Dub Talk 229: Porco Rosso

0:00 folks this is your captain speaking we are currently at our cruising altitude of 35 000 feet so let me announce to those unaware that this is not the actual film of porco rosso this is a podcast episode talking about it's english dub if you'd like to watch the actual film it is available in the us via hbo max and elsewhere in the world via netflix as well as dvd and blu-ray options through your local anime licenser at trusted retailers now with that out of the way i'd like to read a quick disclaimer this episode may contain language in adult situations not suitable for all audiences listener discretion is advised this episode also contains spoilers for the film porco rosso please be aware of this as you listen

0:46 and as always opinions express are those of the individual participants and may not reflect the dub talk podcasts as a whole with that i'd like to welcome you aboard our estimated time of arrival to the end of the episode is 2 hours and 23 minutes please enjoy your in-flight episode dub talk 229 porco rosso hello listeners and welcome to a brand new episode of dub talk a show where a bunch of nerds get together and talk about the latest and greatest in anime dubs and voice-over uh tonight is a very special episode

1:32 because a couple days ago it happened to be my birthday yay happy birthday to you warner brothers we'll sue so stop singing this song they smell like one two they can't sue anymore that case got thrown out in federal court it bull it was a [ __ ] i'm sorry it was a not good lawsuit that had no merit to it anyway so for this special occasion um we dub talk hosts if we wish it typically get a birthday episode so i decided to break one

2:18 of the things that i swore i would never do again i'm doing a ghibli episode and the whole audience went like oh no not a ghibli movie that's the worst thing they could ever talk about we could talk about nakayama again we can throw you off the plane we can give you to the seaplane pirates megan and not like so that didn't tip you off um tonight's episode will be on i don't know where it would stand on said list but it is definitely one of my top five films of all time not just like that is porco rosso like

3:04 when did the two bears show up where do the two bears that fly a plane show up no no that that's a different tv show that are you sure no no see they haven't uploaded the the season three episodes to uh to disney plus yet so not everyone has seen that season of duck tales yet noah get the [ __ ] out no no i know what i want you out of this house noah that was a tailspin reference yes and because they cameo in the new season of duck tales but not until season three which hasn't been uploaded to disney plus yet and i'm pissed off about that because more people need to see they have like wuzzles references and and and and references to uh chippendale rescue rangers and goofy makes a cameo in this weird surreal seat and

3:50 that has nothing to do with the show we're talking about although maybe in season four they will reference all the ghibli films man that would be fun all right someone get the horse sedatives i gotta do a plot description i'm sorry i got my wine right here the horse the horse sedative plot like don't question it plot away patrick fought away uh so a plot summary courtesy of the back of the g kids blu-ray from the legendary studio ghibli creators of spirited away and academy award-winning director hayao miyazaki comes a dazzling aerial adventures set in and above the scenic port towns of the adriatic sea barco rosso is a world weary flying

4:35 ace turned bounty hunter whose face has been turned into that of a pig by a mysterious spell when he infuriates a band of sky pirates with his heroics the pirates hire curtis a hot shot american rival to get rid of him but with the help of the teenage girl theo an aspiring airplane designer and a sultry lounge singer named gina porco takes disguise for what may be his final high-flying showdown hey hey roots on on that uh on the back of the blu ray there does it say the words get rid in quotation marks okay because i'm looking at the disney release of this and we can talk about

5:20 the release history of this movie in a bit but that description is almost as uh verbatim as the one on the back of the disney release of it except it says the words uh they hire curtis to get rid of him which is very because nobody has ever [ __ ] had a horrific death in a disney movie ever disney has never ever had mafia members attempting to kill and kidnap children who end up eventually being hit by a new york subway train on a bridge nor do we see his dogs learn why you don't touch the third rail nothing violent has ever happened in a disney film nothing ever unless you deserve it it took me a long too long to realize which movie you were talking about megan

6:06 why did my brain also go to oliver and company when thinking of an example i don't think i've never seen that movie in full in my entire life power of billy joel man i guess come on i'm surprised you haven't seen the movie that literally its entire thing is do you want to see billy joel play a smooth talking dog well no i don't like billy joel that much he's billy joel what am i part of my part of the internet billy joel is extremely uncool oh he's not stealing he's not stealing dan or anything he's very much not stealing steely billy joe is not going to write songs about you getting dope from your dealer and then going to have dumplings with them afterwards so no you're not wrong there's a reason there

6:54 is not a twitter account called billy joel hot takes could you imagine a disney musical as written by steely dad what would that be it would have to be like oh man like some crossover between you know steely dan and the righteous brothers with i don't know like steely dan's a little mermaid speaking of the little mermaid a disney movie with songs written by steely dan would just be your dad sitting in a lounge and the movie would never be released to streaming service it would only be available on laser peg into the record player stick the needle on to the triangle mix himself

7:42 whiskey sour and just like yep that's a good album right there every day going to disney world with their kid is literally the best of steely dan as they block out how much money they've spent at the parks they're waiting in line just zoning out thinking about the saxophone solo from asia yes while they're in the japan section of epcot absolutely and all they're thinking about and we have fun here can we go to the hard rock cafe and think about that one time they may have to play the guitar lick from no that's at universal oh don't trust me don't don't [ __ ] with me in my on my theme park knowledge of florida i have been to most of them

8:27 never go to legoland it's out in the middle of nowhere and it sucks that's well there is a there's not a lego land but there's a lego store at uh on the disney world resort isn't there i remember i went there okay a long time ago so like a tangent before we get back into this so one year i went to orlando with some friends for like one of their birthdays and like we just spent the whole weekend out there but we got free tickets to dis to legoland so like when you get off the highway in orlando to go to like if you're driving from like orlando to tampa when you get off the highway to go to lego land it's not like lego land is like right off the exit no it's like another 45 minutes in the middle of nowhere ah yeah i can do that that was not where i wanted that to go i am so

