About the Soundtrack: Joe Hisaishi's "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" has been building up a great word of the mouth.  Even though the smash Japanese animated film has only recently been slated with North American distribution, its popularity in Japan has been spreading across the globe.  Specifically with the score, Hisaishi's work has been gleefully accepted by both new and existing fans alike and is building up steam.  For now, the music is only available as an import.

 

The CD imports are available in two versions.  One is the Image album, featuring just a handful of score tracks that are not even the best highlights of Hisaishi's work, and the other is the full score soundtrack, with 35 tracks to enjoy.   I purchased my copy of the latter through a reseller on Amazon.com for just over $20 dollars. With over an hour of score material, this is the way to go for any fan of the composer's work.

 

What You Need to Know:  Perhaps the best composer that you have never heard of, Joe Hisaishi continues his highly successful collaboration with Miyazaki Animation with "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea."  In his best score since the grand Princes Mononoke, the music of "Ponyo" is at once charming and memorable.  While it never does bring out a theme as memorable as the one heard in "Princess Mononoke," the soundtrack offers a consistent tone throughout and cascades a magic in its notes that will remind the listener of Walt Disney's glory years.  In short, this one is worth the leg work.

 

The remarkable aspect of "Ponyo" is the amount of themes that Hisaishi melds into the score.  While neither one on its own will bowl you over, the sum of its parts creates an overall feeling of a positive nature.  At its core, the movie has a sweet message to it, thus the music does its best to create a score that fits this essence.  To do that, Hisaishi brings out several fairy tale inspired motifs that interchange seamlessly during the soundtrack.  There's even a "Flight of the Valkyries" type of inspiration heard in some of the tracks. While some composers would be unable to smoothly transition the themes from one to the other, Hisaishi does it naturally and makes it easy on the listener to glide from one motif to the next.  Such expertise really keeps the listener's attention throughout the hour+ of music. Heck, even the cheesy theme song at the end of the album proves to be catchy!

There is a significant impression of "classical" music associated with Hisaishi's writing on this one.  It's an approach that further lends itself to the classic Walt Disney scores from so many years ago.   Given its charm, I also think that this is a score that I think children in particular will enjoy.  It's offers the type of music that plays to the kid in us all, I think. From the heartfelt tugs of its main theme to the operatic verses that bring in a sense of mystery, there is a lot of depth to this album and a high entertainment value. 

Enchanted, restrained and imaginative are the words I can best use to describe this one. 

Final Score: Though it requires a bit of a commitment on your part to locate it, "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" is a worthwhile investment.  While I won't put it on the pedestal next to "Princess Mononoke," it is a sharp improvement over Hisaishi's previous two Miyazaki scores and that's saying something!