MalakiArt

I'm not the biggest Studio Ghibli fan, but Ponyo and Howl's Moving Castle are movies that always stuck with me for very different reasons.

HMC takes the source material and injects overt romance and grittyness into it, making it a movie mostly about war. It also makes Howl much more of a dreamy prince compared to the absolute fuck up that he is in the book (seriously, look it up XD).

Meanwhile, Ponyo brings up serious themes, from pollution, natural disasters and families with one absent parent and doesn't give any of these much thought nor time.

I find both movies quite puzzling to be honest, despite loving both for their visuals, personality and beautiful, lively animation.

In the interviews about Ponyo's production and in the artbook, there are very interesting tidbits specifically about Fujimoto and Granmamare. I absolutely adore the idea of her human form as the 'lure' of a prehistoric anglerfish (and I find it very funny and totally in character for Fujimoto to learn about this and going 'Joke's on you, I'm into that shit' lmao) but it is the little backstory we get for Fujimoto that actually sparked my imagination the most.

Many kids have a dinosaur phase, well, not me. Baby me had an ancient egypt phase AND a Jules Verne phase. I absolutely love Verne's novels, especially 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea and From the Earth to the Moon. The 1959 Voyage to the Center of the Earth movie is also a big fave of mine and growing up, one of the anime that fascinated me the most was the now largely forgotten Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water.

Secret of Blue Water is a retelling of 20.000 Leagues under the Sea and Hayao Miyazaki was involved in creating the pitch for this show in the 70s. It was produced many years later under the direction of Hideaki Anno but, if you're familiar with Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that he was fond of that concept and wanted to reuse some of those ideas in a project of his own.

So... yeah, these silly concepts of mine are basically a weird crossover between Nadia and Ponyo, placing a young Fujimoto on the Nautilus from the tv show, which already has a memorable cast of fun characters and deals with similar themes to those only brushed upon by Ponyo.

I also wanted to avoid the cliche of having his encounter with Granmamare mirror that of Ariel and Prince Eric (aka: having her saving him from drowning) and I thought it would be more interesting if they were brought together by their mutual worry for Captain Nemo. If you're familiar with Verne's book (or Blue Water tbh), you'd know that Nemo is quite a tortured character that inspires both loyalty and fear in those who encounter him. I like the idea of Fujimoto seeing him as his mentor but realizing that Nemo is walking down a path he doesn't want to follow while Mamare, being obviously familiar with the Captain as she is with all that moves below the waves, has always been fond of him but can now see that he's becoming more desperate and violent.

I do like the idea of Mamare reaching out to Fujimoto without revealing her divine nature in the hope that he can help her reach Nemo (Nemo used to 'hear' the sea, but now he has closed his heart to anything but revenge). So basically the story would be about the two of them trying to save a mutual friend from himself and failing, which obviously leaves both of them quite distraught, but also a lot closer to each other and with Mamare's secret now out in the open.

From the 2021 Digimon Tamers live reading