9:12 sorry honey so you know where i do want this to go where pigs fly yeah and in order for pigs to fly they require aircraft which require fine engineering much like the crew who worked on the dub of this production um and interestingly enough we are i think this might be the first time we're talking about a dub from this particular studio um basically disney sound studio buena vista sound services this would be this is the second time because we did cover uh kiki's delivery service last year oh that's right we did yeah um and also the um the crew for this

9:58 film is particularly interesting and i think i think noah's gonna get a kick out of this uh so directing this film is tony bancroft and adapting the scripts are cindy davis and donald h hewitt um i'll start with the scriptwriters first um they've worked on projects such as nausicaa the valley of the wind spirited away whisper of the heart howl's moving castle and things like the cat returns and pompoco i was going to say whispers of the heart do you mean contrary [Laughter] boy olivia newton john we're just covering all the 70s acts today aren't we kind of a fun tangent on this um

10:44 apparently there's an older dub of porco rosso that was exclusively available for japan airlines yep which was dubbed by a bunch of ex-pats and sort of that akira style uh i think didn't japanese airlines co-produce this movie um now the last part of this um this is going to be really interesting particularly for noah this is where we ask noah cluedos this is where we ask noah to sit down and hope that he has his pants on hey when when you talk about the co-director of mulan there are no pants up again here oh come on i was gonna get to that no way i'm stealing this one nope sorry happy birthday now let me talk about tony branch for a

11:31 bit shut up noah i wasn't let my boyfriend talk or i'm going to go up there with a bat you can't get here we're behind a wall of white right now listen here you know who else is behind a wall of white a lot coke addicts i can snort my way to you i am a big girl i am the alaskan bull worm of weebs i'm big i'm hairy i'm pink roots i'm so glad you're here because i don't think anyone would believe that megan says the thing she says if you weren't here with us we'd go to you later like roots you'll never believe what your girlfriend said and you're like you're right i don't believe you

12:17 no i'd believe you so i'm sorry go ahead and tell us about the adr director okay so tony bancroft doesn't actually have a traditional director's resume an adr director um like noah had mentioned he co-directed mulan uh but he he also got his start in the animation department for disney working on characters like cogsworth and beauty and the beast iago and aladdin pumbaa and the lion king and crunk crunk [Laughter] um he also directed a movie recently um

13:06 the kind of the bizarre financial situation that you could do an entire podcast on all on its own um animal crackers that netflix ended up streaming um so i'm going to now that i've basically introduced our our staff for the dub i'll go ahead and pass it off to our crew uh to get her to get their opinions on it um so who would like to go first i guess i will um so this is the man that we have to thank for putting jerry orbach as a talking and thank god for that just like megan

13:54 why do you know so many weird intricate little things about the cast of law and order well you see i was raised by new yorkers so do new yorkers actually talk to uh you know forensic investigators while still like carrying boxes and talking in the way from that one yes uh then and then and depending on where they are they'd also tell them up yours and then leave um yeah there's a deficit of that in law and order but anyways you were saying yeah law and order isn't all truthful um no so i was actually pretty impressed with the dub it sounded very 1992 or probably like late early 90s uh this was it was actually 2005. oh it was released

14:40 yeah this was released in the well mid-2000s dub didn't seem like that um the original movie did come out in 1992 so yeah i was gonna say the dubs sounded a lot older but i guess that works because there is a possibility that they time traveled back to the night they brought the cast to the 90s so that the recording process would be more authentic you know what shut up um now i thought i thought it was a fairly it was a fairly uh entertaining dub i thought it was there are some characters who i think were a little flat um maybe just due to inexperience doing adr um because i don't think a lot of the there's very a lot of the people in this are either pre-lay actors or stage or television

15:25 actors not necessarily they're like 100 doing voiceover um in terms of the ghibli movies because the ghibli movie dubs can be very hit or miss in my opinion really um yeah granted i've only really seen like speared away the cat returns arietti ariata eased up was like just kind of okay um so no i i really like this i think that disney did a good job uh thankfully this is after that time hayao miyazaki sent a sword to somebody and said no gods um get [ __ ] weinstein no i genuinely really liked it i thought i thought especially my there's there's like one performance in there like we were giving root [ __ ]

16:10 about not knowing who that what that actor was that person and then when i heard that performance was like yeah no i understand what you mean now um now i understand what you mean but i thought the mixing was pretty good i just i liked it a lot and genuinely i liked the movie a lot overall too i thought it was a lot of fun so yeah that's that's what i thought nice awesome now i gotta ask the question did the pig puns drive you nuts no no because i am of the thing it's a oh god what's hold on um uh typeity type type type type type yeah no i fall under the i fall under the uh hana from fire uh hana from fire emblem

16:56 uh fates people who say no pun intended are in cowards intend your puns weakling word well spoken because as far as i understand i don't think that those were in the original japanese and so i was i was wondering if it turned anybody off but it doesn't really clash with the rest of the tone so when uh gina says things like you're so pig-headed or uh piccolo says like don't be such a pig it made me think for a minute no it worked yeah it works and it yeah that's the only really note where you think about the scriptwriting because the script writing is honestly really uh pretty good in this there's that okay this is a very adult movie

17:42 porco rosso is arguably uh i was gonna say it was maybe the most mature but i honestly think the wind rises would be the more mature but that doesn't uh hide the fact that the scriptwriting still fits in lots of quips the light-hearted joking i love the old ladies who come in and say we need to get some poker money and i love all the little pickled ellos that they add to all the uh characters like the the pirates as well so yeah props to the writing really well um it's kind of a shame that um like we don't see uh this crew of cindy and donald doing very much else i'm looking at the other imdp indb page and i don't see any other credits for things that went on to do it's a shame because they were really good at this as good

18:29 was tony brandcroft who directed the team pretty well there's only one thing that bugged me a little bit and you guys can tell me if this bugged you too ghibli movies are a little hard to do to do lip match flaps for because there's a lot more mouth movements than in standard anime so there's times where it felt like they didn't even try to match up the lip flaps uh they said look we can have lip flaps matching with stilted acting or we can have genuine sounding acting like very natural speaking but doesn't quite match the lip flaps very well and they went with option number two and that bugged me a little bit and just trying to watch and listen at the same time but i think i'd prefer that to the other option so did that guy did you guys notice that at all

