Ponyo (2008) Is an Alchemical Mermaid Harbinger of Death

This is a discussion about the movie “Ponyo,” a Ghibli film released by Disney in the United States. The hosts discuss their experiences watching the movie, noting that some viewers found it too juvenile and confusing. They also talk about the voice acting, with one host preferring the original Japanese version. The hosts also discuss potential for a sequel, despite the mixed reviews of the original film.
The text discusses a movie about a human who turns into a magical underwater wizard and has children with a goddess, resulting in fish-human hybrids. The story explores themes of responsibility and fear of harm to those we care for. Despite its fantastical elements, the movie is grounded in real-world issues and experiences. The text also touches on the cultural impact of the movie and its merchandise, comparing it to other popular franchises.
The text discusses the impact of popular culture, focusing on TV shows like ‘The Simpsons’ and movies like ‘Ponyo’. It explores the idea of balance between magic and humanity in ‘Ponyo’, comparing it to Disney movies. The text also discusses the theme of death in ‘Ponyo’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, and how it affects the characters. Lastly, it mentions the potential influence of real-world events, like the 2011 tsunami, on the portrayal of tsunamis in ‘Ponyo’.
The text discusses the movie Ponyo, drawing parallels between its plot and other stories. Ponyo, a fish-human hybrid created by a moon goddess and a wizard, escapes her underwater home and is found by a human boy. After tasting the boy’s blood, Ponyo gains magical powers and eventually transforms into a human girl. The text also explores the movie’s title in Chinese, which translates to “little girl of the waves,” and discusses the consequences of mixing magic and humanity, as seen in the movie.
The text discusses a movie where characters explore the idea of compartmentalizing their human and magical selves. It also mentions an old folklore called Dolbear’s Law, which suggests that the temperature can be determined by counting cricket chirps. The text further discusses various elements of the movie, including a dangerous driving scene, the significance of the number 333, and the focus on prehistoric fish. The author also questions whether the flood in the movie is temporary or permanent.
The text discusses the movie Ponyo, focusing on the destruction caused by the character Ponyo’s transformation into a human. It questions the morality of the damage and potential loss of life caused by Ponyo’s actions. The text also explores the dreamlike quality of the movie, the strange behaviors of the characters, and the possible symbolism and deeper meanings within the film. It ends with a discussion about the character Ponyo’s unusual preference for meat, suggesting a carnivorous nature.
The text discusses the movie Ponyo, questioning how the character learns language, the mother’s acceptance of Ponyo’s transformation from fish to girl, and Ponyo’s ability to fix electronics. It also explores the symbolism of the white picket fence and the theme of humans harming nature. The text ends with a discussion about the Ponyo song and its different versions.
The text discusses a movie where a mother often arrives late to work, which the author criticizes as a bad habit. The author also discusses a character named Ponyo, who transforms from a fish into a human, and her father, a sea wizard. The author questions the logic of the movie, such as why Ponyo can’t get wet and why the sea wizard must remain wet. The author also mentions a scene where the sea turns into a tsunami, and wonders how many people can see the magical elements in the movie.
The text discusses a movie with scientific theories and influences from Disney and Wagner. The speakers share their personal preferences and experiences related to the movie and snorkeling. They also mention their projects, including a new sticker book available at paranoidamerican.com, and various podcasts. The text ends with a song about their work and experiences.

Guys, we’ve been a little too adult, so let’s make a story about a fish that drinks a child’s blood and then drowns his entire family. That will, that’ll really sweeten it up a little bit. Ask about Illuminati sister charging. Is it Disney mind control? Is this MKUltra Deluxe? We go from meal to me a co business. Oh hear me moving no more feel a co business Ask her about to move this day teacher go to everybody a co business Wish upon a star a cold Disney you know God to jealous far. Hello. Welcome to the Occult Disney podcast where we enter jellyfish sea castles to to breathe the Saudi Arabia Brian and find the mysteries of movies.

Not a Disney movie. Today we’re back to Ghibli, though it is released by Disney in the States. It’s Pono. This is Matt here, Paranoid American over there. How’s it going? It’s going great. And I would argue Ponyo is the closest to a Disney movie that we’ve seen so far. Out of the Ghibli movies. Yeah. And I’m just sitting here scanning my brain the ones we’ve covered for sure. It’s little, it’s Little Mermaid. It’s just the Ghibli version. A Little Mermaid. Yes, yes. Which it is and it isn’t. There’s a few other things mixed in there. Little Mermaid, of course, very clearly being one of those things.

But I saw this movie, I guess I don’t think I saw it in the theater. I guess I saw it when it was came out on Blu Ray and I was kind of like confused by it originally, maybe because I was expecting a more of a straight up Little Mermaid. And then Pono is a fish, but it’s a girl and kind of sort of. And I, I, I was 29 years old when this came out, but I was still confused by it the first time I went online just looking for fan theories and other reviews. And this one seemed surprisingly hated by a small minority of people, but vocal nonetheless.

And they were making complaints that I just did not agree with in any way. And I guess that’s more normal for regular movies. But so far with the Ghibli movies, I was like learning new ways to appreciate them where people were like, oh, yeah, it doesn’t move the same way that a western movie would. Right. Toro is a really good example of that one. But this one, there was a lot of complaints about it being too juvenile and the story and the plot not making sense. And I felt this one was really cohesive. This might even be my favorite one we’ve watched so far.

Okay. I, I liked it a lot better watching it this time. And oh, I remember what happened. It was actually when I was coming to Japan this time I had the Blu ray and I visited my, my cousin on a layover and we watched with her kids or whatever. So we probably watched in English. And this would vary. I, I watched in Japanese last night and this, this would be on my list of, oh my God, you need to watch in Japanese. I, I’m guessing you didn’t, but. Because I know. Yeah, because it had so much kid talk.

I’m like, that, that’s the line for me when, when we cross a certain threshold of kid talk for a Japanese anime, I’m like, I have to watch it in Japanese now. I cannot deal with Western kids doing Japanese kids. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t work in my mind. But see, this voice cast was kind of star studded. Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchet. Liam Neeson plays the guy that his daughter gets kidnapped. So I mean, that alone should mean that it’s worth watching it with. The English dub is that this is. This predates taken, right? This predates the new Liam Neeson archetype where someone kidnaps his daughter and he has to hunt them down.

That is the plot of this movie. Kidnapped Liam Neeson’s daughter. Okay, well, you get that from the dub. Maybe the kids. I want, here’s what I want. I want the mix where the kids are still speaking Japanese and then you can put in everyone else. And as you’re studying, everyone else is Japanese. But we keep Liam Neeson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can speak in. Or. Or we teach Liam Neeson to speak some Japanese. That, that could be some fun. I, I was thinking about this too, though, because I knew that you. This was going to come up again.

We’re like, oh, you should have watched in Japan. And I think that since this is the occult Disney podcast, I do get to bring the original sort of still not ex expat, but current Pat. Like I am a current American perspective. And, and how many Kerpats are watching, you know, Ghibli movies in Japanese and reading the subtitles. That does not sound American to me. American to me sounds. At the very least, you’re finding the English audio dub or you’re not watching at all. Okay. I think I’m just like highly annoyed by children’s voice acting in English.

Like that might be across the board. Maybe, maybe I want like in regular Disney movies for the juvenile characters to start speaking in Japanese as well. And this movie was like, kind of. That’s the thing with the criticism calling it too juvenile is it was 100%, you know, meant to be that, like, that was the. The point, because Mononoke was 10 years earlier, how’s Moving Castle? And even Spirited Away is pretty hardcore. So it was kind of like, let’s. Let’s pull it back a little bit and make one. You know, make one for the kitties that they can watch or something.

So, guys, we’ve been a little too adult, so let’s make a story about a fish that drinks a. A child’s blood and then drowns his entire family. That will. That’ll really sweeten it up a little bit. Yeah. And then later, when the sea goddess and the. And. And dad are talking about the magical rules and stuff, I’m like, man, something’s going over my head here. You know, I. Maybe I should watch that scene, like, three times or something. Down the rules. I actually know all the different rules that came up. I was. No watching. I was kind of assuming, okay, it’s going a little over my head, but I’m.

