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Porco Rosso / Kurenai no Buta (1992) - ****½
This movie, still the craziest concept Hayao Miyazaki has ever taken on, covered the tale of a literally pig-headed bounty hunter pilot on the Adriatic Sea and originally started as a short film for Japan Airlines to show during flights. “When we said we’d like to show dogfights, we thought they’d say no. But then they said, ‘That’s fine’ (laughs). I wanted to make something light. But then Yugoslavia collapsed and all these conflicts broke out in Croatia and the islands which were my setting. So Porco Rosso became more complicated. It was a very difficult film and I was disappointed that I’d made something for middle-aged men, because I’d been telling my staff to make films for children and then what did I do?!”
In his score, Hisaishi continued the European feel of Kiki’s Delivery Service, though less generally Mediterranean and more purely Italian. There are suggestions of Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone (possibly unintended, though Hisaishi later expressed admiration for both composers), with the ghost of the former summoned by marches and jaunty melodies hinting at the music of Fellini films and the latter suggested by a captivating love theme that seems to roll on and on and on in the best possible way. That nostalgic idea, called Crimson Wings on the image album and first appearing in The Bygone Days on the score album, remains a contender for the best melody the composer ever wrote.
Perhaps the only quibble about that spellbinding theme is that it doesn’t appear more often; imagine if the tear-jerkingly evocative violin solo in A Picture in Sepia lasted longer than a minute! But this is also a case of the composer doing more with less, as judicious spotting is superior to the alternative of a great idea receiving umpteen variations and getting run into the ground. At this stage in his career, Hisaishi rarely had his primary melodies overstay their welcome.
If the prior two Miyazki scores were an exercise in stylistic consistency, Porco Rosso was a pivot towards more diversity, as the elements in the prior paragraphs don’t even scratch the surface of all that’s contained on its album. There are bustling semi-comic fanfares, balletic passages backed by castanets, mandolin solos, clarinet melodies, energetic chase music in Madness, and even string arrangements that at times suggest Jerry Goldsmith, though I think that’s less a case of one composer copying another and more that they were probably using the same classical reference points, namely Maurice Ravel. None of this should imply that the work feels scattershot, as almost all of these items work within the melting pot of the score; the only real outlier is the abstract electronics that occupy most of the runtime in the track Lost Spirit, which seem to have flown in from a different score entirely (though they make sense given the contemplative, dream-like sequence they accompany). And it all feels like a Hisaishi creation, less “spot the reference” and more an example of a composer fusing a variety of influences into his own identifiable style.
The score album does seem to wrap abruptly, with the semicomic Dogfight a seemingly odd penultimate track, but that’s largely because the engine and crowd noise was sufficient accompaniment for most of the climactic aerial battle and fistfight, and in any event you’ll forget about that feeling after the composer knocks you out with an immense final arrangement of the love theme. On the whole, the frequent marches may drive some listeners batty, but Porco Rosso should still endure for its serene evocation of the Italian coast and its all-time classic melody. It remains perhaps the most underrated of Hisaishi’s animation scores.
Like Kiki’s Delivery Service, the Porco Rosso score album closes with two pleasant songs that Hisaishi didn’t have a hand in, the latter here featuring an arrangement by Cowboy Bebop composer Yoko Kanno. The image album for Porco Rosso may have the lowest percentage of material that made it into the actual film of any Miyazaki score concept up until this point; the understated vibes of The Savoia in the Clouds, the pulsing beats in Playing War, and another track of relentless Mkwaju-like world music percussion have no comparable track in the movie.
Porco Rosso was a major success in Japan, becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time based on domestic box office, a title it would hold until Miyazaki’s next film. But despite composers being credited at the time for all their year’s work when they were nominated for the Japan Academy Prize award, Hisaishi’s work on Porco Rosso was not mentioned when he won the award at the 1993 ceremony (his second consecutive win). Only Rocking Horsemen, a charming score that’s difficult to find outside of a piece recently uploaded to YouTube, was cited. Maybe the organization wasn’t predisposed to consider animated music; it took until 2009 for one of his Miyazaki scores to even be nominated, though that bias has clearly changed as five of the last seven best score winners have been from animated feature films.
Image album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4CD6wcfmrKCorMP2K8DMkw?si=9A5yYf8ORoiZ4ZqYzf8oxQ
Score album - https://open.spotify.com/album/6NhWTFHoOj5n0UhbBkq5G3?si=teuhSGZbTpaoRdr1tFuCZA
Works I Madness - https://open.spotify.com/track/3mWTIU8nuFokLd8Sn3V283?si=8eddcbf7bb694b0b
Works II Madness in concert - https://open.spotify.com/track/2Cq6CzwE7x54yUALPbkTe7?si=6a2f46f388004e65
Budokan concert Bygone Days - https://youtu.be/QsowHW0t7CA?si=FaXkIpIUztsnva2A
Budokan concert encore Madness - https://youtu.be/UO_dy21kOKQ?si=vmv_-JXvbD4edgv1
Rocking Horsemen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13sHkKREhjo
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Symphonic Best Selection (1992) - ****
Discovery #18.
