Ponyo vs The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo

The studio closed its computer graphics department so the film could be drawn by hand. Miyazaki had ships drawn frame by frame, and the sea is full of wobbling, uneven lines. The ocean looks like it is breathing.

The Boy and the Heron

Studio Ghibli's animators draw every frame by hand, and you can see the texture of paint in each one. Water, fire, feathers and the buildings of impossible worlds all get the same care. You can see the work that went into it, and that makes its own case against smooth digital animation.

Ponyo

When Ponyo uses her father's magic to become human, nature loses its balance and the sea rises onto the land. The wave spirits obey Fujimoto and the sea answers to a goddess, Gran Mamare. Nature has a will here, and people have to live with its answers.

The Boy and the Heron

The world between life and death is full of parakeets, herons, pelicans and warawara, which are small animated spirits. Each group has its own society, its own hungers and its own sense of right and wrong. The natural world ends up feeling more complete than the human one.

Ponyo

A cartoon fish with a human face can show wide-eyed joy and fear in a way a real actor could not. The biggest emotional beat is drawn as simple images, a bubble and a kiss. A child can read it at once.

The Boy and the Heron

Miyazaki uses the animated world-between to turn grief into an actual place. There is a landscape you can walk through, a tower you can enter and a heron that speaks. What mourning feels like on the inside becomes as solid and easy to move around in as the real world.