I’m pretty sure you’ll get it. I took good notes. But again, English dub notes, and who knows how much has been lost in translation, right? The one I picked up on that might get lost in translation is when they’re entering the tunnel near the end of the movie, the kanji there is prominently and translated as stop. So I just thought that was funny that the movie is telling them to stop or telling Sosei to stop before he goes in the tunnel. Is this name still Sosuke in English? The kid? It is. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just curious.

They pronounce it so soke. Oh, okay. Sorry. That. That broke my brain a little bit. And they spell it. It’s like S, O S, U, K, E. So. Yeah, that’s how you would spell it. It would just. Yeah. The pronunciation was. Oh, no. They say over and over again they say it. It meanders between Sosuke and so. Okay. Yeah. So that. That makes my ears bleed a little bit. Just living in Japan because. Well, I mean, it’s like. It’s like pretentious, I guess in the States when people are like karate or karaoke, but that if you say karaoke and karate, Japanese people might not understand you.

It’s like me asking if you want salada, you know, you gotta speak English. Yeah. Do you want salada? Sure. I’ll take whatever you want to give me, man. Yeah. No, that’s just salad. And the first time I heard it, I had no idea what was being said to me. I was like, salad what? Just, you know, that little change can really throw you off, you know? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? They give you whale sperm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. It was delicious. The other really funny thing, just looking at some of the production notes here, is the follow up film was what, seven years later with the Wind Rises, right? But apparently Miyazaki was like, I want to make Ponyo 2.

Which is kind of funny since it wasn’t like. I mean, it wasn’t hated or anything. But like you said, there was a vocal minority of people that didn’t like it. So him. Maybe he was trolling those people. I’m gonna make ponyo 2. Deal with that people. I don’t. I don’t. How would you make Ponyo 2? It’s a pretty well contained story. Well, I don’t know, because Ponyo has what looks like hundreds of siblings and they turn into waves or fish waves or something. I’m not really sure exactly what’s happening in some of those scenes, but I feel like if there’s one Ponyo, then there could be hundreds upon you.

Yeah, yeah. You have a TV show, one Ponyo a week, has some. Some adventure on land or in a drowning land or whatever. Yeah, yes, yes. Fragaraka punyas. That’s cool. I guess one of the things that really confused me in saying this the first time is you look at wiki and wiki is saying like, it’s. They’re goldfish. I’m like, okay, they have human faces from the start. That’s creepy. Goldfish don’t have human faces. Right. And the whole story is about a guy that used to be human and then somehow turn into a magic underwater wizard that needs to stay wet.

And he shacked up with the goddess of the ocean slash the moon. And they had all of these offspring which are fish human hybrids, but the fish human hybrid are less mermaid and more like an actual fish with a human head on it. Yeah, that’s kind of the premise. Yeah, it’s nightmare fuel for a. For a kitty movie, isn’t it? I don’t know. I mean, at first it was a little bit off putting, but I thought that this was incredibly interesting. Like all the different things that happen. For example, the. There’s a constant theme that the human thinks that he’s killed this fish the entire time.

And I kind of can relate to that. I remember when I was A little kid. And I would find a turtle or I’d find a garden snake or a lizard, and it would sort of be my captive prisoner, slash Peter. And then he says so many things that I can relate to, like, oh, you’ll be safe here. I’ll be back later. You just leave this helpless animal in a bucket somewhere under a tree and just God hopes that you actually remember that it was there and it doesn’t, like, just fry out in the sun. And this entire movie is about this kid constantly putting his pet in danger and worried that he killed it, and his mom putting her son in danger and constantly worrying that she’s gonna, like, kill her son.

So I don’t know, it’s a weird set of Aesop fables where, like, there’s this weird nesting doll of everyone concerned that they’re gonna kill the thing that they’re meant to protect. Well, yeah, that’s hardcore for a kitty movie. I don’t mind calling this one the kitty movie, by the way, just because that was fully the intention. Again, if. When people are complaining about that, that’s like. It’s like if I make a science fiction movie and you complain that it’s too science fictiony. It’s like, I told you what I’m doing. You know, I might complain a little bit that it could be off putting for an adult that could potentially watch this to consider it a kitty movie, because I didn’t really.

Personally, I didn’t find it any more or less juvenile than Totoro was. I would agree with that. It’s. It’s kind of ones in between the three proceeding in particular that I’m thinking about. Like, all of those are like. I remember every kid in Japan has seen, like, Spirited Away, but, you know, I remember my wife being like, oh, are the kids too young to see Spirit Away? I’m like, they’ve already seen it 10 times and it was like, it turned out like my mother in law was scared by it. So. And that’s the World War II one, right? Which fireflies? I always.

I don’t know why I always get those. Oh, God, no, no, we were not hanging around watching Grave of the Fireflies. That’s. That’s what you probably don’t want to show to children. No, no, this is Spirit Spirited Away. Where? With the bath house. Right. So, okay. Right. You know, we saw that one. Yeah. I mean, it’s got creepy stuff in it, but it’s not like it has way more going on. I feel like you have to pay attention and keep in mind, all these different dynamics. Whereas Ponyo, aside from understanding that there’s a wizard that lives in the ocean and that he banged the moon goddess and they created these weird fish human hybrids, outside of that, there’s not a lot else you have to really worry about.

There’s not a lot of other moving parts. And it also feels the most realistic. And I mean that knowing that there’s an underwater wizard and a fish human hybrid, but it doesn’t constantly jump in and out of magical dimensions or realms or like weird, you know, interdimensional goblins are popping in and out and you’re going on these huge journeys. It all takes place mostly in the real world, dealing with real people problems. And the mom works at a retirement home and the guy, the kid, you know, I, I’m gonna have to say Sasak, because that’s the way I apologize.

But like, he goes through some like, very normal kid stuff in the out in the human world, which so far was a surprise to me because all the Ghibli movies we’ve seen within the first 10, 15 minutes, like, oh, and by the way, you’ve just passed through this completely different dimension where everything, you know, is wrong. And here’s like a whole entire fantasy world to back it up. This one kind of aside from when we see this underwater world with the wizard and the moon goddess, but the rest of it’s pretty normal. Yeah. And I had missed how smoothing Castle in the theater.

I actually, I hadn’t seen it till we did it for this podcast. So this was Ponyo is like the one I saw after seeing Spirited Away and was, yeah, I think at the time, a little bit disappointed that didn’t have all the stuff right. I wanted to see like probably, you know, Summer wars would have been like, which we watched a few months ago, would have been a better follow up for me at the time. So was that a theatrical release? Summer Wars? Yeah. Yes, question mark. I. I didn’t see it in the theater. I think it was in the theater, but it wasn’t like a massive success, as we learned from looking at the box office.

That one, this one, I always do the box office. I guess I need to have a look at that budget. 34 million box office, 205 million. So yeah, this one was made a little bit. I don’t think it’s the most successful Ghibli, but it’s a, it’s a rollicking success. So, you know, good for it. Do you see Ponyo shirts and stuffed animals out in the Wild in Japan, not so much. So that. That’s a good point. One, what you see the most of is, you know, actual Disney. Not. Although we’ve talked before, I think. Was it here where we were talking about, like, Ghibli merchandise is kind of, like, a little bit curated, so it’s not just, like, all over the place.

I was in Tokyo Station last week and I found, like, a little Ghibli store which they had. They had some Ponyo stuff in there. But I don’t see kids, like, rocking in to my, you know, classroom with Ponyo thermoses or anything. Well, like, compared to. You said that Totoro or Totoro, that. That one does Ghibli. That’ll. He’s the Ghibli that’ll show up the most. But even Totoro doesn’t show up on my. On the kids stuff as much as regular Disney stuff or Paw Patrol or Pokemon. There’s a lot of Pokemon, of course. So, yeah, Paw. That’s actually kind of cool.

Paw Patrol makes it. So, you guys, we. We’ve exported our child’s version of police brutality into Japan. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that came up somewhere else where I mentioned it. Apparently there’s some weird connotations in the States about it. I. Which I’ve never. I’ve never gotten those vibes because I’m here. The connotations were mainly during the massive, like, BLM protests turned riots in some areas. And then there was this whole, like, acab, which means all cops are bad, or there’s another slightly less tasteful version of that. And there was. It was just like a big political movement that went on for a long time.

