With resonances in the wartime stories of Dahl and Hemingway, Porco Rosso is an often whimsical adventure where the light heart of Miyazaki's previous films is nevertheless entering the shadow that would, five years later, cover his dark anime Princess Mononoke. Based on a comic the director drew for a model-building magazine about Marco, a (literally) pig-headed aviator who hunts pirates over the Depression-era Adriatic, Porco Rosso is touched with glimpses of rising Fascism, and ironic postcard views of the same Croatian coastal towns that would come under destruction during the making of the film.