Ponyo behind the scenes gags

When Miyazaki conceived the film, he listened to Wagner's opera "The Valkyrie". The original name of Jinyu Ji was "Blenside" (a character in "The Valkyrie"). Later, Miyazaki had a whim when he was painting and changed it to "Ponyo".

The name of the protagonist Sosuke comes from the character Noaka Sosuke in Natsume Soseki's novel "Door" (in Japanese, "Sosuke" and "Sosuke" are pronounced the same).

During the release of "Howl's Moving Castle", the members of Ghibli collectively went to a small town near the Seto Inland Sea for vacation. It maintains the style of traditional houses, which Miyazaki likes very much. Everyone lives in a hotel on a cliff with a view of the sea. This trip gave birth to "Ponyo on the Cliff".

In the sunflower garden that Zongjie often visits, there are beautiful gladiolus blooming. This is the arrangement of Hayao Miyazaki. The flower language of gladiolus is passionate love, longing, hard work, and forgetting, alluding to the story of Po Niu.

There are often delicious foods in Hayao Miyazaki's animation works. In the film, Risa made ramen for Sosuke and Ponyo. Miyazaki himself particularly likes spinach ramen, but because the spinach is not well drawn, the green leafy plants on the last surface are changed to green onions. There are half an egg and two slices of ham on the noodles. In the film, there is a scene where Ponyo eats ham. The original painter painted Ponyo taking a piece of ham on it. Later, after investigation and verification, the painting supervisor changed it to choose the next piece of ham—because of the first one. The noodle soup is hotter. 

"Ponyo on the Cliff" is 1 hour and 40 minutes long and has 110,000 frames, which is more than "Spirited Away", which is more than 2 hours long. "Ponyo on the Cliff" does not use any computer effects, all the pictures are drawn by hand, and the style of painting is more simple, in order to touch people's hearts with simple images. 

The film's producer Toshio Suzuki revealed that the hero "Sosuke" in the film is based on the character of Hayao Miyazaki's son Miyazaki Goro when he was a child. Miyazaki Goro is also an animator, but Hayao Miyazaki has a poor relationship with his 40-year-old son. Toshio Suzuki said that Miyazaki believed that the initial reason for the deterioration of the relationship between father and son was the "lack of company" when his son was five years old. At that time, Miyazaki Goro was at the age when he needed the company of his parents the most, but his father had no time to accompany him because he was buried in work. 

On October 31, 2020, the movie "Ponyo on the Cliff" released a handwritten New Year greeting specially prepared by Hayao Miyazaki for the Chinese audience. "Thanks for 2020, let's work hard together in 2021", to encourage everyone who has worked hard through this year. 

In January 2021, a set of production details will be released, showing the ultimate ingenuity of the movie "Born for the Big Screen".