sea-wizard named Fujimoto (Joji Tokoro) stands at the bow of his submersible, surrounded by an air bubble and an assortment of sea creatures. They swim circles around him as he pours magic potions into the water. Out of a side porthole, a red goldfish peeks out, making sure not to be seen, before waving goodbye to her smaller siblings and swimming off to join a school of jellyfish. She rests on top of one, domed by another, as they float towards the surface and far from her home.

When she wakes up, she find herself in the harbor of a seaside town Tomonoura. When a large bottom trawler comes towards her, the goldfish swims away from the jellyfish in an attempt to escape but is quickly pulled into the mess of garbage and debris that the trawler picks up in its net. She becomes trapped withing a glass jar but manages to escape the net and make it towards shallow water. Meanwhile, a young boy named Sosuke (Hiroki Doi) runs down the hillside path from his home to the water's edge to play with his toy boat. There, he notices the goldfish stuck in the jar and breaks her out of it, though cutting his thumb in the process. As he holds the seemingly lifeless fish in his hands, she licks his wound clean. Happy that she's alive, the boy takes her back up the hills as a series of strange waves comes in and reach for him. The waves return to deeper water where Fujimoto is waiting. He is horrified to hear from them that the goldfish, his daughter, has been taken by a human.

Sosuke puts the goldfish, which he names Ponyo (Yuria Nara), in a bucket full of water and brings her with him to the car where his mother, Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi), is waiting to take him to school. Just before she gets in, she notices Fujimoto crossing her yard with a portable pump on his back. She scolds him for spraying what she thinks is fertilizer, though he attests it's merely pure ocean water to keep him from drying out on land, before driving off. Lisa drops Sosuke off at school before going to work at the nursing home next door. Sosuke hides Ponyo's bucket in the bushes but his secrecy doesn't go unnoticed. Kumiko (Eimi Hiraoka), a classmate, asks to see what he's hiding but snubs her nose when shown Ponyo, calling her a boring fish. Ponyo squirts water into Kumiko's face and she begins to cry. 

Startled, Sosuke goes through the side fence and meets with a few senior citizens sitting outside. While some, like Yoshie (Tomoko Naraoka) and Noriko (Tokie Hidari), adore Ponyo, bitter Toki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) is suspicious of Ponyo's odd appearance and gets squirted in the face as well. The commotion attracts Lisa, and Sosuke rushes to the water's edge to escape punishment. However, Fujimoto's waves surround him and take Ponyo back to sea. Sosuke calls after Ponyo but is collected from water by Lisa who does her best to console him. Arriving home, Lisa is disappointed to hear that Sosuke's sailor father, Koichi (Kazushige Nagashima), is unable to come home that night. As his ship passes their hill, Sosuke sends his father a message via Morse code using his signal light. Still peeved, Lisa sends her own unfriendly message, but Sosuke manages to cheer her up.

Back underwater, 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 vices her desire to become human, because she has started to fall in love with Sosuke. Suddenly, using her magic, she forces herself to grow leg and arm-like appendages and start manifesting into a human, a power granted to her by the human blood she ingested when she licked Sosuke's finger.

Her alarmed father forces her to turn her back with some difficulty and goes to summon Ponyo's mother, Granmamare. Meanwhile, Ponyo, with the help of her sisters, breaks away form her father and in the chaos inadvertently uses his magic to make herself fully human. 

The huge amount of magic that she also inadvertently releases into the ocean causes an imbalance in the world, resulting in a huge tsunami. Running pell-mell over wavea of the storm, Ponyo goes back to catch up with Sosuke, who is amazed and overjoyed to see her.

Lisa is equally amazed, but takes Ponyo's transformation in stride, believing the world truly mysterious. Lisa, Sosuke, and Ponyo wait out the storm at Sosuke's house, where Ponyo learns some of the things in the human world, much enchanted by these new experiences.

Worried about the residents of the nursing home where she works, Lisa leaves to check up on them, promising Sosuke thet she will return as soon as possible. Granmamare (Yuki Amami) arrives at Fujimoto's submarine. On her way there, Sosuke's father sees and recognizes her as the Goddess of Mercy. Fujimoto notices the moon appears to be falling out of its orbit and satellites are falling like shooting stars, syptoms of the dangerous imbalance of nature that now exists. Granmamare declares that if Sosuke can pass a test, Ponyo can live as a human and the world order will be restored. A still-worried Fujimoto reminds her that if Sosuke fails the test, Ponyo will turn into sea foam.

Sosuke and Ponyo wake up to find that most of the land around the house has been covered by the ocean. Since it is impossible for Lisa to come home, the two children decide to find her. With the help of Ponyo's magic, they make Sosuke's toy pop pop boat life-size and set out across the ocean. 

Over the course of their journey, they see prehistoric fish swimming beneath them, and encounter several other evacuees in boats. After landing and finding Lisa's empty car, Ponyo and Sosuke head into a tunnel. There Ponyo loses her human form and reverts into a fish from using too much of her magical power to help Sosuke and others along the way. Meanwhile, Lisa and the residents of the nursing home are below the surface, but have been temporarily given the power to breathe underwater. 

Sosuke and Ponyo encounter Fujimoto, but Sosuke doessn't trust him due to Toki's claims and attempts to flee. However, Fujimoto captures them and takes them down to the protected nursing home.

Sosuke is reunited with Lisa and meets Granmamare, with whom Lisa has just had a long private conversation. Granmamare asks Sosuke if he can love Ponyo whether she is a fish or human. Sosuke replies that he "loves all the Ponyos." Granmamare then tells her daughter that if she chooses to become human once and for all, she will have to give up her magical powers. Ponyo agrees to this, so Granmamare encases her in a bubble and give her to Sosuke, and tells him that kissing the bubble will complete Ponyo's transformation. The balance of nature is then restored, and the previously stranded ships head back to port, including Sosuke's father's. Ponyo jumps high in the air and kisses Sosuke, transforming back into a human.