19:14 no no i noticed it but it didn't bug me gotcha that's very the kind of thing where like i will often notice if i am looking for it but usually if i'm just watching the movie i'm not paying that close i'm not paying that kind of attention to it gotcha i think i had the same experience too it just like stopped being an issue after a while and it's just good because these are like really good actors i'd hate to have held them back in terms of like their actual skills so we'll get to that when we get to the actual cast but yeah um for like you said roots for tony not having a traditional adr uh director experience in his resume um he leaned into this pretty well and i think it helps that he had uh pretty high respect for uh ghibli's pedigree that he wanted to do right by

20:00 their material he he did not want to make any cuts and i'm glad they didn't because this movie doesn't need any cuts in fact it needs to be longer in fact it needs a sequel in fact it needs a tv show it needs just more everything calm down nowhere goro will get a hold of it he's made much better but that's another story for another day i know i shouldn't be mean to goro because his dad's already mean enough to him i mean don't i mean okay i didn't like um uh tales of ursie but i really liked from up on poppy hills so i don't think he's a bad as bad as his reputation leads you to believe at least not anymore then again i haven't seen um the witch in the ear wig so we'll see how that

20:46 goes all right um um um let's see yeah i enjoyed this uh parker rosso is kind of perpetually fighting with princess monodokey for my favorite ghibli movie uh which i'm sure is really surprising if you've listened to me talk at length about anything i like i'm sure you're incredibly shocked to learn that i like this movie i enjoy this a lot like i think i think this is like a really well put together dub for the most part i think like i i like the writing i think it is punchy in like a very appropriate way i think the leads are cast really well um i i agree no i think you can kind of tell that the the writers and director i i think well fun

21:33 fact actually did any of you want if you if you own the blu-ray did any of you watch any of the trailers for the movie that are on the discotheque release i watched the one on the disney release and it's it's the original japanese trailers right so i was i was just watching this for a kick and the the like main full-length trailer it got has this bit in the middle of it when it's talking to the film uh an animated film for adults filled with life's sorrow and don't like wars but love war games workaholic middle-aged men and women who love such men and i think they got that sense of like yeah this this is this is i don't know if like i don't i have not bothered to try and show my dad a lot of anime he's in like his 60s at this point but i feel like if there was one i would sit him down for like hey you might enjoy this

22:18 it would be this one this is absolutely a movie that plays on tbs on saturday afternoon but yeah i i actually i i have no idea if they saw that trailer but i feel like they kind of caught on to the fact that it's like yeah this is like uh this is like the this is the ghibli equivalent of like those sort of mid-budget movies aimed at adults so they don't really make uh anymore is uh even down to the fact that a lot of it's just kind of you know not super high paced and it's just kind of you know sad and melancholic about life and what has gone on uh and i i think they actually i think they retain that pretty well in the adaptation like i i've seen this movie before but i had a lot of fun revisiting it for that reason nice now of course the question on my um i'm sorry amman's question is

23:06 you go back and forth with between this movie and princess mononoke is your favorite uh do you have the same feelings about the dubs themselves i haven't seen the dub for princess mononoke in a long time and i'm gonna note that like as much as this probably makes me horribly basic like i still really like neil gaiman and he wrote the [ __ ] dub script for princess mononoke like i mean look look look my my mother my sweet poor mother who clearly just saw a good review for this in the paper took me to go see that movie when it was originally running in theaters at the west newton cinema and 10 year old me got to watch a man get his arm shot off by an arrow anyways i sure i shared that story to suggest that princess vine okay left a very deep impression of me as a

23:52 somewhat young child it wasn't like that time that i was watching the sci-fi channel and wizards was showing and i was like should i oh no no no there's swearing in this cartoon am i allowed to watch this yeah there's titties and swearing and smoking and drinking and this is this is for children right it's sci-fi channel i wouldn't have had the titties no but no no no but the uh the lead guy definitely called someone a son of a [ __ ] before he shot him which was i think one of my other i think one of the other times i saw an r-rated movie before i i was kind of old enough to appreciate it was uh oh wait no that was pg-13 not r i was like they took my my friends took my 11 year old butt to go see uh reign of fire which is still one of my favorite [ __ ] movies oh dear rooted i snuck into the matrix i was

24:38 like 11. there's something about the line i snuck into the matrix that has horrible connotations to it just oh rich did you have opinions exactly anyways uh so about this movie what did you think roots yeah honestly the script writing here is really good the the entire world of porco rosso the the islands off the adriatic sea um all of it felt really i wouldn't say the scripts were particularly punchy but everything felt alive

25:24 um from the random wallet guys yelling down with the regime to flying the not some random weapons dealer to some random weapons dealer telling his son oh yeah if you make money from war you're scum but if you can't make money from bounty hunting you're an idiot like every little thing just felt like this was this felt real and this is a film about a pig who flies a plane um i i absolutely love this stub to death um yeah

26:12 the the casting's actually really solid as well um like noah was was mentioning i did happen to notice these sort of awkward lip flaps that you know it it's sort of a thing with ghibli movies where the actors are really expressing and the animation follows the japanese side pretty much one-to-one so when you turn around to dub it it kind of gets a little awkward but honestly it didn't detract any sort of major amount from my enjoyment of it so yeah overall uh the technical side of this is really good also for a dub produce in 2004-2005 for

27:00 a 1992 film um a lot of problems that stem from when you turn around and dub something like a decade later it kind of shows its age uh this is particularly a problem with like the pioneer dub of akira um where the sort of background music and sound effects and all that um they feel really analog when the english dialogue is being recorded on like digital sources and you can tell um maybe it's just a consequence of being recorded in sort of in i i don't want to say like

27:47 older but um a sound studio that sort of oh i don't know how to word this um it just sounded like it blended really well i i i totally buy that disney have like a bunch of sound studios that still have like eight tracks in them just for this kind of purpose there's a funny story about it sounds too cl it sounds too clean it's gonna be distracting break out the old studio there's an old story uh that crispin freeman likes to tell uh where he the one time that he got to dub uh on disney lot was for his his brief cameo appearance in the house moving castle and which is funny because it's you know it's a that's a dub full of people who aren't really voice actors

