Following this confrontation, we’re shown a little more of the setting. There’s an obvious lack of danger throughout the sequence despite the bullets flying through the air but it doesn’t harm the enjoyment of the scene. He combats them via a seaplane of his own, a beat-up old red thing that has trouble getting off the water, and has little trouble foiling their plans and freeing their hostages. We immediately get a sense of the film’s tone as the pirates are pretty bad at what they do and Porco is quite nonchalant in his attitude towards them. The setting is post World War I and Porco has apparently been hired by the ship owners to keep the pirates away.
The film opens with Porco battling sky pirates: pirates that choose to attack luxury cruise ships via seaplane. And like many of Studio Ghibli’s films, it’s now available via Disney Blu Ray which is how I had the pleasure of experiencing it. Like The Wind Rises, it romanticizes the role of the pilot and easily could have been a live-action piece (though the pig-faced Porco may not have played as well as an actual person). Debuting in Japanese cinemas in 1992, it tells the tale of a former Italian flying ace turned bounty hunter cursed to live out the rest of his life with the face of a pig.
Porco Rosso is one of Miyazaki’s older works.
Some possess such fantastic imagery that it’s clear to see why they are animated, while a film such as The Wind Rises, Miyazaki’s most recent and possibly his last, is essentially a drama well-grounded in reality that just happens to be animated. They could have easily been shot in live-action and more obviously marketed towards adults. Many of his works are animated films because that’s just what Miyazaki does. Even so, it’s still worthwhile repeating that Miyazaki is a supremely gifted director with an apparent synergy with the animation medium. The internet is dotted with support for his brilliance and his films are readily available on US soil thanks to an agreement between Studio Ghibli and The Walt Disney Company. It almost seems pointless at this point to sing the praises of Studio Ghibli and its famous director, the great Hayao Miyazaki.
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