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Revision as of 09:25, 30 September 2008

My Neighbor Totoro
Poster for My Neighbor Totoro
Directed byHayao Miyazaki
Written byHayao Miyazaki
Produced byToru Hara
StarringChika Sakamoto
Noriko Hidaka
Hitoshi Takagi
Tanie Kitabayashi
Shigesato Itoi
Sumi Shimamoto
CinematographyHisao Shirai
Edited byTakeshi Seyama
Music byJoe Hisaishi
Distributed byToho (Japan)
Troma Films - 1993 dub (USA)
Disney - Disney dub (USA)
Release dates
Japan April 16 1988
Fox Dub
United States 1993
Disney Dub
United States March 7 2006
Running time
86 minutes
LanguageJapanese

My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ, Tonari no Totoro), is a 1988 animated film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The movie won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1988. This movie was originally released in the U.S. in VHS format with the title, My Friend Totoro.[1]

Troma Films, under their 50th St. Films banner, produced a 1993 dub of the film co-produced by Jerry Beck. It was released on VHS and DVD by Fox Video. Troma's and Fox's rights to this version expired in 2004. The film was re-released by Disney on March 7, 2006.[2] It features a new dub cast. This DVD release is the first version of the film in the United States to include both Japanese and English language tracks, as Fox did not have the rights to the Japanese audio track for their version.

An ani-manga version of My Neighbor Totoro was published in English by Viz Communications starting on November 10, 2004.

Plot

In 1958, a university professor and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei, move into an old house in rural Japan, so as to be closer to the hospital where his wife is recovering from an illness. The daughters find that the house is inhabited by tiny animated dust creatures called soot sprites, which their father explains are makkurokurosuke — small house spirits seen when moving from light to dark places. (These creatures are referred to as "dust bunnies" and "soot spirits" in the 1993 English dub; in the Disney version, they are variously called "soot gremlins" or "soot sprites". In the English subtitles of the first Japanese-language version to find its way to America, they were "Black Soots". The original name, "makkurokurosuke", literally means "pitch-black blackie".) When the girls become comfortable in their new house and laugh with their father, the soot spirits leave the house.

When Mei, the younger daughter, plays outside the house while her father works inside after Satsuki has left for school, she sees two white, rabbit-like ears in the grass (reminiscent of The White Rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). Upon following this creature under the house, she eventually discovers two small magical creatures, which lead her through a briar patch (once again alluding to Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole), and into the hollow of a large Camphor Laurel tree. There she meets and befriends a larger version of the same kind of spirit, which identifies itself by a series of roars she interprets as "Totoro". Her father later tells her that this is the "keeper of the forest".

File:1totoro.jpg
Ō Totoro, or Big Totoro, flying Satsuki and Mei around the countryside.

One rainy night, while the girls are waiting for their father's bus, Satsuki encounters Totoro herself for the first time. The girls are worried because their father has not come on the bus they expected, and it is getting late. Mei insists that she stay with Satsuki instead of going back to the house and staying with Granny, and falls asleep on Satsuki's back. While they wait, Totoro appears beside them. Because he is looking rather forlorn for only having a leaf on his head for protection against the rain, Satsuki offers him the umbrella she had taken along for her father. Totoro is delighted at both the shelter and the sounds made upon it by falling raindrops. The girls receive in return a bundle of nuts and seeds. A bus-shaped giant cat halts at the stop, and Totoro boards it, taking the umbrella. Shortly after, their father’s bus arrives.

The girls plant the seeds, which do not sprout for a few days. One night, they awaken at midnight to find Totoro and his two miniature colleagues engaged in a ritual dance around the planted nuts and seeds. The girls join in, whereupon the seeds sprout and then grow into an enormous tree. Totoro then takes his colleagues and the girls for a ride on a magical flying top. In the morning, the girls find that there is no tree in their yard, but that the seeds have indeed sprouted.

