"Porco Rosso" is Hayao Miyazaki's love letter to Italy, a place that has inspired him on numerous occasions. According to the Italian website Daily Best, the filmmaker visited the Mediterranean country in 1990, two years before "Porco Rosso" was released. He captures the dazzling beauty of the Adriatic Sea masterfully — though, like many Miyazaki films, the depiction is juxtaposed with a political undercurrent.
Set in the 1930s with fascism on the rise in Italy, "Porco Rosso" — a loose translation of the original Japanese title "Kurenai no Buta," meaning "Crimson Pig" — follows a World War I fighter pilot-turned-bounty hunter living with a curious curse. Porco transformed into an anthropomorphic pig at some stage, though Miyazaki doesn't explain the hows and the whys of his predicament. When the character himself is asked about it, he simply says that "all middle-aged men are pigs," indicating that he's accepted his fate. It's not until Fio Piccolo enters his life that Porco's self-loathing begins to subside.
After his plane is shot down by a rival, Porco visits his favorite engineer in Milan. All his sons are busy, however, so Porco has to make do with his daughter, Fio. The initially skeptical bounty hunter is so impressed with Fio's work that he lets her accompany him back to the coast, where she helps Porco overcome his rival and his curse, if only for a moment — Fio catches a glimpse of his real face towards the end of the movie.