And during that political movement and all these calls to defund the police, the Cops TV show got sort of, like, briefly canceled. There was one called Live Patrol or Live pd that was, like, Cops that got canceled. And Paw Patrol, I believe they either delayed or they didn’t get as much promo out. And then they came back out first. So there was all this uproar about, you know, how. How dare there be this, like, child’s program that’s promoting the thing that so many people are now protesting and trying to defund. That. It was. I don’t know, I thought it was just interesting to watch from the sidelines.

All that’s over now. Cops is back. Live PD’s back. Paw Patrol was back. But, yeah, there was a very specific year, maybe two years, when everyone was kneeling for sports games and everyone was yelling at Paw Patrol. Okay, so I missed that. Here and actually, I do feel like it’s been, like the past two years when I’ve seen kids around here getting into it. But, yeah, we didn’t have that. You know, that just didn’t come up in Japan. So I, I, that, that. I guess that is. We’re reading something on a news headline and then, like, you know, being in the atmosphere, two different things.

Like, for me, I’ve just, like, you know, forgotten, I mean, you know, how big Cops was, right? Like. Oh, the TV show. Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, imagine a movement so powerful that it canceled Cops. I don’t know. After 30 years, though. I mean, why is the Simpsons still on the TV also? You know, I mean, they might. I would prefer that there was some mat. I mean, technically, that also sort of started. Right. What was the. My name is Apu or some. The documentary about Apu. And then they took Apu away. Right. I think there might be.

Oh, usually it’s like the actor dies. Yeah. Phil Hartman. They lost all those characters on the Simpsons. Anyway, it’s like the Simpsons. I’m like, I bet some of those episodes are good, but I’m not going to sit down and watch a modern season of the Simpsons, most likely, you know, unless I got the flu or something. And even then, probably not. Well, I, I didn’t notice anything controversial in the entire Ponyo movie, except for an interpretation that everyone dies at the end. And I, and I get it, right? A lot of the people that were talking bad about this particular take, they were sort of implying.

It’s the most common and predictable archetype, that when you’re trying to find some new fan theory about a movie or TV show, that that theory tends to be, everyone’s dead. They were dead the whole time. Everyone dies at the end. Right. All of those tend to be very common that come up. And I, and I get that, and I try my best to not just throw that out there, but, man, even without putting any special lens or a cult Disney lens on, as I’m watching this, they’re all warning people, like, don’t go in the water. They’re gonna try and drown you.

That guy is gonna try and drown you. And then they all go underwater. He lures them underwater, and then it shows that they’re sort of just living and breathing and acting normal even though they’re underwater. I can’t shake the idea that everyone dies at the end of this movie. See, I, I was coming on with a. I guess a slightly more like, photo reel. What I’m seeing on screen I was like, okay, people are on those boats. They’re. They’re in the retirement home, like, breathing bubbles or whatever. But half the town did die, and we’re just not seeing them.

They didn’t make it to the boats. They drowned. They’re in those buildings underwater, you know? Right. Or they didn’t get the magic ability to breathe underwater either. And so there is, I guess, if I have to make some complaints, or at least the parts that I am still trying to figure out. The whole movie deals with a balance, a balance between humanity and magic, which also feels like the core premise of a lot of early Disney movies. Everything. And Mononoke was sort of that same. That same balance. And in this movie, though, they keep talking about balance.

Well, doesn’t it upset the balance to give humans the ability to breathe underwater in addition to fish, especially if they’re seen as this destructive force, which is more of a modern Disney archetype, kind of blends those two. But I don’t get that. What? That felt so unbalanced that now everyone gets to live and they can breathe underwater, which feels magic to me, versus if you drown. That’s kind of restoring balance. Yeah, maybe because it’s like a temporary thing, whereas what Ponyo is doing is, like, permanent changes, you know? So I’m just trying to work out the magical laws of.

Of this. Me too. I’m still. I’m still figuring them out. And they. They state a few different actual rules verbatim in the English dub. For example, one of the things that the wizard dad says right early is that the rules are look, but don’t touch. And I think this is something that he’s saying to Ponyo early on. And I just. It felt like such a very specific rule. Like, if you’re about to go into this human world, here’s one of the rules. Look, but don’t touch. Although that doesn’t really carry over because she immediately starts touching stuff as well.

Say, tell that to any kid. They’re gonna start touching everything. Ponyo takes that to the extreme level I’ve ever seen, where we see a scene where a baby develops a cold within seconds. Like, you just see a baby hanging out with the mom, and all of a sudden the baby wakes up and starts crying, and snot is running down its nose, and it’s. It’s like overheating. And Pono runs across the water, jumps onto the baby and rubs her face all over the baby, and then runs away. And everyone’s kind of happy about this. And I didn’t I understand the context in the movie is that somehow Ponyo has these healing abilities where she can heal cuts.

She can, I suppose, take the cold away from a baby by rubbing her face all over its not in its spit and then running away. But not even for a second did the baby’s mom be like, what the hell are you doing to my baby? And the baby was, yeah, unhappy before that. And I was sitting there wondering, oh, maybe the baby can tell Ponyo doesn’t have a soul. Because I was thinking of the. The OG Little Mermaid stuff. Right. Which isn’t the direct direction they are going in, but that is the direction I was like, oh, is that where they’re going? Oh, that’s not where they’re going.

Okay. I mean, that could have been a thing. Oh, the baby doesn’t like Ponyo. Ponyo is missing something. That’s what we have to, you know, gain or something. I, I think if you broaden it a little bit more, the, the best relation between Little Mermaid and Ponyo in that way is that they both revolve around themes of death. That in the original, like the story, the Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid, that was more. It was less about a little mermaid named Ariel that wanted to understand humanity and gain the soul. It was more like she was afraid of perma death.

That she realized that if she died and didn’t get a human soul, that she just turns into sea foam and, you know, salt, basically. So it was a story about her so fearful and, you know, disliking death that she ends up coming across this solution for it. In this movie, in Pono, you’re constantly worried that the human is going to kill the fish, is going to kill Pono over and over again. And then that Ponyo being this out of balance, like the fact that she was a magical fish creature and is now trying to live as a human on land, that that’s going to cause tsunamis.

And there was even the old ladies in the retirement home, they mention this, they say, oh, whenever you see a fish with a human head, that means tsunamis are going to happen. So clearly this theme of death kind of applies to both of them pretty hardcore. Especially in Ponyo, the death is for not just one person, it’s for basically all people. Right, Right. Yeah. This movie definitely could not have been made a few years later. You know, after the, the, I think even now the atmosphere in Japan, they would be, look at this movie like a little bit after the 2011 tsunami, you know? Right.

Yeah. The whole, the whole premise is that she’s going to cause this tsunami and this happens right before an actual tsunami takes place. So. And that’s an insane one. The town just stays underwater. I mean that’s. Again, this is water world stuff, you know, and they like it because they can breathe underwater if you watch it with those lens. But again, I can’t shake the idea that everyone drowned. And since it was a kid movie, they can’t show everyone drowning to death at the very end. So they, they flip it into something kind of fantastical. Right.

Did they make the sea goddess look too much like Ariel? I don’t know. Just having a sea God, a red headed sea goddess like that just throws you straight into thinking about Ariel, you know, which maybe. Although the sea goddess still had that classic anime look, so it looked way closer to a million different anime video games and cartoons than it did to that classic Disney style. So I guess if you’re just. Because I do remember when the film came out it was like, oh, this is Ghibli’s Little Mermaid, right? That, that was the selling line for this movie.

So you come in like directly comparing and maybe make. They didn’t know how it would be marketed, might be part of it. But yeah, I feel like I would. I don’t know, I looked into that and apparently a lot of the documentaries about how this movie was written and made, it was supposed to almost be standing on the shoulders of Little Mermaid. It wasn’t a remake, it wasn’t a continuation. It was more about, oh look, here’s a secret. A sea creature that wants to become a human girl. And we can tell that story in a slightly different way, but using that as the DNA.

