Film Name: 咕噜咕噜美人鱼 / Gulu Mermaid
When Ponyo, created by Hayao Miyazaki, floated slowly to the surface from the depths of the sea aboard a jellyfish, she encountered a little boy who would change her life forever. The boy placed the swimming Ponyo in a basin, marveling at this strange creature until she transformed into a little girl. Finally, Ponyo and the boy shared a kiss.
For some reason, watching “Gulu Mermaid,” my mind kept flashing back to “Ponyo: Meet Ponyo.” It’s the same story: a little mermaid named Gulu, with a personality as adorable as Ponyo’s, meets a young boy named Fishball. She swims around in his wooden basin until she transforms into a little girl. In the end, Fishball has this memory erased.
Comparing the two, the same characters yet different endings. Suddenly, our reality feels so cruel.
But that’s not the cruelest part. Ponyo’s story with the boy is about searching for her mother, bravely challenging herself, facing difficulties head-on, and growing through courage. Gulu’s story with the boy, however, involves battling treacherous humans and brutal sea monsters. Yet, despite these seemingly perilous struggles, the protagonist never achieves any real growth.
Comparing the two, they share the same childlike charm but carry different missions. Suddenly, I felt our reality was far from simple.
Of course, there’s even more cruelty. In Ponyo and the boy’s journey, we see towering waves and a deep, dark tunnel mirroring inner fears—yet these remain psychological crises. In Gulliver and the boy’s tale, however, the sea monster and mermaid are locked in a life-or-death struggle. The sea monster violently plunges its long claws into its subordinate’s body, killing it outright. Similar scenes of brutality recur throughout, culminating in the monster itself being blown to pieces. The psychological sense of crisis is now fully expressed through violent imagery.
Comparing the two, the sense of crisis remains the same, but the nature of the violence differs. Though China lacks a rating system, our children’s animations simply cannot go this far.
This is the difference between The Goldfish Princess on the Cliff and the mermaid battling sea monsters. We habitually resolve conflicts through binary oppositions, crowning heroes by slaying monsters. Yet true childlike wonder rarely lies in such tropes. It is precisely the everyday moments—like Gulu delivering meals to Fishball, or the playful routine of Gulu repeatedly puncturing and then repairing Fishball’s bubble shield—that make Guruguru Mermaid’s most heartwarming scenes resonate so deeply.
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