28:33 and then you get to the very end and it's like professional voice actor voice and you're like ah finally but the the the story he likes to tell is that you know he's used to working in very small uh studios for you know things like central park media and other animes worked at but then when he finally gets called into disney to do these few lines they were recording it on this huge sound stage and they had a giant projector on the back screen that was showing the adr beeps and he was kind of like the hell this is so fancy so yeah i i totally buy that disney what's going on here oh yeah oh oh and that and he he apparently he knocked those all of his lines out in like 10 minutes they had booked him for a longer period of time because they're used to people who don't know how to do the thing they're doing so they looked at him after he's done

29:18 and they're like you've done this before haven't you it's like yeah so let me show you let me show slater not slater he wasn't in that movie uh let me go show bail how the real boys do it did you did you legitimately make a christian slater reference listen if ghost stories can do it so can i why does it always come back to ghost stories every time every don't you know that the only noah don't you know that the ghost stories dub is the pinnacle of u.s dubbing you're not wrong i i'm just i'd like to give some recognition to some other productions for once i mean adv did more than just the ghost stories dub my eyes started twitching and i don't

30:04 know why so moving on from the villain of anime dubbing to the villains of this movie um our first set of characters is the mama yudo gang yay they're a bunch of sky pirates they're also a bunch of idiots it's great they're the best characters in the movie they are idiot sky pirates in a different way from the cast from the ducktales reboot they do not do musical sequences that i know of sorry i just like they're basically they're basically team rocket where they're just competent enough no

30:50 but i i when i watched this again and i was like man these these are just the time bokon people if it was yeah 50 of them instead of 20 isn't it that is exactly who they are i mean typocon is based on it was an influence on team rocket too but yeah let's go way back to the original show yeah that was actually what i was thinking of but i couldn't i couldn't put my finger on their name fun fact uh mama iuda translates to help mom now i just imagine i now i just imagine that they all have the same singular mother so they're like the pirates they are the beagle boys they have they're like the italian beagle boys they all spawn from one

31:37 italian lady i'm sorry but you were saying who voices these amazingly hairy sky pirates all right so starting off we have the boss of the mama yudo gang uh he's played by brad garrett yes he is um you would know brad garrett from such things as um he has a lot of characters in pixar movies um in particular i'd like to highlight one of my favorites of his um dim from a bug's life oh yeah uh he's also the hook-handed boss and tangled i had a dream once somebody's got to tell you that gunter likes collecting ceramic unicorns

32:25 [Music] he's also tripped to khan and transformers for the five of you who who have actually watched the transformers cartoon hi lauren lauren um but also the thing you would probably most know brad garrett from mimetically is robert and everybody loves raymond my favorite thing is how many members of the everybody loves raymond cass has been at a ghibli dub oh yeah oh oh we're gonna get into that except i don't think ray romano himself has been in one he's too busy making that ice age money

33:11 yeah yeah give it time noah give it to you he will be the lead in that one movie that miyazaki is still making clearly cut to five years later my god noah called it look at the odds i'm sorry who else are the all right so there are three more air pirates that act that were actually credited um first of all we have um bill fagerbacky um you would know him as characters such as broadway and gargoyles for the anime crowd we have steve long in three by three eyes do you know what 3x3 eyes is

33:59 no just ask the guy with the longest beard in your anime club what three by three eyes is i can tell ya i was gonna i was gonna say is it hentai no it's not no d it's just very very old and sort of like it's sort of like that uh it's it's like 80s shonen that gets really violent uh yeah it's it's one it's one of those shows that got like localized relatively early when anime became a thing in america and so back in the day everyone had seen it because it was really easy to get your hands on um but you would know bill faker becky for one particular role that he has done for probably about 12 years now uh that's patrick starr from from yeah from the fairly oddparents

34:47 it's patrick starr from spongebob squarepants little lee oh i thought you were going to talk about his role on coach i thought you were going to talk about his role he was also in coach or or his role in the stand miniseries from the mid 90s where he is basically doing his patrick star voice all right um next up we have kevin michael richardson a pretty prolific voice actor right now uh you know him from such as uh captain gantu in lilo and stitch uh he was actually the voice of goro in the live action mortal kombat movie the first like the weird ugly ass cgi goro oh bless this guy that sucks

35:35 uh he was panthro in the 2011 thundercats reboot and he was also takamoto in um afro samurai resurrection uh i think it was a blacksmith guy uh and last but not least is frank welker who has also been around for a very very very very very long time so um frank welker may well be one of the most prolific voice actors currently living yeah i mean pretty much on a par with mel blanc i could go for the entire length of a podcast episode listing off stuff he has done it is largely animal noises which is awesome uh but in particular

36:25 he has played fred fred jones in the scooby-doo franchise pretty much since the beginning scooby-doo where are you oh yeah um and also he took over the role of scooby-doo himself and i think like the late 80s i want to say uh it was kind of back and forth between him and don messick he probably most prolifically at least to most of the people listening to this started voicing him during the incarnation of what's new scooby doo particularly because i'm trying to name anime roles from these particular actors um he was also totoro in my neighbor

37:12 [Music] um so i think i'm gonna start with megan again okay uh just keep the order the same uh what did you think of the mama udo gang they are the [ __ ] best um they are they are they're they're a lot of fun and i kind of wish they were in the movie a little bit more because they are the perfect comic relief uh unfortunately i i really couldn't tell uh bill frank and kevin apart but they sounded great and they all sounded big dumb and believable and kind of dopey and it was great but brad kind of stole the show between the three of them because he was big and bombastic and over like kind of over the top and like the really big dumb goofy villain kind of way but like he's actually a good guy