Right? So yeah, it just, it makes a weird relation. Like get like now we’re used to just like the legacy core or whatever, which obviously this is is not that so. But adding, adding the. A very aerial looking sea goddess maybe just makes you just have a thought in the back of your head of a legacy ghoul or something. I, I did dig up one other weird, interesting. Well, two, two other interesting links. One of them is the connection between this movie and the third act of the Ring cycle, which is a Wagner opera. And there’s a character named Broomhilda which is the act in the English dub.

That is Ponyo’s real name. She’s named. It’s the same in Japanese. So that is all the way back to the script. Okay, so, so the wizard, the wizard dad, when he bangs the moon goddess and creates this fish, human headed fish creature, he names her Brunhilda. Or maybe even the mom does before the kid, the human kid. So I’m sorry about that. Finds her and names her Ponyo. And Ponyo becomes her actual name, but Br. Hilda. And in the. That third act of that Vagner play, Brunhilda, she also. It’s all about death. It’s about her father tells her to go into the world and kill a man because he’s committed adultery, but when she goes to actually do the deed, the guy is like, so die Hard about his love interest.

He’s like, fine, just kill me, whatever. And she kind of becomes impassioned with how passionate he is and decides to help him stay alive and lie to the dad that, you know, that she killed him. He comes to the earth, kills him anyways. But now dad is so moved that Brunhilde was so fascinated with being a human that he spares her life, but he condemns her to being a human. So this original story of Brunhilde kind of follows these same plots where it’s like, don’t go on land. Don’t interact with these humans. Oh, you went against my bidding.

Well, now you get to be a human forever, but you lose all of your magic. You don’t get to be a goddess anymore. That’s sort of what happens in this movie. Yeah. And. And, I mean, that’s still pretty much the Little Mermaid thing, so. Well, here’s. Here’s the other one, too. And this one was way out of my depth, but I saw this mentioned somewhere, and I looked it up, and I feel like I’ve verified it in two or three different ways that the. The Chinese version of this movie, the. Is it they still use kanji, or is there another name for they use kanji? They just all have.

Well, they wouldn’t call it kanji. It’s just like. It’s the same symbols, but they’re pronounced differently. Well, okay, I’m gonna call it kanji, since I’m a difference. So in. In the Chinese kanji, they actually phonetically have these two words put together that are pronounced ponyo and po, or po in Chinese stands for wave or ripple, and yo stands for girl or little girl. So a loose translation of that is like a little girl of the wave or a little wave girl. Which is kind of interesting that the actual Chinese phonetic, the one that they use on the movie cover translates directly to, like, little girl of the waves, even though I assume the Japanese one doesn’t necessarily translate that same way.

I mean, I imagine someone in The Ghibli office, like knew that, you know, maybe knew some Chinese. I was like, oh, if we use these kanji, it’ll be this. Although actually I’m looking at the poster here. Ponyo. It’s not using kanji for the Japanese poster. It’s. It’s spelled out in the katakana, the full title being Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. I mean, I don’t the, the just adding that little bit again. I guess it’s like up last week where the title has to be more descriptive or something. But yeah, whoever gets most letters in their title wins somehow.

Yes, yes, that’s correct, Cliff. See, so I’m just checking out the Japanese here. Yeah, yeah, they don’t, they don’t use any kanji for Ponyo. And it is very much like a cute thing a kid would say. But I like, I bet someone caught on. I knew some Chinese and kind of worked that out, you know, as a, as a fun little Easter egg. Well, let me do a quick synopsis. I think I’ve already done it in a few different ways, but I’ll do the full one really quick. This is a good time. So Ponyo, if you haven’t seen it, I do recommend it.

It’s about a magical underwater wizard that bangs the moon goddess. They have a fish human hybrid. That fish human hybrid escapes, gets seen, and then kind of cap or saved rather by a human. And because she finds her way into a jar, into trash, and a human boy goes and smashes the jar open. As he smashes the jar open, cuts his finger in the process, holds up this little fish, Ponyo, and thinks that he’s killed it. The one of many, many times that he thinks that he’s killed Ponyo. Except for Ponyo notices that his thumb is bleeding and drinks the blood from it, which immediately heal his hand.

But also seems like it starts to give her these other magical powers. Throughout the course of this movie, she’s being pursued by her dad again, Liam Neeson, that someone kidnapped his daughter and now he’s gonna find them and destroy them. That’s literally what’s happening in this entire movie. Ponyo makes her way back out to the ocean under captivity of her evil stepfather. I’ll say, because it’s a Disney style movie. And eventually Will’s her ability to be human just wills it into existence. She grows feet and arms that sort of look like frog or bird appendages at first.

Turns into an like a proper human girl. At a certain point, she kind of makes a deal Indirectly with her dad and her mom. And they all agree that you can be a human child. Except we’re gonna put your love interest to the test. So this poor Sasuke guy has to go through a testament morality to make sure. And if he fails this test, then Ponyo turns into Seafoam. But if he passes the test and Ponyo gets to become a real human girl, spoiler alert. She becomes the real human girl at the end of the movie.

I think that’s pretty much the whole thing. Yes. Although she is floating in the air at the end. I thought that was a weird last shot there. I feel like it was Matrix slow motion. It wasn’t really floating in the air. It was like, you know, Keanu Reeves didn’t fly. He just sort of, you know, bullet time. Yeah, I’m just trying to tie in the inception, you know, the, the top still spinning at the end sort of thing. It also, the town still screwed at the end. I mean, that town was devastated. That’s what I’m saying.

Even if a lot of people survived like, like without thinking of, you know, fan theories, like, come on, a lot of people, there’s a lot of death there too. Right? How do you get your mail right? If you’re underwater, that just means that contact with the outside world ceases to exist. Or none of these questions are answered in the movie. By the way, if you are now living underwater and you didn’t die, can you just walk up a regular ground, go to the city next over and be like, all right, well, it was nice talking to you guys, I’m going back home.

And what, you just walk back underwater and, and live your life underwater again? Or is it like a one time deal? Like once you break the surface, you can’t go back underwater. None of that’s explained which why it makes more sense that they’re all dead. I assume the flood recedes and it’s a temporary thing. That’s why I was saying before, like maybe the balance of that’s not as notable because it’s a temporary thing where what Ponyo was trying to do is permanent. It’s like if you’re trying to wash your car and you know what you’re doing, you’re going to put a little water on there, some soap and you know, get a sponge on there.

Whereas Ponyo is taking a bucket of mud and tossing that on the car. It’s not cleaning the car, you know, like, like it’s still magic, it’s still effective, but it has a very different result. That’s kind of how I’m looking at. The car is now permanently muddy. You didn’t clean it. There’s another. There was another rule that her dad threw out there, which I felt was noteworthy. And he said that you can’t be human and magic at the same time. And that feels like such an interesting plot point that maybe has existed in every single one of these Disney movies we.

We’ve watched all the way back to Snow White. I almost feel that we can apply that. Like, there’s like a. He kind of gave away some of the DNA in all these stories. You become twisted inside. If you’re human and you use magic, that’s how you get the evil Queen. Right. Right. Yeah. You are out of balance. And that you almost start to turn into like. Like two separate in MK Ultra terms, alters. Right. That you can’t be human and magic at the same time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t compartmentalize your magic self and your human self and access them through, you know, ladies and polka dot addresses and shock therapy.

Yeah. I’m sitting here trying to just think of an exception to the rule, which I haven’t done yet. But I’m, you know, seeing her mentally scanning through all the Disney films. Yeah, I guess. No. Princess Elsa. There we go. That we aren’t to Elsa yet. Right. But that’s. And they. They couldn’t crack that movie. Apparently. They were on that into like around Snow White time. But, you know, we didn’t get it till 2014 or whatever it was. There’s another random tangent that I went down that I thought. I thought was incredibly interesting. There was a line that one of the old ladies in the retirement home says, and she’s noting how the weathermen don’t know what they’re talking about anymore.

