紅の豚

KURENAI NO BUTA

MOVIE

MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
MANGA
RELEASE
July 18, 1992
LENGTH
93 min

DESCRIPTION

Take flight with "Porco" Rosso, a valiant World War I flying ace! From tropical Adriatic settings to dazzling aerial maneuvers, this action-adventure from world-renowned animator Hayao Miyazaki is full of humor, courage and chivalry. When "Porco" —whose face has been transformed into that of a pig by a mysterious spell— infuriates a band of sky pirates with his aerial heroics, the pirates hire Curtis, a rival pilot, to "get rid" of him. On the ground, the two pilots compete for the affections of the beautiful Gina. But it is in the air where the true battles are waged. Will our hero be victorious?

(Source: Disney)

CAST

Porco Rosso
Shuichiro Moriyama
Fio Piccolo
Akemi Okamura
Donald Curtis
Akio Ootsuka
Gina
Tokiko Kato
Mamma Aiuto Boss
Tsunehiko Kamijou
Grandpa Piccolo
Katsura Bunshi VI
Ferrarin
Mahito Tsujimura

RELATED TO KURENAI NO BUTA

MANGA ActionHikoutei Jidai

REVIEWS

hoeberries
95/100
I'd rather be a pig than a fascist.
I was surprised to find this film had no reviews. Porco Rosso (1992) is a funny, wistful story about flight, war, and idealism, all soaking in this cosy bath of nostalgia. Go watch it! It’s Miyazaki’s birthday today, you know. This might just be his most characteristic movie, featuring the grand sweep of flying, anti-war sentiments, working women, and pig metamorphosis (kinda weird that it happened twice). I suppose all it is lacking is a dash of environmentalism.

What it is not lacking is planes. Miyazaki loves those things. Possibly a bit too much. The flying, the planning, the building, the crashing and burning—within his long list of plane-related work, Porco Rosso pulls this stuff off the best, and is certainly worth a watch even if the subject matter (anthropomorphic grumpy plane pig) doesn’t light up the sky for you. I enjoyed it a lot more than 2013’s The Wind Rises, which insists on telling a long, self-indulgent biography of plane-maker-war-criminal Jiro Horikoshi and kind of forgets that the majority of us do not care about airborne hunks of metal.

Porco Rosso is plenty indulgent itself, described by Miyazaki as “idiosyncratic” in a way he doesn’t believe films should be. He whipped the movie up as a promotional short for a goddamn airline (dream come true for the guy), and he based it off his plane-centric manga called The Age of the Flying Boat (1988) that acts as a campy tribute to aviation. Due to certain real-world events, though, things had to change (more on this later).

Porco is not your typical Ghibli protagonist. He's a chauvinistic, lazy, jaded pig. He was a heroic French pilot in World War I, but after becoming disillusioned with the country he fought for, he set off on his own. We're introduced to him living a cruisy life as a freelance bounty hunter, reprimanding sky pirates in the idyllic Adriatic Sea before sliding into the smoky Hotel Adriano where he sits down, lights a smoke and just looks very, very cool. Naturally, Miyazaki creates a stellar tourism ad for the area.

On the surface, the movie is an airborne romp. A love letter to early aviation, sure, but one that is instantly enjoyable and accessible to those of us that did not grow up in a literal plane factory. The central plotline (extracted from the source material) follows Porco's rivalry with this American caricature named Donald Curtis, and it's consistently (consistently!) hilarious. Whether it's Porco's dry wit, Curtis' campy stupidity, or the delightfully funny minor characters, the laughs persist throughout.

But Porco Rosso is a lot more than that. While Miyazaki and the gang were putting together their fun little airline short film, they were blindsided by the Yugoslavian ethnic war. This news would echo into the movie.

Miyazaki is not just a giant plane nerd. He's a romanticist. A pacifist. An environmentalist. A Marxist. A feminist! He is all manner of good -ists in the world. Spectating the collapse of Yugoslavia's socialist state broke something inside the beloved filmmaker, and he ended up channelling these feelings into his work. How can you live when it seems like the world is going backwards? How can you reconcile that awful feeling of being disillusioned by humanity? To varying degrees of visibility, I feel all Miyazaki movies reckon with these questions.

