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Ponyo may look and feel a little “different” compared to Western-style Disney and Pixar animated features, but it’s a wonderful treat, stuffed with creative visuals, delightful entertainment, and most of all bottomless heart.

If you’ve never seen a Hayao Miyazaki film, Ponyo is a perfect place to start.

Okay, maybe we need to roll back on that a bit. If you’re not familiar with the name Hayao Miyazaki (let alone know how to pronounce it—it’s High-OH Mee-yah-ZAH-key by the way, but I had to look it up myself), he’s the revered Japanese animator-writer-director who’s created such films as Princess Mononoke, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Miyazaki is often called the “Walt Disney of Japan” (and indeed Disney and Pixar director John Lasseter have worked to bring many of his films, including Ponyo, to American audiences), but that’s somewhat condescending: Fact is Miyazaki is a world-wide treasure in his own right. His soaring imagination; his obsessions with air, magic and transformations; and best of all his perfect mixture of the surreal and the comfortingly familiar have made his films both cinematic treats for film lovers and delightful entertainment for children and adults.

Ponyo, which offers a very Japanese spin on the Little Mermaid tale, is a bit of shift for Miyazaki. Where the complexity and teen/tween protagonists of Mononoke, Spirited, and Howl’s aimed those movies more at young adult viewers, Ponyo is blissfully childlike (harkening back more to his ‘80s films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service) and may find it’s most devoted audiences in those under 12. However, Ponyo certainly stays in tune with the fantastical, supernatural elements of all Miyazaki’s work.

That’s wonderfully embodied in the film’s title character, Ponyo. The magical sea-dwelling daughter of a once-human water wizard (voiced in the English-language version by Liam Neeson) and a mystical ocean goddess (Cate Blanchett), we first meet Ponyo as a small goldfishy creature, the most curious of a whole school of sea-monkey-like daughters. But Ponyo wanders out to explore, winds up on land and in love with a young schoolboy named Sosuke, and much to her human-hating father’s dismay, decides she wants to be a human girl.

Young Ponyo and Sosuke are voiced by a couple Next-Gen Disney creatures: Miley’s little sister Noah Lindsey Cyrus and the Jonas-in-waiting Frankie. Both do terrific jobs–as do the rest of the all-star American voice cast: Tina Fey and Matt Damon as Sosuke’s parents; and Betty White, Lily Tomlin, and Cloris Leachman as Sosuke’s pals at a nearby retirement home. All the voice actors do what they need to: convey warmth and humor while not distracting from the film’s true star: it’s astounding visual creativity.

As is often the case, Miyazaki is expounding an environmental message, though he does it less by scolding human waste and pollution than by celebrating a near-explosion of glorious nature: Ponyo’s quest to become human uncorks a dazzling marine cornucopia as jellyfish, carp, prehistoric water creatures, and anthropomorphic waves are unloosed in a vibrant, colorful surge.

Still fascinated by the strength of nature and the weather, here Miyazaki replaces his usual love for the air and flying with a rush of sea power. As befitting an island nation where the water and fishing are deep-seated parts of the culture, the ocean is presented as a strange and marvelous place, both beautiful and dangerous.

Ponyo herself pops back and forth between a giggling little girl and an odd chicken-fish creature somewhere between her magical watery roots and the human girl she dreams of being. But through it all, she carries the movie along on her goofy innocence and a curious playfulness (and love of ham!) young children will certainly relate to and find captivating.

Visually, the film itself is also intentionally varied. While life on land has a solid familiarity, the Yellow Submarine world of Ponyo and her sea parents is a ‘60s kaleidoscope of swinging London aesthetics. Even if Dad’s magic submarine is red. (Ponyo’s sorcerer father in his striped jacket, sunken eyes, and tangled red hair is much more Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett than Gandalf the Gray.)

But in addition to the trippy designs, Ponyo also shares a big heart with Miyazaki’s other works—he always anchors his wild flights of imagination in images of family warmth, often centered on shared meals in cozy safety. So in the middle of all this watery spectacle, Ponyo slows down for a lovely scene with Sosuke’s mother serving him and Ponyo a steaming meal of noodles and honey tea while tucked safely at home during a supernatural storm.

And that’s Miyazaki’s true message and Ponyo’s secret power: Amidst all this strange sorcery and imaginative beauty, the true magic remains a hot meal shared with your loved ones.

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