Even Littler Mermaids

I recently watched Ponyo, which I think I had previously posted about. It's the latest of the Studio Ghibli movies and has a wonderful theme song that spent months boring its way into my brain. The full title is Gake no Ue no Ponyo, meaning Ponyo from the Cliff by the Sea, or something like that.

The story is very loosely based on The Little Mermaid. In this version, the mermaid is actually more like a fish girl, who escapes her somewhat crazy-seeming dad, who is not a fish-person, but rather a guy who wears crazy suits and bubbles over his head and drives some kind of finned submarine. She meets a kindergartener named Sosuke, who saves her life and names her Ponyo, thinking she is just a fish despite her having a weird human-like face. Ponyo falls in love with Sosuke (this seems rather strange if you consider she is a fish and they are both just little kids), but her dad captures her back. She insists on being called Ponyo and escapes again, this time magically growing legs and arms and eventually becoming totally human. Her magic starts throwing off the balance of nature or something, though...

It's a nice little movie, but I was kind of disappointed by how derivative it is. For example:

1. One of its main characters is a little girl (Ponyo, actually a little fish/mermaid) who has some sort of magic that is undefined but clearly important to the world. It's kind of like Kiki from Kiki's delivery service, or Princess Mononoke, or the girl from Spirited Away, or Nausicaa from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, and on and on. I guess one should expect that from a Studio Ghibli movie.

2. The wave demons here are rather reminiscent of the blob monsters in Howl's Moving Castle.

3. The last part of the movie involves Ponyo and Sosuke looking for Sosuke's mom in a sequence that seemed reminiscent of the search for Mei at the end of Totoro.

I'm sure there are more, but these are just off the top of my head. It was still a decent movie, and I imagine that the English version will be even better because Tina Fey is doing the voice of the mom, which seems perfect for the character.