New Miyazaki trailer online

Wed, Jul 30, 2008

We tend to get excited when there’s news of a new Studio Ghibli movie – let’s face it, Hayao Miyazaki is an absolute gem of world animation and he’s one of the creators most directly responsible for making Japanese feature-length animation so successful world-wide, not to mention inspiring many other animators in theor own works, not least among them many of the crew at Pixar. As the prestigious Venice film festival announces that the new Miyazaki film, Ponyo on the Cliff will be appearing there in late August, the First Showing site has a look at the first trailer for the film. It’s in Japanese but frankly regardless of your linguistic capabaility you can just sit and let your eyes drool over it.

(an image borrowed from the official Ghibli site for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff; its all in Japanese but go and indulge yourself in the image gallery and widescreen trailer. (c) Studio Ghibli)

According to First Showing the film is pretty light-hearted, similar in tone to earlier work like My Neighbor Totoro, focussing on the relationship between a small boy and a goldfish princess who wishes to be human. Story aside though, I’d imagine as with all Miyazaki’s beautiful animations you can probably just let yourself sink into the wonderful world he conjures around you and wallow in it.The man is a wizard.