And she says something to the effect no one understands weather anymore. We should just go back to staring at shadows and listening to crickets. And I didn’t know if this was a folk tale or if this was just some other saying that didn’t translate directly from Japanese. But it turns out that there actually is something called Dolbear’s Law, which was published in 1897 by a guy named Amos Dilbert. And he observed that you can count the number of cricket chirps per 15 seconds and then add 40 and it will give you the temperature in Fahrenheit. So there actually is like a known constant, like a folklore style constant that existed before, maybe even the use of typical thermometers and barometers in order to tell the temperature by listening to crickets.

And I couldn’t believe that maybe it was a coincidence that that was a line in this movie. Or maybe that’s just one of those things that old people would say and you’d be like, okay, grip. I’ve heard another one too, growing up, and maybe it’s from a bunch of Far side cartoons, which is where I also got most of my education, but that there’s these old guys on a. On a bench outside and one of them has knees that are swollen up like beach balls, and the other one’s got like an elbow that’s swollen up, or I think his, like, head is swollen.

And one of them’s like, it’s about to rain. And the other guy’s like, yep. Because I also hear that too, like an old person, their knee will swell and that will let them know that there’s a storm’s a coming, right? And this felt like one of those. But there was a. There was an actual historical basis to this. Man, I’m sitting there trying to think of trying to count cricket chirps. So that sounds like it would be maddening, especially if there’s. I guess you get one cricket in a room and for 15 seconds they give yourself a 15 second block of time and you count how many chirps you hear.

You add 40 and that will be the temperature in Fahrenheit. And as crazy as this sounds, this is an actual law. This is. This is not just an old person said at one time and it became folk. This is an actual Dobert’s Law as a real scientific observation of the natural world. This blew my mind to even know that this existed. No, it’s like I want to go out and test it. And then that’s what I’m saying. Just seems too difficult to test it. You know, get a cricket in a room. I guess that’s how you do it.

But that sounds like too much trouble. So I don’t want to do that either. Well, I wonder too. Does it, does it work with just one cricket? Or can you go out in public and just listen to like a garden and add all of those crickets? Maybe it is just per cricket. I didn’t look that deeply into it, but maybe we need to now. It would have to be per cricket. I think it wouldn’t make. I mean, how. It would be impossible to. If you had like 30 crickets around. I mean, that’s. How are you even going to count, you know, especially in 1896.

Fair point. That’s Science man, moving along. Hey, just one weird kind of observation. The. The license plate is 333. So I guess they’re like half satanic. Yeah. It’s weird, right? 33 has connotations and 666 has connotations, but. And even 369. Right. The secrets of the universe according to Nikola Tesla and Vortex math. But 333 doesn’t have as many. There’s some claims that it’s like an angel number. And personally, I don’t get too deep into the gematria numerology aspects to some of this. I don’t know why the license plate was 333. Obviously it was for a reason.

But I don’t know if they play by the same satanic Luciferian rules that, you know, American Disney does. We do have a Fair amount of 666 license plates rolling around Japan. Nobody cares here. Well, there would be like 88 or something, right? 88 would be the. The band version or like the scary version. People don’t like fours in Japan, so that’s four. Four. So if it were four fours, then that would have been like. And, and speaking of, by the way, maybe the mom’s car should have had fours on it because she drives so dangerously. This also feels like a recurring theme in Ghibli movies that maybe when he was, you know, Mizuki was growing up, his parents were just very poor drivers and were constantly putting them in danger because even.

What was the previous movie we saw where the kids are hiding from the cops because they know that their dad will get arrested because of how. I think it was Totoro, where he’s driving dangerously and they could get killed by all this debris that’s, like, surrounding them. And he just has put him in the back of the pickup. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And now. And now in this movie, we’ve got a mom that for no great reason is driving incredibly dangerously around this, like, dead man’s curve and is not ashamed about it, like, does it every single time she goes around this corner, whether she’s got kids in the car or not.

There’s no such thing as baby on board stickers and ponyo, right? Yeah. My note is just that mom did not make good driving decisions. At least that’s why I wrote down at the time. So again, there’s so many reasons why they might all be dead. There is a lot of weird focus on prehistoric fish in the Cambrian era. And here, like, like they really go out of the way to point out, like, These are prehistoric fish under us, which. That. That kind of stood out. Yeah. One of them was named after a God of the sea as well.

And in the English dub, they use the. The canonical reference to it, like the Carolinius style, Latin genus. And. Yeah, the actual name they give is a Greek God of the sea. Okay, well, there’s a connection there. But. But then I. Yeah, I was trying to work out are those. Those are just. Fish have. Not like that. Have just been around for a long time, or not extinct fish, I guess, because fish. We have very ancient fish that’s still swimming around. Right. I kind of assumed that. I don’t know if that was a Japanese thing or a magical Ghibli thing that, you know, because, I mean, sharks are technically dinosaurs in that regard.

Yeah. I’ve lived three different places in Japan, and somehow I’ve managed to live in three of the most landlocked places you can live in Japan. So one thing is, I’m missing a fair amount of sea culture, the town and this is based on. And I got the name in here somewhere. Tomo Nura, which is. I think it’s near Hiroshima or something. I haven’t been there. That’s. Again, I haven’t been to that part of Japan either. So, yeah, it’s way south. So I don’t. I don’t know this place. So, you know, apparently Miyazaki went and hung out for a while to try and get the vibe.

So maybe he was picking up on, like, local traditions or something and tossing those in. Or it could just be a Ghibli thing. Imagine going to a nice place and then just thinking, man, it sure would be a good story if everyone here drowned. Yeah, really. And I assumed at the end of the movie, I assumed that the flood waters are going to recede. Right. I mean. Or is this a permanent change? I mean, they say typhoon, so. But I don’t. Yeah. How does flooding work? I don’t. I guess I don’t get that. Again, I live in the mountains.

Well, also, how do. I mean, you would assume that it would recede at some point, but there’s not really a given in there. And also, there’s a scene where all of the boats in the sea basically get crunched up together in one spot. Like, the water keeps swelling and pushing all the boats to one area. I feel like, you know, that also caused damage and maybe death, just that particular event. There’s a lot of people that are harmed in the wake of Ponyo, you know, causing these tsunamis to happen. Just because she wants to be a human.

Like, how. How many human lives were lost for one new human to be born? Yeah. I mean, how many people got slammed into bulkheads? Right? You know, or just flew off the side of the ship or something? No, that’s what I’m saying, that the body count this movie is very high. When you start thinking about, you know, they show you this nice couple in a boat, and it’s like, well, there’s probably several other nice couples under that boat, you know? And also, the stakes are a little bit weird, right? Because the mom’s rushing around to make sure that she can save the old people and telling so so and Ponyo to stay in their house and make sure that they’re safe.

Everything is revolving around, oh, my God, everyone’s gonna drown. And then that happens. A tsunami actually does cover the entire town. But then they’re just all okay, like. Or is the story here to basically say, don’t worry about it. If you see huge waves coming at you, you’re not gonna perish from that? Or is it to embrace that because there’s nowhere for you to go because you live on this remote island and have no other, you know, form of communication for transportation? Of course, when they come out of the house, when Ponyo and Sosuke come out of the house, they’re like, oh, the house didn’t flood.

I’m like, that’s pretty close. I think you can say you got flooded. If the water’s there, you know, you don’t have to mop your floor. That’s nice. They were underwater until they were. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s interesting because the line is, like, right at the house. Right. Which is. And from that movie. Yes. Everything becomes very dreamlike. It’s fish flying through the sky because it’s all underwater. That sort of thing. Right? Well, the very beginning, too. The beginning and the very end have this weird dreamlike quality. And the beginning of the movie feels like this also is telling a much deeper story that we didn’t really.

We weren’t privy to throughout the whole development of it. And that’s that when the dad is mixing up these weird alchemical potions, and he has this huge dropper and. And he’ll take liquid from this, like, elixir bottle. Looks like a fancy, like, I dream, a genie style magical bottle. And as he drops this into the water around him, it’s creating all these life forms. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the director’s cut of the intro to the Prometheus Alien movie. But this felt like the exact same beginning. It’s when you’ve got these weird, I believe they called them builders or architects come to a planet and they drop this concentrated DNA, black goo, blood of God substance into the water.

