![porco rosso plane scene porco rosso plane scene](https://media.giphy.com/media/kp6ykzHcy3qZa/giphy.gif)
The film centres around Marco Pagot, an Italian Ex-Fighter pilot who now lives as a bounty hunter, spending his days living alone on an island or chasing down Air Pirates for bounty money. While Porco Rosso is undeniably the most obviously political film so far in the Studio’s history, and possibly overall but that title might go to Grave of the Fireflies or The Wind Rises, the fantastical elements and overall light tone make the film digestible and charming as well, while remaining accessible for children and adults both. But while Miyazaki may consider this to lead to Porco Rosso a failure, I think the real-world politics and the way they’re presented make the film to be a strong outlier in the Ghibli canon. This stems from the fact that during the production of the film the Yugoslav Wars broke out, and this changed the tone of production for Miyazaki and his team. The crux of the issue Miyazaki has with the film is that he “was so disappointed that I’d made something for middle-aged men, because I’d been telling my staff always to make films for children”. Miyazaki is famously critical of his own and others’ work, and from everything I’ve read it seems like Porco Rosso is his least favourite of his own work. In The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (which is a fantastic documentary about Studio Ghibli around the time of the production of The Wind Rises ), Miyazaki described Porco Rosso as “foolish” because he said it was a foolish decision to make an adult film for children.