Trivia

The opening twelve seconds, involving vast schools of fish and undersea creatures, required 1,613 pages of conceptual sketches to develop.

Sôsuke is based on Hayao Miyazaki's son Gorô Miyazaki, when he was five years old.

Hayao Miyazaki drew most of the sea and wave imagery himself, experimenting with making it as expressionistic as possible. John Lasseter said that he had never seen water animated so beautifully before.

This is the first animated feature film since Princess Mononoke (1997) to be created and painted on traditional animation cels.

The design of the ocean waves, during the typhoon caused by Ponyo, were inspired by the waves in the famous woodblock print The Wave Off Kanagawa by Japanese artist Hokusai.

Hayao Miyazaki: [mother] Toki, the bitter old lady in the rest home, is an affectionate homage to Miyazaki's mother (as was the mother in My Neighbor Totoro (1988)).