SUMMARY
The animation was about a boy who likes imagination. In his eyes, even a little fish can turn into a mermaid, and that mermaid becomes his friend (maybe girlfriend). He likes the mermaid so much that he tries to take the her home, but when he introduces her to his parents, they get terrified. In this world, to imagine is a sin. The boy gets caught by the police, and people try to make the boy admit that what he saw was just a little fish. Under the interrogation done over and over and over again, his image of the mermaid starts to vanish. He was scared, and runs away to see the mermaid again, but what he saw there was, like he was told by everyone, a little fish. He was sad, and he brings the fish back to the ocean, and after seeing police officers coming after him, he gets into the ocean with the fish, and the mermaid appears again.
MESSAGE
This animation is a metaphor of the society that does not allow extraordinary thoughts. People think in different ways, and that makes it natural that people see different things. However, people are afraid of differences. When I saw the animation, I recalled the story of Galileo Galilei. Today, people all believe the heliocentric theory, but when Galileo tried to prove this theory, people could not accept it. Galileo was put on a inquisition, adjudged guilty, and was forced to admit that he was wrong. This is just like what happened in the story. People believe in things, and try hard to make sure that they are right. It may be that those criticising are blind and actually not seeing the truth, but one person can barely win a group of people. A world without freedom and personality is just plain and gloomy, and Tedsuka probably wanted to express the danger of uniformity and the importance of imagination and personality.
END
I think it was not a happy ending. I think that the boy did not come out of the ocean again, meaning he died. He chose to live in his imagination rather than to live in the world without the freedom to imagine. People who were looking at the ocean probably could not see the boy and the mermaid happily swimming around. What they saw was a poor insane boy running into the water and never coming out again. They are probably only regretting that they could not save the boy from imagination.