37:58 deep down um i love the banter between them is [ __ ] great like hey boys we have to take all 15. yes you can't separate them i separate them from their friends i love that entire sequence where they're like hey cool you're kidnapping us um uh the kids kids those days and i just love that the kids end up like start keep your clothes on like nope and they're just jumping out into the water and just like bye [ __ ] it's like the john mulaney joke about kids being absolutely savage oh man imagine imagine the platelets it sells at work but they're replaced with the little girls that the pirates get

38:44 down body would be so [ __ ] i mean have you seen cells at work black i haven't started yet we're triggering that erection okay but yeah no brad was a ton of fun i loved him a lot i loved when he was kind of really like chilling with uh theo towards the end of the movie and oh my god the scene where theo yells at them all for uh threatening to rip up the plane fine oh that [ __ ] was great i love them they're so much fun especially brad because brad garrett is in i think another one of the ghibli movies i like i think he's also when the cat returns i don't think that he is

39:30 i mean he makes no that's the one with peter no that's the one with peter boyle yeah yeah he had uh oh no it's somebody else in this cast is in the counter that is true that there is at least there are two other characters here who are in quite a few ghibli dubs yes but no i liked them a lot i think they were a ton of fun to listen to yeah i have to agree with megan that uh although um bill frank and kevin uh do have distinct voices from each other especially in their more archetypal voices like you know bill's got the the um the patrick boyce frank's got the well he's got a lot of voices um and then kevin's got the the you know the smooth cool black guy voice like i love how he used that in uh joker in the batman uh but they're not really distinguishable enough here and i think

40:17 that was by uh design they were supposed to be uh ensemble cast that sounded kind of similar to each other they had the same gruffer uh working-class kind of persona that is supposed to be these kind of characters because you know they're so broke that they they can't even match their tail metal to the rest of the plane when it breaks because because they were too stupid they were too stupid enough they weren't smart enough to keep the right amount have you ever seen one of those cars where it's like they lost the door and they had to get another one to replace it but they couldn't find one the same color so it's clearly a different car car uh car door attached to this one who lives on my street has that car paint for the tail of the plane yeah and it's gonna say it's like when they it's like when the hubcaps fall off and

41:03 they don't feel like going to get new ones but did you mean my did you mean megan's mom yes that's that's why i wrote my notes right here i wrote just like megan's mom um to bring this back to the point though um yeah this is where the movie gets to have all the fun and it's one thing that uh in retrospect i'm really glad they didn't do was they didn't over goof up the the pirates themselves they made them just goofy enough to fit in with their animation because they've got really exaggerated facial animation and it fits in with the world that uh porco lives in you know it's a very grounded 1920s world but it's flavored with all of that enthusiasm for adventure and piracy and fascism that really makes people

41:49 remember this movie so yeah these three definitely get props for uh rounding out those uh those back essentially background characters rounded out of course by brad himself who as he admitted on the uh behind the scenes material for this uh blu-ray uh he he always plays either a thug or an oaf of some kind and he's doing it again here and yes it sounds exactly like classic flavor brad garrett which is just amazing like i i if we had to put lobo from justice league into this movie he would absolutely be the same character so i'm oh my god i forgot he was lobo jesus christ that was a cut of deep uh deepness

42:34 but yeah this is uh these these pirates are a lot of fun to listen to they're a lot of fun and it's really a testament to uh miyazaki's uh kind of balancing act he had because uh you know he he was very anti-war you know he didn't like war he didn't like fascism he didn't like countries building up large amounts of ammunition for fighting but he loved drawing army planes and tanks so he kind of had to find a balance between them well the thing the reason why he hates it so much is that his father was a aircraft engineer for japan during world war ii and he grew up during it and he i i did an entire research paper in hayo miyazaki's early life when i was like in high school because yeah we had to do a paper was you had to write a research paper on a

43:20 famous person but you couldn't do it for why they were famous so i did a lot i did his early life and that's where i found out like oh yeah his dad was an aircraft engineer he always had like a big love of it uh and that's when i also found out that his mom had actually uh spinal tuberculosis ooh i did not know that yeah and she was in the hospital for a lot of his young life and he would go visit her that's why i think a lot of parents are missing in his movies theory but not confirmed but yeah his dad was an aircraft engineer i mean this was based on this wasn't based on someone else's source material this was as amman said this is based on a short manga that he did so it's not like he intentionally cut them out of the source material well again and again i will note to speak to your point again this

44:06 is a this is a manga that ran in a magazine for like model airplanes and tanks yep what was it called it was called um model graphics yeah model graphics there you go yep which is very interesting like like imagining opening up uh you know electronics illustrated and it's like in between here's how to thread a wire and here's how to rip copper out of your wall that you're renting there's also oh and also here's a a guest story written by neil gaiman or someone else famous now it would probably be the uh who does science i don't know maybe the guy who does those uh cartoon histories to whatever stories anyways um this is my turn yeah go ahead all right

44:53 sure uh yeah these guys are hilarious uh they've a yoda they're just they're they're just delightful uh they're the exact right level of cartoon i feel like there's an important tone setting in that first scene where it's like there's they're sky pirates and yes they have they have technically taken a small a large group of small children hostage but their main attitude is like this isn't a playground we don't want you to get hurt that's not the point here we just want to get paid uh and i think i i i'm not terribly surprised that this ended up being where they hired a lot of like more traditional like you know cartoon voice actors to fill out these roles this feels like the correct uh not the correct place but like this

45:38 feels like a place where it's like oh we can hire like a b and c and they can just play these characters and excel at them and give us what we want like without too much trouble they just stick their head out of the recording studio it's like hey bill you got a minute i know you're recording lloyd in space but can you come in here for a second we need a background voice i mean it's not like you're wrong person [Laughter] um you know everyone everyone's like very good i think i i agree whenever i was watching it it was always very like all right i definitely recognize these actors but not well enough to say who's who except for bill fagerbachy because at one point it was like i wonder where he's in here and it's like yeah that was close enough to patrick star that was definitely bill okay

