My Neighbor Totoro – Tonari no Totoro (1988)

Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki | 86 minutes | animation, family | Original voice cast: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto, Tanie Kitabayashi, Hitoshi Takagi, Yûko Maruyama, Machiko Washio, Reiko Suzuki, Masashi Hirose

There are many things that make a person happy. Some of them are a bit healthier than others, but still. A nice drink, a good book, listening to stand-up comedians, watching a few seasons of ‘Friends’. It all helps. And yet nothing works as well as the animated film ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ from animation great Hayao Miyazaki.

In ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ we meet sisters Mei (4) and Satsuki (10) who move with their father to a cottage in the countryside. Their mother has been admitted to a hospital in the area, hence the move. The house is in ruins, but the girls don’t care. What fascinates them are the surrounding hills, forests, rice fields and giant trees. And even more captivating are the strange creatures they meet: a cat bus, fluffy beady-eyed soot balls and the inimitable Totoro. Who or what Totoro is? Let’s leave that in the middle (it is also inexplicable).

Everything in ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ exudes cheerfulness. For starters, the girls themselves. Mei and Satsuki are cheerful, curious bouncing balls. They run and jump and hop and love everything they come across. What they encounter always appeals to the child’s fantasy, so that we always view the environment with children’s eyes. Anyone who knows Miyazaki’s later work knows what kind of colorful creatures you meet, but still you are amazed. Especially when you first see Totoro (which we’re still not going to explain).

The film’s greatest strength lies in its original elaboration. The cat bus is something different than you would expect. In any other animated film it would be a cat carrying children on its back. In ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ it is a colossal cross between cat and bus, with a grinning cat’s head, a folding door, open windows and wonderfully fluffy couches. The movie is full of such fantastic ideas.

Then there are the beautiful animations, the wonderfully effusive humour, the touching interaction between the children and their father, the never-intrusive ecological message, the funny secondary characters and the successful references to ‘Alice in Wonderland’. This makes ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ a gem of an animation film for young and old. Anyone who doesn’t make fun of this can’t be saved.