For my ninth post in the “12 moments of anime 2009” series I’m choosing my experience seeing Ponyo at real movie theater.

        While I have seen thousands of episode of anime and over 100 hundred anime films seldom do I get to view anime films the way they’re meant to be seen, in a real movie theater. Over my long years of anime viewing I’ve seen anime films, and for the most part I’ve viewed these films at anime club, or watched these films from VHS tape or DVD at my house. While these viewing methods are great when it’s the only viable viewing method available a movie is really meant to be viewed and experienced on the big screen.

        Over the years, I’ve only had the good fortune to see a couple of anime films in full theater glory and I have to say that you can tell the difference between watching a film in the theater vs the best home movie equipment. So, this past August I had the pleasure watching Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff AKA Ponyo at a Digital Cinema movie theater.

        Seeing Ponyo in the theater reaffirmed just how good anime films can be when you watch them as they were intended to be seen, and made me wonder how much more I would had loved 5 Centimeters Per Second & The Place Promised in Our Early Days if I would have had a similar viewing experience.