Follow TV Tropes

Following

WMG / Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
aka: Ponyo On A Cliff By The Sea

Go To

Fujimoto is Mako Tsunami.
He and the ocean have resolved their differences and got a ton of kids. Also, prolonged exposure to the sea reveals that Mako's hair is actually red.
  • Freaky fish kids, even.
  • Although he seems to have become an amphibian (judging from his ability to be in the air as long as he stays damp), which is really not fair. Freaky frog guy?

Ponyo's age is dictated by what she wants
Before she left the water she was the eldest daughter who was able to manage a ton of toddler fish on her own. This was prob. the only life she knew so she went with it, no reason to rebel. Upon meeting Sosuke and having licked his blood to kickstart her powers and motivation to leave, she begins to evolve. Back with her father she very much acts out the rebellious teen runaway. Again, capable. When she gets back to land, to Sosuke who is whats she wants she becomes like him. Physically and mentally. This may explain why her parents were willing to let her leave. She'd either age with Sosuke, or she would grow to whatever was fitting.
  • Wouldn't that mean Ponyo is de-evolving when she finally transforms into a human?
    • Well, technically, no. If you think that a part of herself still knows how to age/de-age, she will never actually de-evolve. But, of course, she will just grow up with Sosuke anyway, so that doesn't really matter. Good material for fanfics, tho.

Granmamare is Ariel when she becomes queen of the sea.
Well, it explains how accepting she is of her daughter wanting to be human.
  • And she moved to Japan?
    • All the way from Atlantica? And Fujimoto is her second husband?
    • The Little Mermaid was a long time ago, and We Are as Mayflies. Mermaids live at least three times longer than humans.

Granmamare is Ariel's daughter, Melody, from Contested Sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.
  • Can't be. Melody has black hair, and even prolonged saltwater exposure can't change black to red.
    • Becoming a Goddess probably would let change it though.

Fujimoto is Captain Nemo.
He was just hiding. Who would have guessed?

He hates humans, he builds tons of cool steampunk technology, and he has vaults from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries…

Fujimoto is a descendant of Howl and Sophie.
Their children lived in Japan and either intermarried or used Japanese names to fit in.

Lisa is The/a Stig.
Black and white outfit, Drives Like Crazy yet skillfully and thinks nothing of it, and finds an opposites-attract love with a guy who loves boats.

Lisa is Satsuki.
She seems to accept the whole "fish-turned-into-a-girl" thing quickly. Clearly she's had experience with cute supernatural occurrences. Plus there's a totoro on her fridge.
  • Also, the boy Satsuki becomes friends with grows up to be Souske's father. The hat Souske wears is the one he wore in "Totoro".
    • Backed up even more when she sings a little bit from the Totoro theme song (remember when Sosuke cheered her up and she went "happy as can be"/"watashi wa genki"?)
  • Impossible. Lisa's too young to be Satsuki. If Satsuki was eleven in the 1950s, then during the early 2000s where Ponyo is most likely set she would have been in her sixties. If anything she's more likely to be Lisa's mother, making her Sousuke's maternal grandmother. Picture this: Satsuki could have sung Sanpo to Lisa when she was a child, and Lisa still sings it from time to time to make herself feel better.

Lisa is a grown-up Kiki.
  • Nonsense, the senior citizen with the huge bow is a grown-up Kiki.
    • If anything, a lot of the ladies from the nursing home were once the teenage girls from Kiki.

Fujimoto is an AU Taro Urashima.
Think about it. Both are/were humans who somehow lived underwater for a time, met a beautiful water spirit, and fell in love. The original Taro left to go home; Fujimoto stayed underwater and lived forever thanks to the Year Inside, Hour Outside.

Ponyo is actually Sosuke's new younger sister
Think about it. Heck, the last few scenes near the end (that involved an ovum-like vessel for Lisa and the seniors to breathe in , no less!) appeared to be a extremely subtle metaphor for a pregnency. The love between Ponyo and Sosuke can be easily taken as a platonic, sibling love as well. Why else would they include a scene where a new mother explains breast milk?
  • Additionally, the scene where Ponyo's sisters pop the bubble she was trapped in is very reminiscent of sperm fertilizing an egg.

The whole thing was a Batman Gambit on the part of Granmamare to have Ponyo become human
The Goddess knew that humanity and nature (via the sea) needed to come back together, and saw that Ponyo would be a way. So she stuck Ponyo and her sisters with her overprotective, but adorably Cloudcuckoolander husband, who would remain distracted by his "work" to give Ponyo the freedom to be curious and just rebellious enough to go off on her own. Ponyo started coming into her greatest power at the most curious and "innocent" time of life to be able to create a close bond with a human child. It was pretty much a given by that point. (Seriously, does anyone think Fujimoto really could have gotten away with getting rid of humanity and restarting life from the sea? He can't even fix a stuck door.)
  • On that note, having Ponyo live on land may have been Granmamare's way of foiling her husband's Kill All Humans plan without directly confronting him about it.

