Hayao Miyazaki has won many awards for his achievements in directing animation, but to credit him in such a way seems limiting. Miyazaki makes films, not just animated films. Animation is just a medium to him, and not a genre. Perhaps it is a dictate of American culture, an unfortunate result of Disney’s legacy, that animated films are automatically seen to be fare for children. There are obvious exceptions (Beavis and Butthead, South Park, most shows on Adult Swim, etc.), but by and large, animated works, including Miyazaki’s, will always be viewed through a filter as works intended for children.

This hasn’t hurt the filmmaker at all. If there were any American director with which he shares certain similarities, it would probably be Tim Burton. The two exhibit tendency toward insanely original visions of worlds in which rules only apply by a separate scheme of the auteur’s imagination. Each of their productions always bears a distinctive creative stamp (Burton’s kooky curled set designs, for example), and a large portion of their works can double as family and adult fare. Miyazaki is no stranger to complex, moving works which can capture any imagination through story as well as sweeping illustrated visuals (Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc. all the way back to 1984’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind).

So, Miyazaki’s latest film, Ponyo, is a laundry-list of what one can expect: stunning, sharply-drawn anime animation, bright popping colors, rich and realistic characters, wholly unrealistic circumstances, a love of the fantastic and sequences of fancy set to vibrant music (but not of the Disney faux-Broadway sing-along type). It’s a fish-tale (ha) of a goldfish-like princess, Brunhilde, with a kooky inventor human-expatriate of a “father” named Fujimoto (voiced by Liam Neeson). She gets lost and a young boy named Sosuke nabs her as a pet. He names her Ponyo, and, as he innocently captures her, he cuts his finger. She magically licks the wound, healing it, and this human DNA begins to transform Ponyo into a real girl — who occasionally switches back to a half-fish form when she wants to do magic. It’s that kind of movie.

It’s the kind of movie where it’s perfectly normal to see a half-fish, half-girl sprinting on the backs of hundreds of whale-sized halibut made of water. It’s normal for the ocean waves to shoot 300 feet directly upwards, and for people to drive in such conditions. Ponyo’s father is a deep-voiced drag queen and her mother is the queen of the ocean. Dad keeps magic in liquid form in five-foot tall vials … underwater. Did I mention the whale-sized hydro-halibut?

It’s still a rollicking adventure about a little girl that wants to be human (Little Mermaid much?) and a boy that loves her, while giving glimpses into the boy’s life being raised by a mother whose husband is away at sea all the time. No wonder Sosuke wants a pet. He lets Ponyo try ham, and the girl is sold on humanity, even if her desire floods the world in the process. Katrina wasn’t so bad, right?

Unfortunately, voice-acting kills the English version of the film. It’s not poorly dubbed, but the subtleties of face-voice matching are difficult to replicate. Some lines are unintentionally comical. Tina Fey tries to add her trademark wit and timing to Lisa, Sosuke’s mother, and it almost works in the film’s best moments. At the film’s worst, we get lines like, “I’d let a fish lick me if it’d get me out of this wheelchair.” Maybe it’s my bias against dubbing and for subtitles. The movie would likely be more enjoyable if the Japanese were translated literally, as the voices focus on carrying the pitch and nuance of emotion. What a shame. Regardless, the cast boasts the aforementioned Fey and Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Lily Tomlin, Betty White, Matt Damon, Cloris Leachman and Miley Cyrus’s little sister, Noah Lindsey, as Ponyo.

Bottom line: another wacky cartoon film to add to the stellar (but seriously, he’s on crack) Miyazaki canon: No real artistic stretch for him, and probably best viewed in Japanese with subs.