HISAISHI, JOE

The vinyl edition of Joe Hisaishi’s Porco Rosso: Image Album offers an exceptional, jazz-infused musical journey that takes listeners back to the earliest conceptual roots of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1992 masterpiece. While the final soundtrack relies heavily on a grandiose 70-piece orchestra, this standalone 10-track record was composed before animation production even began. It was based entirely on Miyazaki's early manga The Age of the Flying Boat (Hikōtei Jidai) and his initial conceptual notes. As a result, the album serves as a more intimate, experimental playground where Hisaishi explores the 1920s Mediterranean and Adriatic atmosphere through a lens of smoky lounge jazz, ragtime whimsy, and early synthesizer arrangements.