TIL that in January 2014, a seven-year-old girl named Charlotte Benjamin wrote a letter to Lego, pointing out the lack of female characters compared to male ones. A few months later, in June 2014, Lego introduced a “Research Institute” set showcasing female scientists, which quickly sold out.
“Porco Rosso” is a about an ex-military seaplane pilot who battles air pirates. He also, incidentally, has been turned into a pig. It’s both fantastically funny and very occasionally heart-breaking.
It also has one of the best lines in cinema: “I’d rather be a pig than a fascist.”
I love that proco being a pig is treated as mildly weird. His relationship with the fascist government is more important to the plot than that he is a pig. No one else is an animal. It’s just a thing that happened to him. You can tell it’s a big deal to him, but no one else really cares. You could remove him being a pig and the story still works fine. It just makes the regret and inadequatecy more obvious.
I think I like Howel’s Moving Castle more. But it’s close. That one gave me a whole author.