** 2026 Stock ** With Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008), Joe Hisaishi delivers one of his most exuberant and openly child‑centred scores for Hayao Miyazaki. Where earlier Ghibli soundtracks often hide complexity under a restrained surface, Ponyo wears its heart on its sleeve: bright orchestral colours, huge dynamic swings, and a title theme so instantly catchy it became a pop phenomenon in Japan. The film retells The Little Mermaid as a coastal flood tale about a goldfish girl who wants to become human and the boy who befriends her; Hisaishi’s music tracks that transformation from deep‑sea mystery to storm‑lashed peril to domestic warmth with themes that are simple on the surface but carefully woven through the narrative.

As with many Miyazaki projects, Ponyo spawned both an Image Album and a full Original Soundtrack. The Image Album (ten tracks, often issued on vinyl) presents early versions and medleys of the major themes, written from Miyazaki’s poems and scenario rather than finished footage. The Original Soundtrack, released in July 2008, runs to 36 tracks and over an hour, covering everything from the pre‑Cambrian opening sequence (“Deep Sea Pastures” / “Deep Sea Ranch”) to the village’s response to the supernatural flood (“Fleet March,” “Fleet March 2”), and quieter interludes like “Sosuke’s Tears.” Hisaishi serves as composer and producer, with large orchestra, choir, solo voices and occasional synths all folded into a tightly constructed whole.

The score is built around several recurring themes. The “Mother Sea” motif and its choral writing give the ocean a numinous, almost sacred presence, first heard as we see ancient sea life blossoming under Ponyo’s father’s magic. The “Ponyo” theme itself – bouncy, pentatonic, and orchestrated with bells, brass and woodwinds – is introduced in cues like “Deep Sea Pastures” and “Ponyo and Sosuke,” then explodes fully in the end‑title song. That song, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea,” features a children’s duet in the film version (and other vocalists on different editions) and is deliberately “cheesy” in the best sense: a sing‑along refrain that encapsulates Ponyo’s boundless energy and the film’s focus on small children’s perspective. Between these big signposts, Hisaishi threads more nuanced material: dark, undulating motifs for Fujimoto, Ponyo’s mercurial father; transformation music that shifts harmony and orchestral weight to match Ponyo’s metamorphosis; and action cues that turn the rising sea into rolling string figures and brass surges.

What sets Ponyo apart is how it uses orchestral heft without losing a sense of play. Tracks like “Ponyo and Sosuke” and its sequel cue capture genuine peril – strings straining, brass and percussion punching accents – yet they always bend back toward major‑key affirmation, matching the film’s insistence that even Biblical floods can be faced with resilience and mutual care. “Sosuke’s Tears,” a short piano solo, distils a familiar melodic cell into something quietly devastating, showing Hisaishi’s ability to express a child’s confusion and grief with minimal means. The final stretch of the OST brings back all the major themes in quick succession, resolving tension not through a single overwhelming climax but through a sense of cyclical return: motifs we’ve heard in chaos now reharmonised in calm, as the village finds its footing and Ponyo’s fate is sealed.

On the Image Album, those themes are re‑presented in more free‑standing arrangements, interspersed with character songs and choral pieces designed specifically for listening rather than sync. Instrumental medleys expand cues that are brief in the film into full movements, while vocal tracks – including “Himawari no Ie no Rondo,” sung by Hisaishi’s daughter MAI – underline the score’s familial and generational subtext: a father composing for a film about parents and children, with his own child singing one of its key songs.

Between these two albums, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea stands as both a crowning achievement in children’s film music and a distillation of what makes Joe Hisaishi’s collaboration with Miyazaki so potent: a knack for melodies that feel archetypal on first hearing, an orchestral language that can swing from whimsical to dissonant without losing coherence, and an instinct for matching emotional beats so precisely that, as many listeners report, hearing the music alone is enough to replay entire scenes in the mind.