Studio Ghibli PONYO Exhibition -- Academy Museum Los Angeles

Going? You can check in after it ends.

You were five, and the ocean was the biggest thing you had ever seen, and nobody had to explain to you that it was alive. Walking into this gallery reopens that exact file, except now you are an adult and still cannot account for why Miyazaki makes you cry.

More than a hundred pieces, hand-picked by the studio: original drawings in Miyazaki's own hand, art boards laying out the frame-by-frame labor behind every wave that rolled across the screen, posters from the original Japanese release. Some of it has never been shown anywhere in North America. There is a table where you build your own stop-motion sequence out of paper sea creatures, which is the room where the children go still and the parents quietly take over.

Wilshire Boulevard at the Academy Museum, timed admission, closed Tuesdays.

Take the kid. Then notice which one of you refuses to leave the drawings.