This begins a friendship. Sosuke (the voice of Frankie Jonas, younger brother of the Jonas Brothers) protects Ponyo (Noah Cyrus, Miley’s kid sister) in a pail until arms and legs pop spontaneously from her body and she becomes a little girl who speaks his language. He takes her to school and to the nursing home next door where his father works; all is wonderful until we discover that by crossing the divide between land and sea, Ponyo has triggered ecological changes that unleash a dangerous tsunami that floods Sosuke’s village right up to the doorstep of his house.

This begins an exciting escape in a toy boat that Ponyo magically enlarges, and a dreamlike journey among flooded treetops in search of Sosuke’s mother. From the surface, they can see giant prehistoric fish, awakened by the great wave, which cruise the highways his mother once drove.

This cannot help sounding like standard animated fare. But I have failed to evoke the wonder of Hayao Miyazaki’s artistry. This 68-year-old Japanese master continues to create animation drawn by hand, just as “Snow White” and “Pinocchio” were. There is a fluid, organic quality to his work that exposes the facile efficiency of CGI. And, my God! — his imagination!

The film opens with a spellbinding, wordless sequence beneath the sea, showing floating jellyfish and scampering bottom-dwellers. The pastels of this scene make “Ponyo” one of the very rare movies where I want to sit in the front row, to drown in it. This is more than “artistry.” It is art.

And consider Miyazaki’s imagination as he creates a human protector of this seascape, Fujimoto (Liam Neeson). He is the father of Ponyo and her countless baby sisters (the biology involved is widely not explained). Although he seems sinister at first, his desire to keep Ponyo in the sea is eventually explained because of his concern for the balance of Earth’s nature.