10. Ponyo (2008)

Ponyo is one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most light-hearted films and an adaptation of Hans Christen Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. A five-year-old boy named Sosuke discovers a goldfish that wants to be a human little girl—even though this upsets the balance of nature and is against the wishes of her father, a sorcerer who lives in the depths of the ocean. After she gains the ability to become human and chooses to stay on land, a giant tsunami wreaks havoc on Sosuke’s coastal town, satellites fall from the sky, and the moon spins out of orbit.

Despite this, there’s lots of adorable, family-friendly humor to be found in Ponyo’s misunderstanding of life on land, along with quirks like her obsession with ham and the gleeful wiggling of her new toes. The story is thin and predictable, not quite as profound as Hayao Miyazaki’s more original fantasies, but the visuals of Ponyo’s underwater world are truly stunning—the vibrant schools of sea creatures, the amoebas, and the fish-shaped waves that Ponyo skims across are all eye-popping.