Ponyo will grow up to be an oceanographer
During the test of love, Granmamare askes Sosuke if he could still love Ponyo if she walked in both worlds. If Granmamare intended her daughter to be a sort of ambassador of sea life, it makes sense that she'll become the Japanese answer to Jacques Cousteau.

Ponyo can use Spiral Energy
She willed herself to grow hands and feet and eventually become human, like Boota. Her magic seems to be directly tied to her willpower, though she's still to young to know how to use it effectively.

Lisa is actually Sousuke's stepmother, not mother
On a slightly more believable note than the above entries, Sousuke never actually calls Lisa 'mother'. He always calls her 'Lisa'. When Sousuke and Ponyo are on their toy boat and meet up with the couple with the baby, the father says that Sousuke is 'Lisa's boy'. In the original Japanese, he uses the word 'otoko', which literally means 'boy child', not 'musuko', which means 'son'. But Sousuke does refer to Kouichi as his father, leading to the belief that Lisa is actually Sousuke's stepmother.
  • Lisa and Sousuke look too much alike not to be related, and Sousuke is heard calling Kouichi by his first name.

Everything after Sousuke and Ponyo leave the house is a Secret Test of Character
Granmammare and Fujimoto set up a Batman Gambit to tire out Ponyo reverting her to "gold fish" form if Sousuke had abandoned Ponyo, say to look for his mother, then the disaster would have happened as well as Ponyo turning into sea foam. He didn't, so all they need is a verbal conformation that Sousuke accepted Ponyo the way she is/was/will-be.
  • Wasn't that canon?

Lisa is a grown-up Chihiro.
While she doesn't remember her experiences in Yubaba's bathhouse, she probably subconsciously retains a fair amount of it. That's the reason she's so quick to believe Sousuke's explanation about who Ponyo is- subconsciously she remembers that she's seen much stranger things before. Her love of Haku, a river spirit, changed into a general love of the water- hence the reason she married a sailor and lives so close to the sea.

Granmamare is Amphitrite and Fujimoto is Poseidon.Or...yeah.
  • Alternatively, Thalassa and Pontus. Thalassa being the sea itself, and both spawning fish.

Ponyo will continue to need blood in order to sustain her human form.
In Ponyo 2: Blood Is Thicker, Ponyo will accidentally unlock her magical powers and will once again find herself reverting into a fish. Shortly afterward, the Tomonoura police will discover Toki's completely exsanguinated corpse buried behind the Senior Center...<<|Wild Mass Guessing|>>
Ponyo tried to drag Sosuke under water.
During the wave scene Ponyo was trying to get Sosuke's attention, but because the car was still moving, she didn't think it worked. So she used the wind to drag Soskue over the railing. Why else would only Sosuke get dragged by the wind instead of Lisa and the car as well.

Fujimoto and Granmamare's relationship is like that of Ponyo and Sosuke, but in reverse.
Once upon a time, Granmamare was like Ponyo and Fujimoto was a little boy who lived near the sea. They met and fell in love, but unlike Ponyo (who grew to love the land and chose to live there with Sosuke), Fujimoto found a love of the ocean and decided that he wanted to live there with Granmamare. This is why he looks more human than his wife but less human than his daughter as he gained new powers (possibly from Granmamare) to adapt to his new life in the sea, but is still at his core a human.
  • I thought that was heavily implied. Also given the fact he's probably super old (He still uses Brunhilda as a name) mean he's some sort of demi-god/ magical human.

Sousuke's grandparents are Umi, Shun and Satsuki.
Relating to the above theory, you could draw up an entire family tree. My Neighbor Totoro and From Up On Poppy Hill are set less than a decade apart, which means that Umi and Satsuki must be pretty much in the same age group, give or take a few years. Ponyo is set in the 2000s, which would place the two of them roughly in their sixties, perfectly old enough for their children to have children of their own. Satsuki would have grown up and had Lisa, with Kanta or with someone else. Umi and Shun would have eventually gotten married and their son, Kouichi, would have grown up to become a sailor like both of their fathers, with Umi having passed down her knowledge of signal flags to him. And then you know how the rest of the story goes, Lisa married Kouichi and they had Sousuke and he met Ponyo...

Ponyo is a silkie
  • Or even Bronagh herself

Alternative Title(s): Ponyo On A Cliff By The Sea

Top