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  • Sex and the Single Pig:Desire and Flight in Porco Rosso
  • Patrick Drazen (bio)

When Japanese animation (anime) began gaining more notice in the United States in the 1980s, alarms were sounded in some quarters. Watchdogs of public morality (usually self-appointed conservatives, politically and religiously) complained that Japanese animation was excessively violent and sexually suggestive, if not blatantly pornographic. These objections have been raised before, in Japan as well as in the United States, and are based on an unfair comparison. In the United States, comics and animation are defined as media to be consumed primarily by children. Anime, on the other hand, like the comics (manga) from which many anime are derived, has no such limitation, and the sophisticated stories of some titles scan more like novels than fairy tales.

The long string of feature-length anime from Miyazaki Hayao (who wears the various hats of director, writer, scenarist, and producer) occupies a middle ground. His work is colorful, uncomplicated, and often revolves around children. Yet his plots are often complex and nonjudgmental, leaving open questions of guilt and innocence, good and evil. Examples are many, although chief among them is Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke (1997, Mononoke-hime), who provided jobs and dignity to the castoffs of society while also despoiling the environment and selling arms to the highest bidder. [End Page 189]

Miyazaki's Kurenai no buta, literally The Crimson Pig (also known as Porco Rosso), went through several incarnations before it premiered in its final form in 1992. Speaking at the 1988 Nagoya Film Festival, Miyazaki spoke of a project in which a former military officer, a middle-aged man who happens to be a pig, sets out on a quest for fun, adventure, and romance. The latter is provided by a young waitress who gets kidnapped by the pig, although they ultimately fall in love. The girl's character developed from a waitress into a saloon singer, suggesting the role played by Marilyn Monroe in the 1954 film River of No Return, except, as Miyazaki put it, "younger and purer."1 This description of the saloon singer suggests elements of both Fio and Gina in the final version of Porco Rosso and mirrors the evolution of My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Tonari no Totoro), which Miyazaki had just completed when he spoke in Nagoya; Totoro started out with a single child heroine who was eventually "split up" into the sisters Satsuki and Mei.2 This also suggests that, in the final fight scene of Porco Rosso, the American aviator Donald Curtis may have been speaking in Miyazaki's editorial voice when he yells at Porco, "You can't have both [women]!"

In the four years between the Nagoya talk and the finished film, the story appeared in Model Graphix magazine as a manga titled Miscellaneous Notes, The Era of Seaplanes (Zassō nōto, hikōteijidai); this manga led to a commission from Japan Air Lines for a short in-flight movie, which later expanded to feature length.

Porco Rosso is set in a specific time and place (the Adriatic Sea in about 1930) but also carries elements resembling a fairy tale.3 A World War I fighter pilot, Marco, undergoes a "curse" in combat, which leaves his face resembling that of a pig, hence his other name, Porco. Saying that "the kiss of love" breaks the spell is almost deceptive, neglecting the singular circumstances that create this unique yet archetypal plot. The plot's circumstances are informed by sex to perhaps a greater degree than any other Miyazaki anime.

For reasons that we can only guess at, Miyazaki's first independent production, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979, Rupan sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro), should have been at least one example of his handling of sexually oriented material. Between 1971 and 1980 Miyazaki directed nineteen television episodes featuring the Lupin character, writing two of those episodes at about the time he created Lupin III. Lupin, the creation of the manga artist Kato Kazuhiko, known as Monkey Punch, was a daring and adventurous thief always one step ahead of the law. He was also a conscious parody of [End Page 190] the James Bond character (the...

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