i love studio ghibli films (formerly the "no anime" thread)

[OssieTheOstrich]

Just saw Porco Rosso yesterday. It was a pretty great film; Once again it has the usual Studio Ghibli & Hayao Miyazaki staples, and JC and I enjoyed how they were utilised here. The dub was the 2006 version by Disney featuring Michael Keaton as the titular character (which is great for me since I enjoyed his performance as Chick Hicks in Cars and Kay Croc in The Founder).

The animation is great, the tone is very balance with both seriousness and goofy humor (especially with the air pirates and the banter between Porco and Fio), the characters are great, and the voice acting in the dub is really good too.

I do have some minor gripes with the film though. One, the rather ambiguous ending (which seems to be common in Ghibli films); The film (via Fio) doesn't explicitly explain the fate of Porco during the epilogue narration (the closest thing to that is mentioning the result of Gina's bet being a secret and a post-credits sequence showing Porco's plane flying in the clouds) . Two, the fact that Fio, who is 17 years old, apparently has a crush on Porco, who is somewhere in his 30s, and this kinda rubbed me the wrong way (there are a couple of jokes early on in the film regarding this, and they were actually pretty funny, but then it started to become a little, ehhhh.), which I'm gonna chalk it up to some values dissonance.

But none of those two gripes diminish anything from the film itself, it is still a great film and if you haven't seen it I recommend you should. Actually that could probably be said for all the Studio Ghibli filmography.

The next Studio Ghibli film on JC and I's watch list is Whisper of the Heart, and I'm looking forward to watching it when we feel like doing so.

List of projects I eventually plan to finish after the indefinite hiatus is over, assuming I don't abruptly cancel them:

Spoiler

Mario's Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario's slightly unusual Boss Rush (Completed), Mario vs. Some Unusual Foes (In development), Mario's VERY Unusual Final Frontier (In development))
Sonic's Foray into Random/Unusual Zones (spin-off of Unusual Trilogy, in development)
Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy (In development)
Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition (In development)
Super Hilda DX (In only conceptual phase)

Yes, I am aware that I have about 6 or so fangame projects currently in development at the same time. And yes, I am also aware that all of this is very ambitious.

+ List of projects I'm helping out with in some small capacity during my hiatus:

Spoiler

Super Mario Bros Dimensions 2 (as a spriter, only for Mario's sprites)
MFGG Community Fangame Project 3 (as a spriter)
WordGirl ReWired (as a artist)