Studio Ghibli has a vast wealth of treasures within its filmography, yet My Neighbour Totoro is arguably its most iconic. My Neighbour Totoro returns to selected cinemas nationwide this month.
During one of many memorable sequences in Studio Ghibli’s 1988 feature My Neighbour Totoro, 4-year-old Mei (Chika Sakamoto) chases an unknown creature through her garden and waits for it to re-emerge from under the house. As she waits, a butterfly flies past, rests on a flower, and then takes off again. Another scene shows Mei and her sister, 10-year-old Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka), watching a stream, where a leaf glides on the water over a submerged bottle, its origins unknown. These are small, borderline trivial details within the film’s construction, yet their inclusion breathes beauty and authenticity into the picture. It’s a film teeming with life through every one of its hand-drawn frames, dazzling us even now, decades later, with its charm and thematic power.
In post-war rural Japan, Satsuki and Mei move into a new home with their dad so that they can be close to their ill mother, who is staying at the hospital. The house is old, and the garden is overrun, but the girls don’t mind. They explore with abandon and squeal with delight at each discovery. Even the things that initially scare them, such as an encounter with soot sprites – sentient dust balls that move into empty houses – they laugh off. Such is childhood’s lack of filter.
Their explorations take them into the vast forest nearby. There, they meet a giant furry creature, the titular Totoro, and a hive of other bizarre animals, including a cat-bus. Rather than being frightened, the girls are fascinated by Totoro and choose to play with him, creating harmony that influences the story throughout as the girls come to grips with their new environment.
Right away, the film brims with giddy joviality, a wholesomeness reflected in the animation. The film adopts the anime medium for its style, an aesthetic that bursts with euphoria via the stunning colour palettes and exaggerated character traits, namely Mei’s gigantic smiles. The legendary Hayao Miyazaki not only wrote and directed this film but also drew hundreds, if not thousands, of animation frames himself.
The delight Miyazaki aspired to generate when he first began developing the movie forms the very essence of its spirit, whether seen in the luminous use of colour and shadows or in the attention to detail in the drawn settings. Any moment that begins with anxiety, such as the iconic bus stop sequence, doesn’t stay that way for long, as the girls find serenity in their circumstances, be it with or without Totoro’s help. It’s a movie you wish you could step into and navigate for yourself.
Environmentalism is a recurring theme in several of Miyazaki’s works, and this film champions it by basking in nature’s organicity and adaptability, celebrating the idyllic harmony between humans and nature through the girls’ interactions with Totoro. Totoro is hinted to be a forest guardian, and while this is never explicitly confirmed, the mystique he brings adds a sense of wonder to the otherwise mundane setting of the film. The orchestral score by Joe Hisaishi reaches deep into your soul with its wind-chime-esque beats, the combination of pianos, violins, and wind instruments working together to generate ethereal charm.
That’s not to say there’s no conflict, stakes or story. The girls fret over their mother’s illness, with Mei not fully understanding the gravity of the situation, given her age and Satsuki in a rush to grow up, at times acting like a surrogate mother. There are arguments, fights and even a crisis point in the third act. When either of the girls cries, their sadness hits you like a train.
However, the story, particularly Satsuki’s character arc, in which she learns to embrace being a kid again, culminates in a celebration of life. It doesn’t dispute that hardships exist – it’s set in Japan’s post-WWII era, after all – but it argues that we should try and find the joy in life, even in the face of the unknown, be it the absence of a parent due to illness or the presence of a massive furry creature we’ve never seen before. Its narrative is as fluid as life itself. It accepts the existence of darkness yet always looks for the light.
Studio Ghibli has a vast wealth of treasures within its filmography, yet My Neighbour Totoro is arguably its most iconic. Totoro still serves as the studio’s mascot, and his recognisability, at the very least, within Japanese pop culture has placed him firmly within the zeitgeist of children’s entertainment. The 2022 Sight and Sound Poll even ranked it the greatest animated film of all time. Its effervescent energeticness certainly gives this status credence, but the film is so much more than its liveliness. My Neighbour Totoro is an ode to childlike innocence and the ways life can seem all the more wonderful through that lens. We aren’t young forever, but movies like this capture the spirit of youth for all eternity.
My Neighbour Totoro has immortalised itself as a classic precisely because it embodies the glee and optimism that come with being a child. Its lustrous colours and art direction remain gorgeous. Still, it’s the emotional honesty that its characters and themes exude that makes the film so intoxicating, even if you don’t fully understand the purpose of all its zaniness. It captures pure emotions so acutely that its minimal story feels magical.
The film’s influence can be seen in contemporary movies everywhere, be it in live-action pictures like Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja or in anime like Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children, demonstrating how its resonance and artistry have extended beyond its Japanese borders. This resonance will still be felt for decades to come, as befits this absolutely mesmerising movie. If cinema is about conveying feelings as much as telling stories, then My Neighbour Totoro recreates childlike wonder with rapturous abundance.
Follow Us