This, the first of many anthology albums the composer would release, came from a concert with the New Japan Philharmonic, an ensemble he returned to regularly in his later career. It’s the easiest way to access material from Hisaishi’s earlier Abbey Road studio album My Lost City, a collection of ideas partially inspired by the works of author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Those’ll be catnip for listeners who love the composer’s penchant for elegant, jazz-inflected piano backed by a full orchestra, especially the rapturous Drifting in the City and its hints of film noir romance. This also appears to be the only recorded instance of the composer working his superlative piece Resphina’s Song from Arion into a concert, though the performance here isn’t quite as arresting as the one on that score’s symphonic album. With the album unavailable on U.S. digital / streaming services and its out-of-print CD commanding hefty overseas shipping fees, seeking out an actual copy of it may only be worthwhile for the most ardent fans of the composer.
Album - https://youtu.be/41bj1aKJvTM?si=fM46N1GQDf2-A-cd
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Sonatine (1993) - ****½
“Because of the films I work on, my sound has progressed from minimalist to more orchestral. I use my melodic side in Miyazaki movies and my minimalist side in Kitano movies - closer to what originally drew me to music.”
Kitano returned to violence with this Yakuza drama - and brought Hisaishi along for another collaboration. The sound was still modern and the composer still had only himself and a tiny ensemble at his disposal, but otherwise the score for Sonatine was quite different from the music of A Scene at the Sea - its more challenging, experimental, and emotionally ambiguous cousin. A simple rising-and-falling idea is made evocative by all the activity swirling around it and its unrelenting tone. The composer’s elegant piano peeks through at times. The drums are often abstract, tribal, almost primal. There are echoey keyboards akin to Hans Zimmer’s early film compositions. And there is some of the grooviest material the composer ever wrote, with Magic Mushroom evoking The End by The Doors.
If you’ve only been exposed to Sonatine through its exceptional 8-minute orchestral suite version from the 1997 Works I album (or later performances), a format which occasionally reaches Princess Mononoke levels of majesty as did several other things Hisaishi worked on around that time, then the 1993 score album for Sonatine - with its sampled horns, guitar dissonance, and other abrasive aspects - may jolt you at first listen. For a long time it was my least favorite Hisaishi score for that reason. But more recently I’ve come to embrace the score for its hypnotic feel and its modern cool. A daring evolution of Hisaishi’s contemporary sound, it remains his only score which can be characterized as an acid trip.
Sonatine, along with two other 1993 scores (both unavailable in the U.S.), secured Hisaishi his third consecutive win for best composer at the 1994 Japan Academy Prize awards. The group shifted to awarding individual scores the next year.
Score album - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwXQPWLj4Y_36PIIgUuTzXuoDERhunu8T
Works I suite - https://open.spotify.com/track/6w2BCWL1xrI2AArU7ZdU0c?si=ff56c9018ce84c6a
Works II concert performance - https://open.spotify.com/track/4b3CpxvQ6NJqEEIs4VD5Sc?si=5a0c097c2e7f4a6a
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The Universe Within II: The Human Brain & Mind (1993) - ***
Discovery #19.
Expect a continuation of the style of the first Universe Within and A Scene at the Sea. It's on average a tad more interesting than the score from The Human Body, though it doesn’t have anything like its predecessor’s orchestral finale.
Score album vol. 1 & 2 - https://open.spotify.com/album/6AmFCo3F3dY5YEOpTztMZC?si=RtP-CY4zSVix_gqyTxZDJQ
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Paradise on Earth / Chijou no Rakuen (1994) - **
Discovery #20.
The oddest of the composer’s pop-adjacent non-score albums in that it can’t pick a lane: elegant piano, Kitano leftovers, gospel, and rock songs. Granada, an energetic track in the vein of Madness from Porco Rosso, is great fun. And the album filled a gap for those who desired to hear a Hisaishi hip-hop song. But the album isn’t paradise. It’s purgatory.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/4NDCUAdslonuNgTjPJz4xT?si=I0xRswayRuWJYcYmb8oMbg
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Melody Blvd. (1995) - **½
Discovery #21.
Another studio album, this reinterprets Hisaishi’s themes from films like Kiki’s Delivery Service, Chizuko’s Younger Sister, Samurai Kids, and Haruka, Nostalgia as smooth jazz and easy listening ballads sung in English, along with a new take on the love theme from Porco Rosso featuring a dope harmonica solo. The melodies hold up (and they’d better, given the album title), but the lyrics are forgettable, and unless you’re a fan of any of the aforementioned genres you can probably skip this one. Still, at least it makes more sense than Paradise on Earth.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/6vL9RLD9exngS7T1SnYcGh?si=CNlVt1IMRnaXgmgAIHw3vA
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Next time: The best studio album so far by far.
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