Porco Rosso (1992)

	Also Known As: Kurenai no buta (original)
	Year of first release: 1992
	Director: Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke)
	Actors (voices): Shûichirô Moriyama, Tokiko Katô, Bunshi Katsura
	Country: J
	Genre: Animation, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 09.02.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: During the 30's in the Adriatic sea, Marco is a bounty hunter in the air and on the sea, an outlaw in a world where fascism is growing.
Review: When I saw the first image of the movie and the red seaplane filling the screen, I thought Waw! this looks beautiful, the colors and the quality of the drawings.   Because of the recent release of the latest Miyazaki animated film The Wind Rises (as usual with this kind of movie, no release planned yet in Germany...), the magazine Mad Movies published in January a long article including reviews of all his movies, and reading it definitely made me want to see them.  I knew only Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and The Moving Castle, and I had heard about Porco Rosso since such a long time that I had to start with this one (also because the topic is close to the one of The Wind Rises). What stopped me until now was that because of the international distribution of the Studio Ghibli movies by Disney, their prices never drops below 10-15 euros for the DVDs and 15-20 for the Blu-rays. The idea is: if you love your kids and they want to see this animated movie, you will pay any price for it. This is outrageous. Anyway, I decided to regularly buy those movies in Blu-ray to enjoy the best quality. As I said, the image and sound are perfect, and the aerial scenes really enchanting. Some interesting facts that I learned about: the real name of Porco Rosso is an homage to an Italian cartoonist Miyazaki worked with, and the father of Miyazaki owned a factory that built planed during WWII, explaining his passion for flying (you find this theme in many of his movies). I thought Porco Rosso would be different from the movies I knew as it is older and could be more "optimistic". Well I was wrong, you find in the movie the same elements that make a Miyazaki movie: parallel History, children (over-intelligent for 17-years old) as main characters, some impossible love stories, war, enemies not very scary, and a mitigated ending. All of this makes that even if it looks beautiful, the movie is not so easy to watch and you can't do it just for fun, it forces you to look for deeper degrees of meaning in it. So this is what makes a Miyazaki movie, and what makes that I have a hard time loving them entirely.
Rating: 7 /10