Based on a short watercolor manga the director created for a model-building magazine, Porco Rosso was originally planned as an in-flight film for Japan Airlines. The tale of a (literally) pig-headed seaplane pilot who hunts air pirates over the late 1920s Adriatic Sea grew into a feature-length adventure, in which the titular World War I veteran teams up with a plucky teen engineer to take on a hotdogging American aviator against a backdrop of simmering fascism. It is a celebration of mechanics and the fruits of dedicated labor, which Hayao Miyazaki and his artisan animators exemplify as planes swim, sputter, and soar from sea to sky and back again.