The final encounter with Totoro in the film occurs when Mei, believing her mother's condition has worsened, sets off on foot to the hospital and gets lost. Desperate to find her sister, Satsuki returns to the camphor laurel tree and pleads for Totoro's help. Delighted to be of assistance, he summons the Catbus, which rescues Mei and whisks her and Satsuki over the countryside to see their mother in the hospital. The girls perch in a tree outside of a hospital to discover that their mother is doing well because she had just caught a cold, deliver an ear of corn that Mei believes will make her mother better, and return home on the Catbus. When the Catbus departs, it fades away from the girls' sight in a manner reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.

The closing credits show Mei and Satsuki's mother returning home and feature scenes of Satsuki and Mei playing with other human children, with Totoro and his friends as unseen bystanders. Miyazaki has asserted that the girls would never see Totoro again, but that the spirits would always be watching over them.

Characters

Satsuki Kusakabe (草壁サツキ, Kusakabe Satsuki)
A 10-year-old girl. Satsuki is Mei's older sister. Satsuki is the traditional name of the fifth month of the Japanese calendar, the equivalent of the English May.
Mei Kusakabe (草壁メイ, Kusakabe Mei)
Satsuki's four-year-old sister. Her name deliberately echoes her sister's, May being the fifth month, reflecting the fact that the story originally featured one girl, who was then divided into an older and younger sister. The widely-distributed promotional image for the film of a girl standing next to Totoro at a bus stop reflects the earlier conception with a single child.
Tatsuo Kusakabe (草壁タツオ, Kusakabe Tatsuo)
The girls' father, who works in the archaeology and anthropology departments of a Tokyo university.
Yasuko Kusakabe (草壁靖子, Kusakabe Yasuko)
The girls' mother, recovering from an unnamed illness (confirmed by Miyazaki as being tuberculosis[3]) at Shichikokuyama Hospital, which is noted for its tuberculosis treatment program. When Miyazaki was a young boy, his mother had tuberculosis.
Totoro (トトロ)
A grey and white, friendly forest spirit, whose appearance is a combination of an owl, a cat, and a tanuki, is at least three meters tall. Totoro is Mei's mispronunciation of torōru, the Japanese pronunciation of troll as a loanword. There are two similar, smaller creatures in the film, also referred to as totoro; the big grey Totoro is named "Ō-Totoro", or "Miminzuku", the middle is "Chū-Totoro", or "Zuku", and the smallest is "Chibi-Totoro", or "Mini". These names do not appear in the film itself, but are used in ancillary materials.
Kanta Ōgaki (大垣寛太, Ōgaki Kanta)
A preteen boy of their village, ambivalent towards Satsuki. This character resembles Miyazaki in his fondness for cartoons and airplanes.
"Granny" or "Nanny" (お祖母ちゃん, Obaachan)
Kanta's grandmother, who sometimes takes care of the girls.
Catbus (ネコバス, Neko basu)
A house cat that undergoes a metamorphosis into a passenger bus, based on the Japanese superstition that if a cat grows old enough, it gains magical shape-changing powers, and is called a bake neko. [4] Bake neko are mentioned in several Ghibli films.

Cultural references

Family

One of the most significant things to point out in My Neighbor Totoro is that the mother is absent from the home. According to Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “the [Japanese] mother is characterized as having suffered hardships” (154).[5] This is true in Totoro, as Mei and Satsuki’s mother is hospitalized with an unnamed illness. The mother’s absence is significant because “at home, the husband depends upon the wife for domestic care. The husband is helpless in housekeeping tasks, such as doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and child rearing” (52).[5] In the absence of her mother, it is then Satsuki’s job to take over household tasks with Nanny’s help. This is illustrated several times throughout the movie.

One such illustration is when Satsuki prepares breakfast and lunch for her father and Mei before she leaves for school. This is a task that would normally fall to the mother. Also, the various cleaning and garden tasks that Satsuki and Mei often had the help of Nanny to complete would have also normally been the main responsibility of the mother to complete.

