Porco Rosso

Porco Rosso - (紅の豚; Kurenai no Buta), is a 1992 anime film by Hayao Miyazaki about an Italian World War I fighter ace, now living as a freelance bounty hunter chasing "air pirates" in the Adriatic Sea. The man has been cursed, and has the head of a pig. Once called Marco, he is now known to the world as "Porco Rosso," Italian for "the red pig." (The original Japanese title Kurenai no Buta means "The Crimson Pig.")

The film tells the story of Porco's romance with Gina, who runs a pilots' club and hotel in the Adriatic; his friendship with a young girl named Fio who is a talented airplane engineer; and his rivalry with a hotshot American pilot named Curtis. The origin and nature of Porco's curse are never fully explained, although the question does arise in the movie.

The film was first planned as an short in-flight movie for JAL based on Hayao Miyazaki's manga The Age of the Flying Boat, but grew into a feature-length film. The outbreak of war in Yugoslavia cast a shadow over production and prompted a more serious tone for the movie, which originally had been set in Croatia.

Technically, the film shows Studio Ghibli's almost maniacal attention for particulars, as regards the animation and the historical Italian elements (although some Italian words are shown misspelled in the local newspaper of Milan).

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