In this capstone I use Ponyo (2008) from Hayao Miyazaki to explore animation as a tool to depict transness and trans/queer stories. I trace a line through radical imagination and fiction as a world building tool to animation as a new technology in this field. I look to queer and feminist scholars of color who study culture, embracing methodologies of reading queerly and adding my site to the archive of queer culture texts. My approach to Ponyo is through a trans- framework which works against binaries and across boundaries, a lens I see aligned with the feature of animation called plasmaticity – the freedom from permanent shape and ability to fluidly transform. Thus, my analysis promotes the concept of plasmatic queerness – an expansive understanding of queerness which layers identity and modality, the abstract and embodied aspects of fluid queerness and transness. Presentations of transness are drawn from first the protagonist, Ponyo, and then her co-star, the ocean. Understanding water to be a contact zone and space of transformation and transgression, I continue to posit the value of animation for depicting these themes. Finally, I look to worldmaking as a practice in this film and in filmmaking to see what can be inspired from Ponyo. I suggest this film should be counted in the conversation around building our future and each piece of my analysis serves to peel apart and re-member Ponyo to see it as a queer text and to help draw out the potentialities of animation as a form.