Mutilation, Metamorphosis, Transition, Transcendence: Revisiting Genderism and Transgenderism in The Little Mermaid Through Gake no Ue no Ponyo

What links many stories in the fairy tale genre are the twin thematic foci of physical and mental transformations, changes which are often embedded within motifs of mutilation and/or muteness. How are these entwined notions of growth and impairment reinterpreted and transformed across time and culture(s)? Through the prism of postcolonial and feminist interpretations of masculine colonisation and the subjugation of the female form, this chapter will examine the origin of physical and psychological transition in Hans Christian Andersen's original tale, its reinterpretation in Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) and its cultural and philosophical metamorphoses in Hayao Miyazaki's 2008 Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo: On the Cliff by the Sea).