Four years after "The Moving Castle", Hayao Miyazaki has revealed his next animated movie "Gake no Ue no Ponyo".

According to Ghibli World's interpretation of a feature in "NNN News Real Time", the story doesn't seem to be based around a novel this time. The tale is going to be centred on 5 year old boy named Sousuke and how a princess goldfish "Ponyo" wants to become human.

Interestingly enough, the model for the little boy is going to be Miyazaki's grandson when he was 5 years old.

Producer Toshio Suzuki comments...

It's been 18 months since production began. We're using a new drawing technique that will be different to the fine detailed illustrations of previous works but it doesn't involve any CGI. For that reason, the finer details will be lost but the fun will be in thinking how the animation will turn out. The story will mainly be set in the ocean and all of it will be "hand drawn" so maybe this will become something that no one's ever witnessed before. About half of the story and concept artwork has been done. Director Miyazaki himself has great expectations towards this challenge and is fully immersing himself in the production.

Music will once again by handled by Joe Hisaishi who also composed for other famous works such as Laputa, Spirited Away and Totoro.

So did anyone immediately think of Disney's "Finding Nemo" released back in 2003? Not that the stories are the same but that's what I thought of when I read "goldfish" and the "sea". On the other hand, the story is sounding a little like the little mermaid story. The goldfish probably falls in love with the boy or something...

Source:
• Famitsu

Related Links:
• Ghibli Announcement