My Neighbor Totoro｜Anime

2022.02.19

MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO is an animated feature film produced by Studio Ghibli and released in 1988. It is the fourth feature-length animated film by Hayao Miyazaki and is a fantasy set in Japan. Screening concurrently was GRAVE of the FIREFLIES.
According to director Hayao Miyazaki, he originally intended to use MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO as a picture book.

The attendance was approximately 800,000. With a distribution revenue of JPY 590 million, the film was not well received at the time of its release and was not a box-office success. (Thanks to this failure, Kiki’s Delivery Service was produced to recoup the funds.)

Synopsis

The period setting is around 1958. It is the summer rice-planting holiday period. Only about 10 years have passed since the end of the war and there are no telephones yet, and the film depicts a scene where people communicate by telegram or using the only telephone in the village.
The story begins with two sisters, Mei (4) and Satsuki (12), and their father, Tatsuo, moving to an old house in the countryside near the hospital because their mother is ill and in hospital for a long time.
The old house where they will start their new life. Is there something there? Could this be someone living there? Satsuki and Mei become more adventurous about their new surroundings, the house and the dark spaces. Satsuki and Mei have a sighting. It was someone black. Could someone be living there?
The new house was inhabited by yokai, such as pitch-black blackie and Totoro, who were invisible to adults.
One day, when she went to visit her mother in hospital, her younger sister Mei went missing.
So her sister Satsuki, with the help of Totoro, goes to look for Mei.

MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO | Recommendations

“MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO” is a strange story. I always thought Mei was the main character in Totoro, which I watched as a child, but now I see that the main character was Satsuki! And it took me a long, long time, but I can answer the question.
The story of Totoro and her sisters is clear and easy to understand, and each character has her own charm. Needless to say.

Satsuki’s portrayal of a life-sized schoolboy who has to grow up and can’t grow up is absolutely wonderful.
It is clear that the couple are on good terms with each other, and that they are running a ‘family’ while overcoming the wife’s illness. On the other hand, Satsuki, as the older sister, has no one to blame, no one to blame, but Satsuki’s natural caring nature and cleverness also makes her feel burdened and responsible.

The one person who brings back Satsuki’s childlike spirit is not her mother, father or grandmother, but Totoro.
Totoro’s generosity, calmness and kindness, including his appearance, are felt differently by all generations, or by different generations, and the same charm is conveyed and received differently by different generations, and Totoro looks like this when you are an adult! This is a film work that can be enjoyed many times in one’s life.
The film is also amazing in its expression of the unique smells and atmosphere of the countryside, including the trees, rain, wind and houses, as well as the unique sense of time passing and the laziness that accompanies it. It is a masterpiece.