46:25 found you at least i do think brad's just the standout just because he he's good at playing big goofy villains he's even in that dumb teenage mutant ninja turtles movie replays crang and he's great it's amazing uh yeah they're just a real treat that was just it's they're fun when they're on screen uh i know jimmy doesn't do spin-offs by and large you know cat returns not a uh you know isn't it maybe an exception but like if they wanted to make something starring the mama yoda gang it's like i'd watch that they're great well again just watch the time bo con spin-offs there's like 10 of them can we get one more brad carrot plays a sexy lady [Laughter] prepare for trouble

47:14 all right i i guess that's his turn now yes all right um so yeah honestly kevin frank and bill are sort of interchangeable in this little segment of review uh they were all great they had they all had this little you know they kidnapped the kids but they're taking care of them because you know they they don't want them to get hurt you know they're valuable hostages but why did we have to take all 15 it's like the banter between them is just great uh in that sequence and then later when they're sort of rating porco stronghold and it's

48:00 like it's it's great uh but obviously the standout is um is brad garrett as the boss of the gang um he is big he is bombastic he's basically he's basically being the bluto to um to porco's popeye you didn't happen to steal that from the behind the microphone feature did you i didn't even hear the name bluto mentioned oh no he he flat out said that he's like a pluto character oh well then i wasn't paying enough attention to it then obviously that's commendable then i mean the the

48:46 design basically lends itself to bluto so oh yeah the shots there i had to take it but he's just absolutely wonderful boisterous he plays off of everybody he acts against really really well uh particularly theo's voice actress and um and porco himself like it's just great and it's uh like everything about the mama yudo gang is everything is that comic relief that the movie absolutely needed to sort of balance out the more dour notes that

49:33 show up later in the film so next up we have a couple more incidental players in the uh in the saga porco rosso uh we have ferrari a a member of the italian air force who was a former friend of porcos back when they were back when porco served in the military and uh was actually human uh he shows up when porco shows up in italy basically to give him the heads up that the italian secret police is after him and then also helps him leave italy when his plane is finally ready to depart we have grandpa piccolo

50:22 he runs an aeronautics shop that porco visits to get his plane repaired after it's shut down um he's just this gentle old man and it's great like he just has this warm personality always laughing always joking and then we also have donald curtis the meat head uh he's an ace pilot who's trying to be an actor who's trying to be the president and he's just a big lovable doof even though he's basically the main bad guy in the movie is an air pilot who wants if there's anybody you

51:07 so and this came out years before independence day even existed oh by like four years i mean i guess you could say he's the closest thing to a main antagonist of the film he's technically not a villain there's really not a bad guy villain per se in the villainous fascism yeah there we go because because poor before for poor parkour couldn't go home if he wanted to he gets fascism no no no you know the real villain of this movie well fascism is a villain but the secondary villain is inflation because that money isn't even worth the paper it's printed on anymore yeah yeah yeah don't let inflation happen to your country people

51:55 uh so in any case um ferrari is played by tom kenny grandpa piccolo by david ogden steers and donald curtis by carrie elwin [Laughter] what why is everybody laughing because no no i gave a very unenthusiastic yeah to carrie ellis and i found that very funny he's no what do you have against carriola he's very charming he's just he hasn't gone on to be a very good actor in my opinion i like him when he does we're gonna have words buddy oh man there's something fight fight fight what was the last thing you saw him what was the last thing all right look it's not his look it's like it's not his

52:41 fault that the saw movies ended up getting sequels okay you can't blame him for that no he's trying his best all right so anyway um you would know tom kenny from stuff like simon petrikov aka the ice king in adventure time uh going back around to our sort of anime thing uh he was sawada in tech on concrete which if you ever get the opportunity to watch tech on concrete watch tenkon it's a very hard title to say but it is a very good film that is absolutely worth it been on my shelf for a really long time i haven't gotten around to it yet uh he was also benjamin bright in the

53:27 immortal grand prix uh but you would know him as kind of a certain other thing from an independent cartoon series sort of obscure from a not really well-known network um is that network network spongebob squarepants oh yeah the thing they cooked us with at the super bowl last year so david dogden steers um oh yeah who also unfortunately passed you would know him right bladder cancer um he was mr malliard in regular show

54:12 uh he played cogsworth in uh the disney beauty and the beast uh he was also kamaji the the boilermaster and spirited away um but if you were anywhere near a public access channel or had access to like tv land or you know it was on like hallmark channel at one time uh you would probably know him as major charles winchester in mash i was gonna say i i i feel really bad and you're like all getting excited and i'm just like who the [ __ ] is this he he is a perennial tv character actor he's very much the guy where like you might not know his name but once you see a photo of him you're like oh okay well i've seen him okay

55:00 megan megan here's here's something you will absolutely remember him from you've seen the hunchback of notre dame right yeah he plays the archbishop who you know is like the good you know the guy who only shows up at like once in the beginning of the movie you said he said it was dr jumbo from lilo and stitch i would have known that okay well i didn't know if you see that too but yes he has that he is in that and i should have put that down sorry okay there you go and he's already governor radcliffe in like pocahontas like that's the [ __ ] i know there's so much voice acting stuff yeah he's in every disney thing and to to bring this around to all the ghibli stuff not only was he the boilerman in spirited way he's also the narrator in my neighbors the yamadas so so has so tell me roots has carrie

55:47 elway been in anything we've heard of before um other than dr lawrence gordon in saw as was already mentioned was that one you had picked out already i actually had it picked out in my nose god damn it well i don't think there's anything he was also the baron and whisper of the heart yep um and kind of some other things that you would probably know him from um he was sort of robin hood in the mel brooks uh robin hood men in tights uh but he was also wesley in the princess bride he was inconceivable yeah by the way i have a

56:34 really funny story about robin adamantites do tell so back in college my roommates back when my ex broke up with me one weekend like my roommate and her other friend on campus tiffany my roommate said my other friend in campus tiffany we had a movie marathon to make me feel better and the first movie we watched the day was uh the russell crowe uh hugh jackman like missed oh no oh boy it was only uphill from there it would have to be wouldn't it then we watched pitch perfect but we ended with uh robin hood men in tights because i had never seen it so we're watching it and you know the part where he sends the message off in the 20th century fox and it like runs away making dolphin

