What began as an orgasmic week for prepubescent fans of Studio Ghibli, with the announcement of Hayao Miyazaki’s new animation film “Gake no ue no Ponyo” (Ponyo On A Cliff), has since been tainted with all sorts of nasty gossips involving plagiarism, Miyazaki’s obsession for his failed director son, and worst of all, an accute lack of lolis from his future-ex-secret project, Ponyo.

Miyazaki (senior) is of course Studio Ghibli’s most prominent figure, having been credited with animation films such as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle most recently, and classics such as Nausicaa, Laputa and Totoro. But at 66 years of age, it seems that his inspiration is running dry, since Gake no ue no Ponyo clearly draws from Andersen’s age-old tale “The Little Mermaid”. The film’s story is about a 5-year old boy named Sousuke, and his goldfish princess Ponyo, who yearns to become human (but as you can see from the picture below, has a long way to go…).


Ponyo will be drawn freely in watercolors, giving it a rather boring classic look. The film will mostly take place in the ocean, and Miyazaki-san plans to animate water and waves in exciting ways. As a downside, it seems that the production will last about 20 months, which is significantly longer than Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Things got interesting, however, when it was revealed that the main character Sousuke is actually based on Miyazaki’s own son, Goro - who last year made his director’s debut with “Gedo Senki”. Miyazaki senior was fiercely against it, and even though the film was a commercial success, it was heavily criticized.

Now Miyazaki senior also seems to be drawing some criticism of his own, as Ghibli World reports that he is being accused of plagiarizing works of Yasuhiro Nakura - an animation artist who worked on projects like Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Metropolis and Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Little Girl Who Conquered Time). He also wrote a book called “The world of Nakura Yasuhiro”, and apparently this is what the rumor is all about.

Well, it may be too early to talk about plagiarism, so we’ll see about it after Ponyo is released in summer 2008… Or maybe we won’t, since we’ll certainly have more lolicious animations in need of watching.