And then through that it creates little, you know, amoebas and krill and those develop in the fish and the fish develop into humans eventually. Right? The whole entire beginning premise of the director’s cut of Prometheus, not the, the theatrical cut, but in the director’s cut it shows these archae, you know, architects slash wizards dropping liquid in the ocean that. That creates life. And there’s an actual quote from the dad in this movie. And he’s basically saying that this age of the ocean will begin again. This explosion of life and an end to those abominable humans. Which really, I assume means starting over.

Like, like humans Part 2. Like versions. Captain Nemo stay in his submarine while the rest of the world goes to hell, right? Except he is somehow a water creature too, because he goes above land when he’s searching for Ponyo. Again, this is Liam Neeson. So he will go to the ends of the Earth to find his kidnapped daughter. But while he’s on Earth, he’s bringing this sort of pesticide style sprayer with him. But he’s just spraying himself on the legs with water. And he says that he can’t dry up. He has to keep his legs wet.

Otherwise I don’t know what happens. Does he die? Does he completely shrivel up? Or like, can humans go underwater and live underwater but somehow magic enough he can’t survive the air? Like that’s saying out of balance as well. My note for when he’s doing that at the beginning is weird underwater science in a clown suit. So definitely a bizarre fashion sense from our, from our underwater wizard. It’s got a little bit of a yellow submarine aesthetic to it, the way that he drew. And one of my first notes was this was before I knew who anyone was.

I thought Ponyo was a boy. I didn’t realize that pony was going to turn into a girl. But my very first note was this movie is about an under cream underwater drag queen in a bubble watching sea creatures evolve and multiply. And then I’m like, came up with the Prometheus. Yeah, sure, that works out. Hey, is Ponyo Piranha. Ponyo’s carnivorous Ponyo loves ham. Ponyo develops the taste for blood almost immediately. And that’s one of the first questions that her dad asks her when she returns Home. He actually asks Ponyo, did you eat meat? And pono’s kind of like, hell, yeah, ate me.

And I love the only thing that I want to eat. That’s why I’m calling Ponyo piranha there. Because, yeah, that’s all. That’s all Pony wants after that point. Right, right. They try feeding Ponyo all sorts of things that normally if goldfish would eat. Right. Little chunks of bread. Nah. Ponyo is given us a ham sandwich, and Ponyo eats only the ham out of the sandwich and discards the rest of it. Pony ate the ramen. They have the ramen later. I don’t remember. See, I. I did the. There was that part where they just throw a bunch of weird dates at you.

Like, I. I was thinking timelines. What was it? 1907, 1950, 1871. And just kind of weird. That was, like, somewhere kind of midway through the movie. So I didn’t even. I didn’t even notice that. I wonder if I missed it or if they. It didn’t come over in the dub. I. I wrote down the dates, but I didn’t write enough context about what it was there. But, yeah, we suddenly just got all these dates thrown at us, and I. I thought that was kind of weird. And then there was 1950 something. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, maybe that might be a dead end there.

I’m just, like, scanning through my notes for anything that might be interesting. Well, I got a whole bunch of unanswered questions maybe we can speculate on. For example, I like questions. Ponyo is magic, but how uncommon is that? Her dad’s magic. We know about the moon magic, Mom. And like I mentioned earlier, Ponyo has what appears to be hundreds of siblings. So does that mean all of her siblings are also magic? Is everyone just magic in this movie? Ponyo is bigger than the siblings, though. Suggests that that did kind of divide Ponyo a little bit because the other ones were smaller.

Right. But I just assumed that Ponyo was older than the other siblings. Yeah, that. That could be the case. Yeah. But it could also suggest Pony is a little different. Right. Because why would Ponyo be that much older than, like. So maybe Ponyo has elephantitis somehow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, my point is, Ponyo seems like an outlier, which might be a key into magic. Also, the membrane of the water could be magical. That’s why he’s got to keep his legs wet. Right? You can’t have magic without water. So us land lovers, you know, we don’t get much magic up here.

Okay. I feel like, my question is not sufficiently answered. But that’s not your fault. It’s. It’s almost the movie’s fault in a way. Jellyfish are magic in this movie. They certainly are. Here’s another question. Is the mom an alcoholic? Because the mom clearly immediately resorts to drinking a beer when she’s trying to kind of like, you know, forget her stressful day, but she gets so inebriated that she passes out in her kids room. And then when the dad drives by and like, does the flashing of the. The lights at them kind of doing Morse code, she seems like she’s, you know, half out of it, half asleep.

And then when she does finally wake up out of her stupor, she just starts ranting at the dad in Morse code through the light. I don’t know. It felt like an unhealthy coping mechanism. And then her driving. Driving, that’s all of this kind of added up to her just being a drunk. Yeah. Between this and Totoro, it’s like we have these very dysfunctional parents, Right. That the movie does not directly shine a light on. But once you start thinking about what they’re doing, you’re like, hey, that doesn’t seem right, does it? Well, I mean, in this scene, they are literally shining a light on each other in order to communicate.

I mean, I don’t know when my daughter was born. Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting around having a drink watching Dora the Explorer. So maybe that’s unhinged behavior too, drinking and watching Dora. I was wondering, how does Ponyo know language? And I know I watch the English and you watch the Japanese, but there’s a certain point in the movie when she, by herself starts saying, ponyo loves Soke. And then also she starts saying, I want hands. Like, how does she even know what the word hands is? So she learned the language from dad. And sorry I’m being overly logical, but I’m trying to answer the question, you know, logically.

Like, dad is speaking whatever language, Japanese or English, right? Because he used to be a human, so his fish creatures would maybe have heard him talking because he talks to himself a lot. Okay, fair, fair point. Here’s another question. And she’s only got to graduate to the, the. The language skills of a five year old, right? So, okay, doesn’t have to start doing, like, engineering treaties. She’s not getting a degree yet. Yeah. How is the mom so accepting that her son just made friends with a fish that then turned into a little girl? He runs home and is like, mom, look, it’s Ponyo, it’s the.

It’s the fish. The fish that I had in a pail in my lap in the car this morning is now an adult human girl. And the mom just goes, oh, that’s so nice. Doesn’t the world work in mysterious ways? That’s sort of the response, which either means that she’s patronizing the kid and is like, oh, what a great imagination. Clearly you just met some random girl. You know, that’s. But even when Ponyo tells her, my, my parents live underwater and I ran away from home, she’s like, oh, that’s so nice. Like, there was. There’s absolutely no concern over where did this random girl come from and why does my kid think that she came from a fish? Like, the mom just immediately accepts it.

Maybe it’s like the. Your name. She’s had previous experience in this because at the end at the retirement home, they’re like, oh, she’s been talking to the sea goddess for a really long time. And we never really work out what they’re discussing. So it’s like there’s layers here that they are not getting into. Mom seems to have something else going on with the sea. Also. Can Ponyo fix electronics? And the answer is yes. But how? How is that? Part of her magical abilities is she can literally fix electronics. I lied. She does have that degree in engineering.

Yeah, okay. She did go to mit. She’s doing just fix it real. You know, I know how to do this quickly. I gotta. I got a master’s. I don’t know, it was just weird. It felt. It felt a weird tacked on thing. But also, is this have to do with fluid? Is it because electronics and the properties of electricity moving through a circuit is sort of similar to say, the way water goes, right? They all follow fluid mechanics. So maybe anything at all that follows fluid mechanics is something she can fix because she also fixes a generator.

And the generator I don’t even think was an electrical problem. This was. It was clogged somewhere. But the generator also deals with fluids. And a clog usually represents an impedance of like a fluid movement, whether it’s gasoline or air or anything else, electricity. So maybe she has some kind of control over anything that flows. That might be it. Think about when the barrier spell is around the house, right? And it was a dad who’s coming to the house and touches wood and then the wood responds like with electricity, which. That’s kind of a weird image, you know, so.