Porco Rosso puts forth an answer. Become a pig! Say goodbye to your humanity and lapse into misanthropy. It's a bit pathetic, but can you really blame Porco? As I've hinted at throughout this review, this is a funny movie with a sunken heart. Beneath the bright colours and witty gags exists a tragic backstory: Porco lost all his friends in a war that amounted to nothing. The country he fought for no longer represents his injured ideals. Better a pig than fascist. Better a pig than a human.

If you haven't realised, Porco is not-so-subtly Miyazaki. I don't think it's any coincidence that the filmmaker selected a pig as his alter-ego—he always seemed to like them. And, against all odds, it makes perfect sense in the movie. I never once questioned why Porco was a pig, as it just kind of came into focus over time. The benefit of animation, of course, is that the medium can pull this fantastic animal nonsense off so seamlessly.

As such, I actually dislike Miyazaki’s flaccid attempt to link some type of supernatural “curse” to Porco's pig form. That wasn't necessary. I get that he likes his curses, but we understand why Porco is a pig. It just works, and the implied magic only serves to complicate things.

Anyway, meet Fio! Miyazaki ain't no pessimist, so he cooks up one of his signature girls to breathe life into his stinky pig of a man. Fio is this hard-working, passionate girl who builds Porco a plane and comes along with him. In addition to being a strong, likeable character in her own right, she does so much for this movie, ultimately leading Porco back to his humanity. There's the idea that, if people like this are the future, said future might not be so doomed after all.

I will say that, much like in Castle in the Sky (1986), the teenage heroine is at several points presented as honey on a stick for a conglomerate of thugs who thirst over her throughout the movie. Bit iffy. Her relationship with Porco, at least, is a joy to watch. Save for a few scenes...

She's not the only great character populating this film. The movie gives us Gina, who was not present in the source material. She is unfairly cool. Every man in the Adriatic Sea appears madly in love with her, and unlike with Fio, I totally get it. Her singing and general vibe are almost solely responsible for the mature, nostalgic feel of this film. I just wish she had a bit more screentime. Being such an important part of Porco's past, present, and prospective future, she lacked just one or two scenes.

Even random, no name characters—like the sky pirates, the schoolgirls they abduct, or the old engineer women—are packed full of joy. Miyazaki writes with such care. It's the little things, you know? He does the little things well.

It goes without saying that this movie is gorgeous to look at. It's spectacle after spectacle. I’m not going to pretend that I know all that much about direction, but it's there to gush about if you have the right vocabulary. Miyazaki is as good as they say and then some.

Joe Hisaishi is also here, as he tends to be. This isn’t my absolute favourite soundtrack of his, but you know what? It's subtle. It fits. This whole movie just fits together very well, Hisaishi's "Bygone Days" lapping at the shore all the while.

And the dub is great! Well, one of them. Turns out Japan Airlines took it upon themselves to make an English dub of their own, and I'm honestly quite curious how it turned out. I can't imagine it being better than the dub I watched (the main dub, I imagine?) which was stacked with great casting calls. I found it a lot funnier than the raw audio, but my poor Japanese could have had something to do with that.

Porco Rosso doesn’t overstay it's welcome. It actually holds back a bit. Brevity is the soul of wit, they say, and this is a very witty movie. A grand, pig-reversing ending just wouldn't fit, you know? Some things can't be resolved so easily.

I did think the film wrapped up a little quickly, even if I liked the general hopeful-but-still-ambiguous note we left off on. Miyazaki leaves his audience longing for more; and I think he feels the same way after leaving so much unsaid. By all accounts, this was a passionate, unplanned movie constructed in an entirely different way to his previous work. He was anxious that it wouldn't work out, and then stunned that it became (at the time) his most popular film overseas.

He's even expressed interest in creating a sequel! It won't ever happen, of course. In his own words, "my heart couldn't take it."
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