Mei and Satsuki’s father demonstrates both typical and atypical characteristics of a traditional Japanese father. According to Peter Tasker, “Japanese children are accustomed to never seeing their father on the weekdays, and only for short periods at weekends. A husband’s proper field of endeavor is the company” (101). [6]This is only somewhat accurate in Mei and Satsuki’s relationship with their father. Although their father is often away working at the university or visiting their mother in the hospital, he is by no means an absentee father. He is seen working at a desk while Mei plays outside and spending time with his daughters before their bedtime. Many scholarly critiques of Japanese culture would lead one to believe that this is not the norm.

Setting

My Neighbor Totoro exhibits several important cultural points through the setting and passive details.

The house into which Kusakabe family moves is an accurate portrayal of a typical, rural, Japanese home. The sliding doors that the father opens when they first move into the house are common architectural features. These doors are meant to be opened during the day, weather permitting, and closed at night. Another feature to point out about the house itself is the way the foundation is constructed. “Japanese houses do not have cellars but are built with a foundation of shallow concrete, or a single row of cement blocks. On top of this type of foundation is placed a row of heavy timbers” (33).[7] This can be seen clearly when Mei crawls under the house in pursuit of one of the smaller totoros.

As for Totoro, he lives in a tree demarcated by a shimenawa (braided straw rope for shinto). The tree is called shinboku (sacred tree). Shinto is the traditional religion of Japan and some consider many of Hayao Miyazaki’s films—including Totoro—to have Shintoist themes,[8][9]. and interpret Totoro as a kami spirit of the Shinto religion[10][11]. But Miyazaki says "this movie [Totoro] has nothing to do with that [Shinto] or any other religion."[10]

The community in which Satsuki and her family have moved is a typical agricultural town. The rice paddies are visible throughout the movie. Rice cultivation is one of the most important industries in Japan, as rice is a staple of the Japanese diet. The home that Satsuki and Mei live in is more spacious than what would be available in a city. Also, the scene where Nanny, Mei, and Satsuki are washing vegetables shows the near self-sufficiency of these farming communities.

The bath scene is also demonstrative of archetypal Japanese life. “The bathtub is more like a small swimming pool than a tub” (38).[7] As seen in the movie, several people bathe together at once. It is considered rude to enter the tub without first washing, as shown by Satsuki before she enters the tub with her father and Mei. These bathtubs are heated usually by small, well-tended coal burners under the tub.

Another cultural manifestation is the scene that shows the family sleeping. Often, the living room is converted into a bedroom where the whole family sleeps together on mats called futon. This sleeping arrangement is space-efficient and accommodates for smaller housing in a country where living space is severely limited. Mei is sleeping between Satsuki and her father, which is the usual arrangement—with the youngest in the middle.

In one scene, Satsuki is shown preparing the family's lunch in traditional bento style. A bento is a compartmentalized lunch box usually with only one or two tiers. Food is arranged to be aesthetically pleasing. Bentos are extremely common as lunch boxes for children, adults, and even those who stay at home, as Mei does when Satsuki goes to school.

Other passive cultural references include:

  • The food that Satsuki prepared for breakfast and lunch.
  • The fact that no one wore shoes inside of the house.
  • The way the girls cleaned the floors.
  • The way the students cleaned the classrooms after school.
  • The school.

Release history

My Neighbor Totoro was released by Studio Ghibli as a double feature with Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies in August 1988. There are two theories for this: one was that Totoro would not be successful. Another theory is that Grave of the Fireflies was believed to be too depressing for audiences by itself, and thus needed a lighter animation to accompany it. [12] The late Yoshifumi Kondo provided character designs for both films.

In 1993, Fox released the first English-language version of My Neighbor Totoro, produced by John Daly and Derek Gibson (the producers of The Terminator) with co-producer Jerry Beck. Fox and Troma's rights to the film expired in 2004. Disney's English-language version premiered on October 23, 2005; it then appeared at the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival. The Turner Classic Movies cable television network held the television premiere of Disney's new English dub on January 19, 2006, as part of the network's salute to Hayao Miyazaki. (TCM aired the dub as well as the original Japanese with English subtitles.) The Disney version was released on DVD on March 7, 2006.

