Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 93 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1992
The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!
This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.
What's still to come are:
Saturday - Whisper of the Heart (1995)
Sunday - Princess Mononoke (1997)
Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki's Delivery Service, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.
During the golden age of bi-wing airplanes, the sky is filled with pirates using sea planes to raid local commercial vessels. In all this rather peaceful time, there are those who fly the skies tracking down and recovering stolen cargo; Bounty Hunters.
Among all of these fliers, there is one name that every pilot in the Adriatic knows; Porco Rosso, the flying pig.
... What?!
... Yes, you heard me correctly, I said pig.
Keeping the local skies safe from all of the pirates, Porco Rosso has made quite a name for himself, and earned himself a lot of fans and enemies, namely these guys...
Don't look very happy, do they? Well that's correct, but now they've gone and hired an American to come and fight with Porco. His name is Curtis, and he speaks very good Japanese and French... but not Italian... this again.
Now not only are they rivals in the sky, but also for the love of Gina, a singer at a club and another local legend. "Every pilot in the Adriatic is in love with Gina".
Again, Miyazaki's love of things that fly comes back, this time making a staring role, though the naturalist/environmentalist theme was tuned way down again, possibly nonexistent in this one.
There was probably a humanitarian message in there if you were hypersensitive, but I'm not, so I couldn't tell you.
The music was pretty good, a couple of anthems and some other stuff. There was also a solo that Gina did in the beginning, but I'm kind of adverse to older French songs. A lot of vibrato and always depressing.
The Japanese version is the one that I stuck with, though the English one surprised me. Actually, I've noticed that movies (namely Miyazaki movies because that's all I've seen) tend to have a better selection of English voice actors, so the English versions aren't bad.
Maybe it was the better quality that I found in this download, but the animation definitely looked better, a lot smoother, and it might have been a forced reaction to the abundance of action scenes in this movie.
Porco Rosso MegaUpload
- I'm sorry, but I couldn't find this all in one place. For some reason, people haven't gotten around to ripping it in any kind of quality in one piece (it comes in parts everywhere though), so I had to find this by web searching it...
... So I'm sorry to whoever uploaded this, but good job, man! French, Japanese, and English, damn!
Coming up next!
Day 6: Whisper of the Heart!
Alert!
If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!After a skirmish with some pirates, Porco Rosso notices his engine problem has reached a rather critical point.
Never a good sign.
After tying to fix it himself (like a man, or a... pig), Porco decides to take it to Milan to have one of his acquaintances fix it up.
So he sets off for Milan, hoping that his engine will take him that far.
Well, the engine was doing fine... until Curtis attacked him.
Forced to push his engine past it's limit, the whole thing stops, and Porco's a roasted pig. Cutis shoots him down, and claims the "kill" (a term, not necessarily meaning what it... means). He paints a pig on the side of his plane and returns to Milan to claim the fair Gina.
Porco's not dead yet, and manages to haul his bust-ass plane back to his friend's... Piccolo. Like DBZ? Is Piccolo an accepted name? My spellchecker's not having any problems with it, and I haven't done a DBZ review yet...
Piccolo's had plastic surgery and is now a shrimpy old man with... a hot granddaughter... hands off.
Fio's been living in America, but now she's come to economically fucked Italy for some strange reason. Economies flourish during war times, and America was booming during WWII (though I don't think they're quite there yet). Italy's always on the downside of World Wars, it seems.
And so Piccolo and Fio, and their entire female family start fixing/remaking Porco's plane.
In order to beat Curtis, Porco needs a better engine, Curtis's is faster and probably running at a smoother RPM than his old one, so Piccolo busts out...
A Ghibli!!
It's not a "Folgore", it's a freaking Ghibli! What are you, blind?!
And boy, does she work!
I LOVE THEM!
During his stay in Milan, Porco meets with an old friend from the Air Force. What? I forgot to mention that he used to be a pilot in the AF (Italian)? Oh, and that he used to be a human too? Well no I didn't, this is the first you know about it.
Well, okay, maybe not...
... My bad.
The old friend tells him that he's being chased (more or less) by the government, and is wanted for numerous crimes. In the end, just when the airplane is finished, the cops surround the shop and prepare to raid it.
Porco get ready to take off and fly away from Milan... just the one problem...