But that’s. The barrier spell is made of what looks like electricity, because you could make it like magical sparkles, but it’s clearly a. A bit of electric flow, like you’re saying. I’ve got a little tangent on that one too. Because the dad goes to investigate and try and get Ponyo back again. Liam Neeson taken. But when he gets to Susuke’s house, they have a white picket fence. And when he tries to touch the fence or reach over, does act like there’s this sort of magical electric barrier over it. And there is a historical context for this because white picket fences in particular, aside from being a status symbol in 1950s America.

Right. To represent affluence and sort of an isolation within your little community. But in a good way. Particularly common in Japan, by the way. Well, no, it. Apparently it was. It’s mostly popular in Americas. And even if you go back to the old story of Tom Sawyer, Right. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, that the scene, which I don’t know if this was one of those, like, Mandela effects, but I always remember it, that Huck was paid to paint a white fence and he has, like, this white paint. But no, it’s whitewashing. They’re actually whitewashing the fence.

And whitewashing was way more common, but it was also a blend of. Of hoodoo practices that if you trace this back far enough in the Deep south that the concept of whitewashing offense different from a white picket fence in suburbs Middle America. But a whitewashed fence actually resembled purity because they were taking a whole bunch of different white materials and they were basically putting it into this wash and then coating a barrier with it. And that whiteness, sometimes it will put, like, eggshells in it. Just a whole bunch of different white items in it. That this was supposed to ward off evil.

So, I mean, there is an actual interesting link to white picket fences being used as magical production. I don’t think that’s Mandela effect. I think that’s me just now learning that whitewashing is not painting a fence white. Well, and I’m almost positive there’s been a few adaptations, like cartoon and TV adaptations of this. And I have seen one where they’re painting a fence white versus whitewashing the fence. That might be the thing. Like, you know, we. We read it in a book, so we’re making the mental construct and then. And then even the animators are probably doing the same thing we are and not understanding that that’s a different thing.

So I think it’s not so much a Mandela effect as people, you know, like, there’s a generational gap where people stop understanding what that actually means. My last question was, do fish eat ham? And actually, yeah, it’s a very popular bait for bottom feeders. Catfish and carp specifically. I believe so. I mean, yeah, Dad’s a bottom feeder. He seems like a scumbum. There are a couple other common modern Disney motifs I mentioned. One of them is that humans bad, nature good. And this one we do see at the very beginning of the movie, Ponyo almost dies to a boat propeller.

And then Ponyo almost dies to trash. Actually, the. The propeller she almost runs into is a boat that is dragging a big net to bring up trash from the ocean floor. So human trash almost kills Ponyo twice within like a 32nd time period. Because then she also gets caught into trash, into this jar. And they almost make it seem that as if so Soke had not come and saved her, then Ponyo would have died inside of this human trash. Which totally would have proven her father right, that he hates humans because they’ve ruined everything they come in contact with.

He says that they’re as empty and dark as their black souls or something like that. Like, he really, really hates humans. Yeah. But to balance things out, Ponya sacrifices 333 humans in order to become human herself. So it goes. The blade goes both ways. Yeah. I feel like after the credits scroll and Ponyo goes home to hang out with her dad for one last time, he’s like, good job. Like, I knew you could do it. I knew you could kill those hundreds of people. Was the song at the end in Japanese or English for you? It was English, but I.

It was the same annoying Japanese version that I also looked up and it just goes just over and over again. Yeah, most of my. Like I said, this one doesn’t seem to have caught quite as much cultural traction. But I do remember when my daughter was a toddler, we had a little drum book and it had the Ponyo song on it. So we did could probably because it was like 2011. So it’s still a recent thing. And yeah, I have heard that song a lot more than I would like to. It was funny because as it’s playing and they only play at the end of the English movie, they don’t play at the beginning.

At the very end, you hear this Ponyo song and immediately I just started mocking it in my head, just thinking, ponyo, Ponyo. Drown your family, drink your blood. I’m Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo. Hey, I’ve heard kids singing things along those lines in. In Japanese. So they’re using I, I know what the Japanese dirty words are. I’ve heard dirty versions of the Ponyo song in Japanese. This is another just random tangent, but I, I’ve. It came up while I was watching this movie and again, the mom is just a horrible role model, I think. And she runs into work, she’s driving there, very unsafe, kind of speeds in and as soon as she gets to work she screams out loud, morning.

Seems I’m always late. And then goes inside and we’re just like, man, if you know even the most entry level nlp, you never want to broadcast the worst possible impression of yourself to everyone. But even worse than that, even worse than telling on yourself out loud and saying, it seems I’m always late. What you’re also doing is you’re sort of programming yourself. You’re saying out loud and you’re accepting the statement I’m always late, which is also an absolute. And if you say I’m always late too often, then you’re sort of programming yourself to be always late.

And there’s better versions of this that you can say like for example, hey, I’m late, let’s get to it, or oh, I made it, let’s get rolling, or hope everyone’s morning’s going smoothly. All of these are ways that you’re, you don’t have to sneak in the back door, but you’re shifting the premise to productivity or the, or your presence versus focusing on your absence, which is just. I don’t, I don’t understand mom’s role in this movie at all. It’s just to be a horrible person might be kind of a Japanese thing to do. Like that scene is making a proper apology.

I’m just thinking of like little things that happen over and over again that my company, one, one Japanese teacher always ends her lesson about five minutes late and she always apologizes for the lesson ending late. And I’m like, you’re not sorry. You do it every week. Today I’m going to go into my classroom and the guy from the previous night has left like piles of books on the main desk. I have to go put my stuff somewhere else. Every week he always apologizes, but I’m like, well, you do it every week, you know, So I guess it’s just one of these like apologetic cultural things, right? She’s gonna be late, but she’s gonna apologize for being late.

So that, that is a Japanese thing to do, I think. And it came across without being over analytical, but it does come across as like, oh, look at me. I’m so quirky. I’m the one that’s always late after the seventh or eighth time. I’m sure the rest of her co workers are kind of rolling their eyes. Not in a good way. Like, I had to do some of your work for the last 15 minutes. Yeah, I. I see. She. She’s attractive, so that. So nobody cares. And they’re old, so, like, it gets away. She gets away with it that way, right? The.

There was one particular scene when the Ponyo wills her hands into existence, right? And the dad is watching this happen, and. And as soon as Ponyo makes these hands, she goes, I made hands. And he immediately looks at her and goes, you have tasted human blood. So I feel that he has seen this before, right? This is not the first time that this particular sequence has ever happened. And somehow he knows that one of these fish creatures, you know, daughters of his, if they drink human blood and they get these other abilities. I wish I knew more about that backstory.

How long do you think he’s been a sea wizard? I mean, is he, like, immortal? Has he been a sea wizard since, like, the dawn of time? Or is this. Or is he, like, mortal? And he’s, like, 55 and, you know. Well, I don’t know if he’s immortal again because he had a. He had to wet himself when he went on land, which doesn’t make sense to me either, because there’s another scene when Ponyo is sort of half girl, half frog, chicken thing, and they try and put water on her, and it just rolls right off.

And the kid says, ponyo can’t get wet. It’s like a fish. You can’t get wet. But it would make more sense if the dad couldn’t get wet because he’s the one that can live underwater. He was a human and now he’s living underwater. So you would imagine a human that can live underwater, you put them back on the surface and they’re fine. Yet Ponyo is the one that can’t be on the surface in her fish form without dying, because she does need water in the fish form. But at a certain point between transitioning from fish into frog into human, now water doesn’t affect her.

I don’t know. One of the weird questions that was unanswered as I was watching, Wizard Dad’s coming from the opposite direction. So perhaps his magical trade was to become the sea wizard, but he must always remain wet, whereas Ponyo is becoming human and the magical trade is that Ponyo cannot get wet now. And I guess the last question I had is, how many people can see these weird eyeballs in the ocean? So when Ponyo goes back out into the world after she escapes for the second time from her dad, she brings all of her siblings with her.

And as she turns into a human girl that’s running on these waves, all of her siblings, first, they turn into fish, which. Like these huge blue fish, like, bigger than a boat. But then you get the impression that the fish themselves are really just waves, and they represent these rising waters and these huge waves that are going to start turning into the tsunami. But there is one particular scene when the fishermen on a boat, they see the waves acting as fish and with eyeballs and. And they look at each other, and one of them’s like, oh, I’m glad that you saw that too.