57:21 noises my friend it's like two in the morning my ra my resident my ra in my dorm is pissed at us because she's like on the room right next door and if you've ever met me i don't have a really like soft voice so tiff like we're laughing at the movie really loud and that scene goes off and my friend tiffany goes haha it's making seal noises and we just kind of look at her like it's like it's like patrick it was like a patrick starr moment and we just gotta look at her like what like oh okay tiff let's just okay have we have we introduced all the actors and characters in my freight am i good yeah you're all set to go okay cool i'll

58:07 start with ferrari because i didn't know that was tom kenny at all um i actually thought he was really flat um i just felt like oh this is just random one guy and i don't like his reform it's very much he's like my least favorite performance in the movie i don't have a lot to say for him grandpa piccolo is a fun little old like rat man um he looks like he crawled out of an italian sewer i know shinya i'm trying to get mom to let you out because i can't get up baby girl come here and let me pet you um i liked his performance a lot it was like that like level of crazy kooky old italian man without sounding like mamma mia where is my perogie

58:53 pierogies aren't even italian mama mia where does somebody stromboli well you know his mustache isn't really you know bushy enough for that like he thankfully he did not sound like the college humor benson her spelling bee skit and that's my one that was my one fear um but i liked david's performance a lot i thought it was really enjoyable i thought he he had a lot of fun uh if you would have told me that was carrie owls i would have thought you were a liar because it sounds nothing like i i know kariel's sounding like i think i believe i'm sorry i believe it's pronounced elways always just it's this did not sound like wesley or robin hood to me and those the two like really big things that i know him for and i say this as somebody who's like

59:40 favorite non-studio like non-miyazaki ghibli movie is the cat the cat returns which he is also in um that's the one that he's in with uh boyle as uh the big fat cat yep so whenever we get to do that that episode which i will try to do you will all get to hear me sing putting on the rats yes my mother loves that movie um and i've been forced to see it i love young frankenstein uh but so forced to watch when i when i got to the end of the movie i asked i asked or like midway through the movie i asked roots and i think it was after um donald kind of tries to get gene to go to hollywood with him and i go

1:00:28 are you sure that this guy isn't based off of ronald reagan i mean that's what springs to mind isn't it yes i'm like he's an uh he's a he's an old army guy who's trying to be famous he wants to be an actor and then he wants to be president i'm like this is just ronald reagan without died without the uh sometime around when this was being dubbed no there's something very like ronald reagan asked about this character in the performance and like that's really weird because i've never actually seen ronald reagan's acting you're missing nothing exactly all right uh a carious performance is really charismatic really cheesy and you're just like

1:01:13 dude i get why gina told you off there's something so fake about it because curtis donald curtis is such a fake character like i one of my favorite scenes is that scene where he tries to propose to her with a screenplay in the garden and she tells him off and just the line of uh and i'll talk to that when we talk about gene's character of you fall in love too easily yep and then like literally he's trying to like propose to a 15 year old girl that's problematic i mean even for the 1920s that wouldn't be allowed yeah no but like i really liked his performance i think i think the next set of characters are

1:02:00 probably like some of my favorite performances but he did really good job to uh to kind of curtail that uh unenthusiastic i had for kerry always i really don't have anything against him he's got uh he's interesting in that he for some reason he keeps getting cast to have an american accent uh it took me years to realize that he was the uh the rival to jim carrey in the movie liar liar he's the other guy in that movie and like i did not realize that because he doesn't use his british accent and speeding don't don't make me feel this entire movie with liar liar lines we usually could do that but to talk about carrie elway in this one uh here's the interesting thing is that i'm not used to

1:02:46 um uh media that makes fun of americans uh like so bluntly because you know we're american and we're kind of used to seeing ourselves being portrayed by us and so there's not really a whole lot of media that i feel like we as americans have consumed that's made by people observing americans probably the thing that people watching this may have seen is like maybe hetalia where you know they're making fun of i'm the hero americanism sorry for the ptsd for reminding you that show existed but the reason i bring that up is because it's interesting to see uh ghibli's take on what's essentially you know a parody of an american in this because this is like what they see americans like or at least like the the kind of villainous americans that would be an antagonist to porco in this so why you may ask did they cast a

1:03:33 british guy to voice the american in this and the answer is because it works because the character is kind is the character is already like an over the top americanism stereotype i don't know if any american would be able to play that right because you know it would just be like well you're just playing an american so you get a british guy to do an impression of an american and it kind of works out and it helps that he's not a total bastard aside from the proposing to every girl he sees mentality he's like he's good at what he does he's not full of himself without the skills to back it up and he has some honor to him like he holds up his end of the bargain when he loses the race spoiler alert so carrie's portrayal of him gives him a sense of realness to not maybe

1:04:19 realness isn't the right word like he gives him the self-absorbedness to him without being unlikable that's the way to put it like you don't hate donald curtis you watch this whole thing and you don't really hate him you're just like oh you just kind of feel sorry for me yeah it's like oh honey kind of to him because he keeps getting shot down literally bless your heart gold star for effort you [ __ ] pig although there is one line that i uh i kind of wish that the scriptwriters had fit in here there's a line in the princess bride where uh wesley says to humperdink he says i'll use short words so that you can understand them you warthog-faced buffoon and i would have loved it if they had transcribed that into the script because porko has a warthog face it would have

1:05:04 been perfect but that would have been stretching the realism a little bit here so yeah what you're gonna do uh tom kenny's uh ferrari not the one from ferris bueller's day off but uh this movie doesn't really get a whole lot to do um but the thing that's fun to listen to this is about is i'm used to the cartoonish tom kenny voice not just from spongebob but from like raymundo from shaolin showdown or i think it was starscream in uh transformers animated just like you know really over the top uh kind of squawking sort of voice and then you turn to this movie and he's sitting in a movie theater talking about how you know uh the only way that the italians will let you fly is when you fly for our fleet and it's like wow tom has that normal speaking voice to him that's very