... okay, what are you doing?
Fio strong-arms her way into riding with Porco as a mechanic/gunner/watcher because Porco didn't have all the money he needed to afford the plane's reconstruction at the time.
And so they take off. Porco flies to Gina's club, flying about to say hello to Gina who's just told this to the very persistent and stupid Curtis...
It's a gamble, by the way. It came in two sections and I wasn't going to waste my time on that.
After that, they go back to Porco's hideout to wait for a chance to meet up with Curtis again and challenge him. But they found another problem waiting when they got to the island. What would anime be without problems?
Those pirates that Porco's been schooling for all these years have waited for him to come back to exact revenge on him! After a couple seconds of shouting, they decide to trash his plane, but then Fio pulls of some serious smooth talking (to a bunch of idiots with guns) and manages to get them to not destroy the plane... just kill Porco.
... so they shove an apple in his mouth and slow roast him for a laua. The end.
... seriously, here, I've even got pictures.
... okay, so no I don't, and it didn't actually happen, but that's okay, because Fio managed to stop them from doing that too. Actually, it wasn't Fio who managed to stop them, it was more like... Curtis, more specifically, this line.
Uh, no.
So an agreement was arranged. If Curtis wins, then he marries Fio, and if Porco wins, then he doesn't, and then Curtis has to pay off his debt (this is all Fio's idea, though).
That night, Fio wakes up in the middle of the night, finding Porco's... not exactly Porco, but rather an actual human, but when she says something, he turns back into Porco.
After a while, she asks him to tell her a story. Porco tells her a story about an experience he had during WWI.
His squadron engaged a German squadron and during the fight, almost everybody died, including Gina's first husband (she's had 3 so far). Exhausted from the fight, Porco (when he was a human, Marco, actually) flew into a cloud and passed out.
When he awoke, this is what he saw.
The Cloud Prairie.
As he watched, all of the planes from the fight that he was just in rose out of the white sea about him, taking off and flying towards the white band that stretched out past the horizon.
One by one, they fall into place in the band full of other downed planes. Heven/hell for pilots and their planes.
When Marco woke up again, he was back on earth, and since then, he's dedicated his entire life to planes and flying, turning into a pig somewhere down the line.
The next day/whatever, Porco and Fio arrive at the island where the competition is going to take place. The pirates are capitalizing on the event by collecting bets.
Porco and Curtis face off in the sky, Curtis spewing bullets and Porco busting some serious aerial moves, and though he had a shot several times, Porco didn't fire because there was a high chance that he would've hit Curtis or the ammunition.
More bad news though, the AF (Italian) is coming to that island to pick Porco and anyone else who's there up. Gina takes off and heads for the island to warn everybody.
Jam fest. Both Porco's and Curtis's guns jam up and neither can finish the fight... in the sky, so they land and decide to duke it out.
I have got to use this one.
After a prolonged fist fight, Curtis tells Porco about Gina's bet, and seriously embarrasses Porco, but they're not finished yet. Actually, they knock each other out.
Owned.
Now the first person up out of the water is the one who wins.
Gina lands and tells everyone that the AF (Italian) is coming, and manages to wake up Porco (without touching him of course). And so the fight is over. Fio gets her grandfather's money and gets ready to take off with Porco, but instead he loads her onto Gina's airplane, and sends them off quietly.
Just as they are taking off, Fio leans out of the plane and kisses Porco, her hat falling off as she does.
Once everybody's up in the air, Porco and Curtis watch them fly away. As Porco turns to get his plane up to act as decoy, Curtis notices something about Porco's face, but can't get a better look at it.
And so the story's over.
All of the pirates got old and retired, spending their remaining years in Gina's club. Curtis returned to America and became a Hollywood star.
Fio returned to Milan and became president of her grandfather's company, but she still visits her good friend Gina regularly.
... and it's apparently their secret as to how Gina's bet ended up, so you can choose your own ending, that was nice and at the same time annoying of them.
It was pretty good, though I did have the one problem. How in the hell did Porco become a pig in the first place? I have a hard time with not being told sometimes, and this happened to be one of those times, though it's very possible that Miyazaki "left it to your imagination" or whatever and never intended to explain in the first place.
... augh, whatever, it was still fun.
"Go punch a cow..."
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