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The film tells the story of Porco's romance with Gina, who runs a pilots' club and hotel in the Adriatic; his friendship with a young girl named Fio who is a talented airplane engineer; and his rivalry with a hotshot American pilot named Curtis. The origin and nature of Porco's curse are never fully explained, although the question does arise in the movie.
The film was first planned as an short in-flight movie for JAL based on Miyazaki's manga The Age of the Flying Boat, but grew into a feature-length film. The outbreak of war in Yugoslavia cast a shadow over production and prompted a more serious tone for the movie, which originally had been set in Croatia.
Technically, the film shows Studio Ghibli's almost maniacal attention for particulars, as regards the animation and the historical Italian elements (although some Italian words are shown misspelled in the local newspaper of Milano).