I thought I was crazy or something to that effect. So they do see the. The water fish for a split second, and then it goes into them, almost drowning from the tsunami. So I just wonder how many other people can see these eyeballs in the waves. I guess everybody. And this is, you know, just the weird, magical happenings again. I. I would be interested. You know, this town that apparently inspired the movie might have some real wild, you know, folktales, local folktales or something that might inform the movie. Well, that one old lady did say that every time a fish with a human head comes up on land, we get tsunamis.

So maybe for generations. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. One other thing. The. The old people. The old ladies, of course, are running around, and as a Twilight Zone guy, I was certainly thinking of Kick the Can, where the. The. The retirement people start playing games. And. Well, in that case, they become actual children, which these old ladies do not. And then they. Of course, we have the doubting Thomas lady who is telling Sosuke not to listen to Wizard Sea wizard dad. So, you know. Yeah. That he’s tricking everyone to go underwater, and if you go underwater, then you’ll die.

And then they just bring him underwater anyways, which, again, reminds me of that original Brunhilde Wagner act where they’re like, no, no. I’m gonna defy you. And then the. The dad of the sea just comes in anyways and kills everybody, because that’s what he does. I did. Like, it’s like, jump, Sosuke. Jump. And he jumps, and he makes it, and it doesn’t matter at all. Yeah. Yeah, man. There’s. There’s. There was no way that anyone was getting away from the tsunami at the whole time. Everyone was going to end up underwater no matter what they did.

So all of that dangerous driving and everything all was sort of for no real reason. It was just to raise tension in the movie because everyone was going to end up underwater regardless. See this in your name make interesting yin yangs because this is depicting a tsunami before the Japanese, the 2011 tsunami. Your name is kind of dealing with the feelings from the disaster, but not showing a specific tsunami. Right. So it’s just kind of, kind of interesting, you know, quantum influences on each other going forward and backward in time. Well, I really like this one.

This one caught me a little bit off guard. I had no idea what I was expecting. And not to mention that I did watch a little bit of that in the making of style documentary about it. And they had spent like something like three years or something on one of the opening intro sequences with all the different jellyfish and the fish swimming around. So you can see the. The craftsmanship in this movie. And they also have really cool, not even matte paintings, like what would normally be a matte painting in this movie. They do colored pencils, but it all really blends together really well.

Yeah, I mean this one has even fewer computer stuff than the last few movies, you know, like Hal. You could really start to see where they’re using some computers and here they kind of roll back on it a bit. And the wind Rises I haven’t seen. So when we get to that, it will be new to me. That one, by the way, has a feature length documentary attached to it, which is the Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, which I would. We might want to take a look at that too when we get to that one. It’s a few years in the future, so it’s not next week or anything.

But that. That should be interesting to check out because apparently is a bit of a madman, hence the name of the documentary. That was the last of your questions then. Questions are out. Yeah, I mean I. I think that we got a pretty good handle on this movie. It’s got a lot of really interesting links to scientific theories that I hadn’t heard of before and Wagner plays and clearly an influence on a real Disney movie based on that cons Christian Anderson one. So this, this one checked more of the occult Disney boxes than any of the other Ghibli movies have so far too interesting.

I’m not sure I agree with that. I feel like we got a lot ticked in a Spirited Away. Totoro had a few. I don’t know. Yeah, like this is not my favorite Ghibli I. I liked a lot more this time than I did watching it 15 years ago or whatever. So I guess just interesting, you know, what appeals to. To folks when they’re watching. Yeah, I like. For me, I would probably put spirit away. Yeah, Spirit away. Totoro. Above this for sure. But I. I guess I just like seeing some of the weird folk imagery. I like weird folk, monsters, and things like that, which.

This doesn’t have so much. This is undersea stuff. I like snorkeling, but I have to have one drink before I snorkel or I’ll kind of flip out. The last time I went snorkeling before, you know, just. Just one. I’m not getting loaded and snorkeling, but if I don’t do that, the fish will freak me out. Well, imagine how they feel. Yeah, but if I have the one drink, I’m good to go. Hey, there’s a fish. I’m swimming with the fish now. It’s fine, because. Yeah, I mean, think about how dangerous it is when Sosuke gets into the water.

You’re not supposed to do that in a flood and push the boat around. That’s highly dangerous. You don’t know what’s in that water. You’re also not supposed to draw. Like, the mom waits for a swell in the water and then drives her car as fast as she can in this little vacuum left by the swell. I. Again, I think out of all the people in this entire movie, the mom has the biggest death wish. Like, she. She is doing things and taking risks. Bigger than the little fish girl Ponyo is she hates her absent husband. We never really see the family together, do we? No, no.

He’s all. It seems like he’s just pretty much off to sea all the time, you know, so maybe he drowned at sea too. See, the. The answer that everyone’s dead in this movie more than any other movie answers so many of these hard to answer questions. If you just say, oh, the answer is because they’re all dead. Now it all makes sense. Okay. Yeah. And make things as trippy as you want. They’re dead. Who cares? It’s the. The other side. I guess. We will writing this one down for today, then throw it back into the sea.

What’s going on on your end? As always, I got all sorts of new projects and products and fun stuff. Just go to paranoidamerican.com. i got these brand new sticker books that I just had, and the first few people that grab them, I’m gonna throw in a whole bunch of Extra sticker sheets and sticker packs, including some freaking occult Disney stickers. I got all of them in the mail finally. So anyone that gets anything from paranormarican.com is guaranteed to get at least an occult Disney sticker with your order, along with a whole bunch of other stuff. And I’ll send you a whole bunch of them too, Matt.

Don’t worry. Groovy. Over here, I do a ton of podcasting and random media. It’s@podcastiopodcast.org I do the Twilight Zone Time Enough podcast. As mentioned, Planet of the Apes at Podcast 1999. And a whole bunch of supposedly very good and supposedly very bad movies at Films of Filth. So come check us out there. All right. Yeah. I didn’t say this. Well, you wrote it three times and as the. For this meeting. Ponyo. Ponyo. Ponyo, Right. And it is just. That’s a sound a Japanese kid makes even before this movie existed. Yeah, it just seems like this is like.

I don’t know. I get. What. What do. What do us English speaking kids run around mumbling? I guess I will not repeat it on this program. That’s what I’ll say. We just go around mumbling dirty words. So. No, but you’ll just hear nonsense noises. I mean, I heard a little kid yesterday, which I decided to ignore. Just going. Which is basically like saying they’re going, penis, penis, penis, penis. So here it’s all like Riz Skibidi toilet. I think. I think those are the big ones. There we go. Toilet. So yeah, yeah, if you wanna. You can just ponyo it.

Punyan. I’m. Yeah, I’m just trying to work out weird Japanese kitty noises. I think we should probably stop this now. Or I’ll just start speaking gibberish for the next 20 minutes. Cryptids, coats and killers Favorite conspiracies. All the more sticky sheets. There are North American stickers. They’ll make you smile and snicker False threads and secret societies. All of these and more on our sticker sheets. Explore the unique with paranoid American sticker sheets. Unearth tales of Cryptids, cults and mysteries through each sticker. These won’t last long. Get yours now@paranoidamerican.com American stickers. Cryptids, cults and killers. Killers. We got all your favorite conspiracies.

All sticky sheets. We North American stickers make you smile and snicker. False flags and secret society. All the of these and more on a sticker sheets. What the heck are you waiting for? Discover the extraordinary with paranoid American sticker sheets from cryptids in the night to cults out of sight each sticker is a unique find get yours now@paranoidamerican.com paranoid yeah I scribbled my life away driven the right to page will it enlight your brain give you the flight my plane tape with the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real to real you will engage it your favorite of course the lord of an arrangement I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hey maybe your language a game how they playing it well without Lakers evade them whatever the cause they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated met is the apex execution of flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see max them out then I light my trees blow it off in the face you’re despising me for what though calculated and rather cutthroat paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real Lord give me your day your way vacate they wait around to hate whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotate when a beat hits so thank us you’re welcome for real you’re welcome they ain’t never had a deal you’re welcome man they lacking a pill you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
[tr:tra].