Porco Rosso

I mean, one of the kind of component I wanted to pick up right from the beginning here is the score from Joe Hisashi.

And so Hisashi did the score for Spirited Away, but also for movies like Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, Kiki's Delivery Service.

And his sound, to me, feels as integral to a Ghibli movie's vibe as the animation does.

I don't know if you have thought

Like, it's the space opera that took everything that came before and inspires everything afterwards.

yang when lee and reihard like are easily the best deuteragonist pair in like almost any piece of like media fiction period and the cast is so large but it still gives you more than enough to hold on to and more than enough to root for towards the end of the day it's just easily like one of the best stories ever told in fiction and as anime that's kind of like the biggest one that i can give it like looking back on art my favorite art style this is kind of i would say like for a film like i was kind of going back and forth because originally i probably would have put porco rosso in as my favorite art style there i've got a tiny photo on the inside of my wallet of the tiny little bay that porco ends up hiding in across the mediterranean So it was kind of like back and forth.

I would put that as my favorite films art style.

And then for my favorite anime art style, that would probably go to the Eccentric family.

I have some examples.

Porco Rosso game like Crimson Skies or Star Fox.

Mm-hmm.

Castle in the Sky or Arietta game like the old, like, uh, NES or SNES, uh, platformers, like DuckTales.

Yeah

... like go through that story as a game, you know? Like, that, that would be very, very exciting.

But then the other one would be the Porco Rosso game, where like, you know, you build a plane and, like, the po- the point of the game is that you are constantly trying to make enough money to keep your, like, plane from falling apart while also trying to upgrade it.

But every time you upgrade it, there's, like, another thing that you need to fix, you know? Like...

The year is 2001, and Hayao Miyazaki is retired.

He has made seven films, including My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso.

We did Porco Rosso already on the show, but the global release of 1997's Princess Mononoke has exhausted Miyazaki so much that he quit.

See, uh, Princess Mononoke was the first Studio Ghibli release to be distributed internationally, and Miramax, who handled it here in America, had hyped it up as the Japanese cartoon that was going to change the industry forever.

Yeah, there was a lot of advance attention on the English dub of Mononoke, like eyeballs everywhere on it except in the movie theater.

Then September 11th happens, and ticket sales to Spirited Away skyrocket.

It actually sells more tickets in Japan than Titanic, holds the record in Japan as the number one box office hit there for almost 20 years until 2020 and the release of Demon Slayer.

Now once again, Hollywood comes calling, yet they wanna bring Miyazaki back to America, and Pixar's John Lasseter decides to take that on, even though you might remember from our Porco Rosso episode that Miyazaki felt that John Lasseter wants to guide children, and he wants to get lost with them.

Okay.

And that, he was drawing that the entire time he was making all of these other movies, um, which was also just inspiring to me that, like, he would go and, like, direct Porco Rosso all day and then go home and draw, like, comic pages, which is insane.

Yeah, that, that...

I just love the, the story and the drawing and the artistry of that.

And then of course, later on, you know, I, you know, I started...

I remember taking my dad, uh, to, uh, to Porco Rosso.

Uh-

Mm

it was playing at a, uh, at the Fantastic Film Festival in Brussels, which was a great festival if anyone wants to ever attend.

The coolest film festival, uh, the m- zaniest as well, and I'll tell you why in a second.

There is, um, yeah, I saw Porco Rosso and, uh, and my dad, who was German, was like, "Yeah, but why, why should we go to see this animated violent trash from Japan or whatever?" And I'm like, "Dad, you have no idea." And actually I had no idea.

I was kind of hoping it wouldn't be too violent and stupid, but it just looked cool and, and I hadn't seen any Miyazaki films yet.

I know I haven't seen the one about the pig.

Oh, Porco Rosso, I haven't either.

Yeah.

I think that's what it's called.

These are other G Kids releases that are being engraved with the fireflies, being reissued in Blu-ray format in Steelbook.

And Porco Rosso, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service.

When Marnie was there, all those are all G Kids releases as well, getting reissued on Blu-ray format.

And there's even more.