1:05:50 interesting and that little novelty in itself makes it you know worth listening to tom kenny's performance in it so good job tom i i think that you should actually audition for more you know normal sounding voices because you're good at it and the guy who also should be in just about everything and he was for a while is david oak and steers who i i just adore because especially when he's like cackling or giggling he's like maniacal sounding but it's not because he's evil it's because he's like this kooky old man voice and you can just hear david having lots of fun in the in the recording booth i'm glad that he wasn't one of those uh old tv actors who kind of just faded off the map and didn't do anything into his older age he found a lot of voice over work he's like so

1:06:36 all over the place and you can tell most of the time when it's him like he has a little tiny role in the movie atlantis the lost empire as the uh the owner of the museum and you can tell it's him he's got like that gruff eastern european-ish kind of voice to him and it's like this is just so charming and i just want david to be around all the time so yes to mirror what megan said his piccolo is great not stereotypical italian like from a video game like he's not playing mario kart it's just like the right kind of business savvy guy with a hot american granddaughter all right uh where to start uh tom kenny is ferrari uh i like i

1:07:24 i enjoyed his performance i did like his little scene together just because occasionally porquaros returns to a noir movie and then and then talking talking talking business in this movie theater why this very nicely animated like fake 20s cartoon plays just i'm very i'm actually i'm kind of sad that only exists in this movie that looks very nice um uh what was i saying i do i always find fun when i see tom kenny and things that aren't like cartoons like um you for before he was like a big voice actor he was on a show he was on a show called mr show which is what bob odenkirk and david cross first got famous on and it is always wild to see him just play sketches in that because sometimes he'll play a normal person oh uh and sometimes he'll play a screaming

1:08:10 uh if you're on a fun time kids go to youtube and punch in the altered states of drugsus you won't regret it or maybe you will i'm not sure about it is that something about tom kennedy that tom it is a is a bobbin show sketch that's basically a goof on hr puff and stuff and other possibly made on drugs uh kid shows that the craft brothers put together in 70s and he plays a character on that uh doing what is not too far from the spongebob voice basically so it's it's a it's a trip hr puff and stuff is the thing of nightmares i don't know what you're talking about is it is it as terrifying as mr blobby they're about on par i'm gonna be honest with you like mr mr mr blobby is very much deliberately in the vein of stuff like hr puff and stuff where it's like you

1:08:56 show this to children really okay we didn't have the budget yeah uh yeah i liked his little bit if nothing else it's uh we'll get to this later but it does he does end up prompting the best line in the movie but we'll get to that later uh he was fun uh david ogdensteers is great uh he's the correct level of cartoonishly italian it's not too much it's not too little uh he's just he's just very charming he has a lot of good lines he just delivers it very well it's he bounces off of um parko's actor really well uh i just find him delightful uh and it's always nice when david ogden's cheers and stuff he's a wonderful actor uh i carry use uh when preparation for

1:09:41 this i read a review where someone complained about the dove because they thought donald curtis was more of an errol flynn type and they didn't know why they hired carrie ooze to not just do a british voice and like look you're not wrong but he's a lot of swashbuckling actors he's he's he's arrow flynn he's tyrone power he's douglas fairbanks but most importantly he is in fact we're all reagan if ron reagan was from texas so and i do think carrie got that part of the role really well he is very he's he's over the top but grounded and lunkheaded in the correct way uh like i i thought he was he did a really good job with the character and i thought he did a good job of like you know especially towards the end uh when you know donald he's not a villain he's just he's

1:10:29 just an american he's just stupid and power hungry yeah also i like also i like the bit where like the air pirates are just trying to hire him and whoever's vouching for him is like yeah his mom's cousin's italian oh yeah i just like that their big gripe is like but he's an american he's not italian at all oh it's even worse i think the exact line was his grandma's cousin was italian uh yeah just i yeah like i like these characters i think i think carrie just did a really he had a really strong performance in here i think he's extremely delightful i liked him a lot oh well one last minor note is oh yeah the um in the original manga uh his name was not donald curtis it was donald

1:11:14 chuck okay that makes even more sense donald chuck don't you love it when the japanese tried to make up american names oh you mean like you mean like that one baseball game yep from the 80s yeah so smash some roll fizzle beef quality names there all right um so like everybody else i'm probably going to start with uh tom kenny is ferrari uh not a lot to his role and like megan i do agree it was a little flat uh but considering how little he's actually in the movie and i just wanted

1:12:00 to talk about him because it's tom kenny and an anime dub um i think it was fine for the most part other than the scene in the movie theater um when he actually gets some other speaking lines it it actually sounds pretty okay um i don't know what was up with that with that particular scene but yeah uh not 100 a fan uh carry always as donald curtis the meat head oh my god it's it's great and you know the the texas accent he puts on feels just fake enough

1:12:46 that it lends a lot to the character that he he's basically just putting on all these airs and like like it's great he's he's just this big dumb meat head who's good at certain things but has ambitions to be even greater but if only that darn pig wasn't in the way um i think the standout for for donald curtis is the um in the end with the boxing match where he's basically chewing porco out for not choosing vo or gina

1:13:31 even though really they they have the right to choose i guess but that's another that's another tangent we could go into um i do have something to say about that in final thoughts anyway um just the whole thing where he's telling you know hey you dumbass gina actually has feelings for you like i thought that was great and i uh it's kind of a shame carrie always isn't in more sort of these ghibli-esque anime dubs because i think he did a really good job here uh and the late great david ogden steers

1:14:19 as grandpa piccolo like i had this huge cheshire cat grin on my face every time he let out one of those chuckles because he is like that that little gentle grandpa character and his accent is just enough for you to know that oh yeah he's italian uh but stuff like when he pulls out the engine to test it in the um in the shed i don't think this is good for your [ __ ] he starts turning it onto full blast it's tearing the shed apart and he's just laughing his ass off it's great i love it i forgot to compliment when he's trying to uh introduce all the women that are

1:15:05 coming to work for them and he's just like there's something really sleazy you're not wrong and then it's also just like um you know as porko is interacting with theo his granddaughter uh who we'll get to in the next segment

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