My Neighbor Totoro: 8.1/10

Hayao Miyazaki wrote and directed My Neighbor Totoro for Studio Ghibli, and Tokuma Shoten released it in 1988. It runs 86 minutes. That is short for a fantasy film, and it is the first thing worth saying about it: nothing here is padded.

The story follows Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe, roughly ten and four, who move with their father to an old house in the countryside. Their mother, Yasuko, is in a hospital nearby, recovering from a long-term illness. The house comes with dust-like spirits called susuwatari. The woods come with something bigger.

Trailer, via Crunchyroll Store Australia.

Two Sisters and a Camphor Tree

Mei wanders off and finds two small spirits that lead her into the hollow of a large camphor tree. There she meets a larger spirit. It identifies itself through a series of roars, which she hears as “Totoro.” She decides he is the troll from her illustrated book of Three Billy Goats Gruff, and falls asleep on top of him. When Satsuki finds her, she is on the ground.

Mei tries repeatedly to show her family the tree. She cannot. Tatsuo, a university professor, does not scold her or demand proof. He tells her Totoro will reveal himself when he wants to.

That is the film’s whole method in one scene. The adults in My Neighbor Totoro do not explain the magic away, and they do not pretend to understand it either. They make room for it. Noriko Hidaka voices Satsuki, Chika Sakamoto voices Mei, and Shigesato Itoi voices Tatsuo. Hitoshi Takagi voices Totoro, whose dialogue is a set of roars.

The Bus Stop in the Rain

The girls wait for Tatsuo’s bus, which is late. Mei falls asleep on Satsuki’s back. Totoro appears beside them, and Satsuki sees him for the first time.

Totoro has only a leaf on his head for protection against the rain. Satsuki offers him her father’s umbrella. Delighted, he gives her a bundle of nuts and seeds in return. Then a giant, bus-shaped cat arrives. Totoro boards it and leaves. Naoki Tatsuta voices the Catbus.

This is the sequence everyone remembers, and it earns the memory. Almost nothing happens. A child stands in the rain, hands a spirit an umbrella, and gets seeds. The exchange is small, quiet and complete. Miyazaki does not cut away to explain what the Catbus is or where it goes. It arrives, it takes him, it is gone.

A Midnight Dance and a Growing Tree

A few days after the seeds are planted, the girls wake at midnight. Totoro and his fellow spirits are dancing in a ceremony around the planted seeds. The girls join in. The seeds grow into an enormous tree. Totoro takes them for a ride on a magical flying top.

In the morning the tree is gone, but the seeds have sprouted.

Then the news comes: a planned visit from their mother has been postponed because of a setback. The film does not turn that setback into a crisis with a villain or a countdown. It just sits there, the way illness sits in a family. The youngest runs away from home. Satsuki goes to the spirits for help finding her.

What the Film Is Actually About

The film carries themes of animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism, childhood and the joys of rural living. Those are the labels, and they are accurate. What they miss is how little the film argues. Totoro is not a lesson about nature. He is a neighbor. The susuwatari leave on their own to find another empty house. The camphor tree is simply there, older than the family, indifferent to whether anyone believes in it.

He’s your friendly neighbourhood forest spirit!

The postwar setting matters, though the film never lectures about it. A professor and his daughters move to the country while the mother is hospitalized. That is a household under strain, and the strain is handled with a light hand. Satsuki holds the family together in small ways — carrying her sister, waiting for the bus, keeping her worry off her face. The film notices this without announcing it.

The supporting cast is thin by design. Tanie Kitabayashi voices Granny. Toshiyuki Amagasa voices Kanta Ogaki, the local boy. Yuko Maruyama, Masashi Hirose and Reiko Suzuki voice Kanta’s mother, father and aunt. Machiko Washio voices the teacher. Sumi Shimamoto voices Yasuko. These are people at the edge of the frame, and the film keeps them there.

The Record, and What It Proves

My Neighbor Totoro received worldwide critical acclaim and grossed over $41 million worldwide at the box office. It also grossed significantly more from home video sales and merchandise. In 1988 it won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, the Mainichi Film Award and the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film, plus the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards.

The rankings followed. Empire magazine placed it 41st in “The 100 Best Films of World Cinema” in 2010. In 2012, a Sight & Sound critics’ poll named it the number-one animated film of all time. Totoro became Studio Ghibli’s mascot and one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation, with cameo appearances in other films.

That merchandise figure is the part worth pausing on. A film about a spirit who gives a child seeds became a commercial engine. The two facts sit together awkwardly, and the film itself would probably shrug at both.

What the Merchandise Cannot Sell

The most striking thing about My Neighbor Totoro at this distance is how badly its own success describes it. The rankings, the mascot deal, the $41 million — none of that is in the film. What is in the film is a father telling a four-year-old that the spirit will show himself when he wants to, and then not pressing the point. That is a strange thing to build a franchise on, and it is why the franchise has never felt cheap.

The mother’s illness is the loose thread, and it stays loose. The postponement lands and the film moves on to the search for Mei. Viewers who want the hospital thread tied off will not get it. That is a choice, and it is defensible, but it leaves the heaviest material at arm’s length.

What holds up is the texture. The dust spirits, the camphor hollow, the seeds in a bundle, the Catbus arriving without warning. Miyazaki builds a world that does not need the audience’s belief, only its attention.

My Neighbor Totoro: 8.1/10.

1988 anime · anime film · film review · Hayao Miyazaki · My Neighbor Totoro · Studio Ghibli