Customer Reviews

The Art of Porco Rosso (Studio Ghibli Library)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a must for any fan of the Crimson Pig. I originally got my copy for inspiration for building models of the various aircraft featured in the story. I was hoping for more images of the gunsmith's shop and the hanger where they rebuilt Porco's plane, but was completely satisfied with the content. Just a relaxing collection of artwork from a time when people knew how to behave like ladies and gentlemen... and pirates.

Jason Spangle (Mamma Aiuto)

Length:: 0:19 Mins

Porco Rosso, the movie, is actually based on a 15-page water-coloured manga by Hayao Miyazaki. Included in the book are 3 pages from that manga and they look really fantastic.

The only one thing I don't like about the book is there are too much screenshots from the movie. The concept art consists of character designs, airplane designs, publicity posters and storyboards. I love that they included the film ending credit illustrations. Overall, the amount of concept art is still overwhelmed by the film stills.

Right at the end, there are over 60 pages of the screenplay, broken down to story beats with captions. There are also 5 full black and white pages from the original manga.

There's also not much writeup except to explain a little history on the story.

This book is still good just that it's not as great compared to the art-of books released for later movies.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I love these Studio Ghibli Library (Viz) Art of... books. This one is hardback with no dust cover and 208 pages. Like all the other titles in this series, the printing and paper quality are quite nice.

The book is divided into the following chapters:

Original Story "The Age of the Flying Boat"
Full of Pride and Freedom
Ships in the Sky
Art of Art
Film Ending Illustrations
Media/Publicity
Film Screenplay

The first part of the book is exclusively Miyazaki's work. Most of the book consists of final renderings from the animation, but even pages with final renderings many times will include a sketch or two of Miyazaki's. I was also happy to see Kazuo Oga's (background artist) work.

About a 1/3 of the book consists of the film screenplay.

This is a must for Miyazaki fans. Highly recommended.

I love the movie Porco Rosso.

I liked the book a lot. It described where the story came from, and the historical background. It also had a small section describing each character. The most interesting part is where they describe the various backgrounds.

There honestly was not that much interesting information.

I was expecting for an explanation of the ending of the movie. They didn't even mention the part of the movie where Marco and Curtis fought. They didn't mention that Porco may have became a human again, (because of Gina's love and Fio's kiss, and because Curtis kept asking to see Marco's face after they fought) or whether or not Gina and Marco ended up together. (Porco's plane could be seen in the background)

Altogether, the book was good.
I am glad that I bought it.