LOS ANGELES: An immersive new exhibit devoted to Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki’s hand-drawn 2008 fantasy film about a goldfish-like girl yearning to be human, invites visitors, especially children, into his world through more than 100 original materials and hands-on animation tools.

The show, opening on Saturday at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, showcases rare artwork and production sketches from Studio Ghibli, the animation house Miyazaki co-founded, along with an interactive station that introduces young visitors to the basics of stop-motion filmmaking.

“Ponyo is a very special film in Hayao Miyazaki’s filmography, Academy Museum senior exhibitions curator, Jessica Niebel, said.

First of all, children are very close to his heart, and he likes to make movies for a young audience. Ponyo is probably the movie that’s geared towards the youngest audience within his body of work, she added.

Miyazaki, 85, is renowned as one of the world’s greatest animators, often nicknamed the Walt Disney of Japan. Ponyo, based on the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Little Mermaid, tells the story of a young goldfish-like princess by that name who flees from the ocean and is helped by a 5-year-old human boy named Sosuke. As they bond, Ponyo desires to become a human girl.

The exhibit includes hand-drawn art boards with bold ocean blues and sketches from Miyazaki himself of meaningful moments in the movie. An interactive animation table offers visitors a chance to create their own stop-motion animation sequences and wade into the creative process. For Niebel, the table is a way to introduce filmmaking to children.

“I feel like filmmaking is such a large process and it’s such a big thing. I don’t know that children know and realize they can start out early, she said.

“They can make their own little films already when they’re still very young. And these tables invite them to do just that. Beyond the beauty of the art, Niebel hopes people will understand why honoring hand-drawn human work is so vital in an era of artificial intelligence.

Studio Ghibli was co-founded by Miyazaki and his longtime friends and collaborators Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki in 1985.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2026