As is the case with Disney's other English dubs of Miyazaki films, the Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe, and Frank Welker as Totoro and Catbus. The songs for the new dub retained the same translation as the previous dub, but were sung by Sonya Isaacs.

Other appearances

Miyazaki made a 13-minute "sequel" to the film, "Mei and the Kittenbus", that has not yet been distributed in any video format or broadcast on television. It is shown exclusively in the Ghibli Museum and initially was only shown for a short time [13]. It reappears at intervals there, most recently during the month of January 2008.

Totoro has made cameo appearances in multiple Studio Ghibli films, including Pom Poko, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Whisper of the Heart. Additionally, various other anime series and films have featured cameos, including in one episode of the Gainax TV series His and Her Circumstances. This was likely director Hideaki Anno's way of paying tribute to Miyazaki as Anno worked as a key animator on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 and considers Miyazaki a mentor. One KareKano character, Tsubasa Shibahime, is a huge Totoro fan.

Totoro has also had cameo appearances in various non-Japanese works, including on Comedy Central's Drawn Together, and in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Brief Lives in which Delirium blows bubbles into a number of impossible shapes, including a Totoro holding an umbrella.


Additional information

Pavilion reproduction of Satsuki & Mei’s House in Japan.
  • The main Totoro has become a mascot for Studio Ghibli, gracing the studio's logo at the start of their films.
  • There is a real park in Higashimurayama, Tokyo and Tokorozawa, Saitama named Hachikokuyama which was used as the inspiration for the mountain where Satsuki and Mei's mother was hospitalized.
  • Matsugo, the area where Mei and Satsuki live, is a real district of Tokorozawa, Saitama.
  • When the Catbus is about to take Mei and Satsuki to the hospital, the destination sign displays several real locations in Tokorozawa. In the final display, the final character of 七国山病院 appears upside-down.
  • Asteroid 10160 has been named "Totoro" by Takao Kobayashi. The name was approved by the International Astronomical Union.
  • The 2005 World Expo in Japan featured a "Totoro" house, a recreation of Satsuki and Mei's house in the movie.
  • Lisa Michelson who voiced Satsuki in the Streamline dub died before it was released. However, the film was not dedicated to her.

Credits

Cast

The movie stars the following voice actors:

Character Original Japanese version Streamline English version Disney English version
Satsuki Kusakabe Noriko Hidaka Lisa Michelson Dakota Fanning
Mei Kusakabe Chika Sakamoto Cheryl Chase Elle Fanning
Professor Kusakabe Shigesato Itoi Steve Kramer Timothy Daly
Mrs. Kusakabe Sumi Shimamoto Alexandra Kenworthy Lea Salonga
Kanta Toshiyuki Amagasa Kenneth Hartman Paul Butcher
Nanny Tanie Kitabayashi Natalie Core Pat Carroll
Totoro Hitoshi Takagi Rob Paulsen Frank Welker
Catbus Hitoshi Takagi Frank Welker Frank Welker

Reception

As at September 2008 the film has an 8.1 rating on IMDb,and a 87% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.com. Reviews were very positive.

Source Reviewer Grade / Score Notes
AnimeOnDVD Chris Beveridge Content: A
Audio: B+
Video: B+
Packaging: A-
Menus: B+
Extras: B+ 		Disney DVD/Movie Review
Anime News Network Christopher Macdonald Overall (dub): A
Story: A+
Animation: B
Art: A-
Music: B+ 		Fox DVD/Movie Review
THEM Anime Reviews Raphael See 5 out of 5 Movie Review

References

  1. ^ Ellis-Christensen, Tricia. "Who is Hayao Miyazaki?". Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  2. ^ My Neighbor Totoro (Media notes). Walt Disney Home Entertainment. 2006. {{cite AV media notes}}: |format= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |director= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |titleyear= ignored (help)
  3. ^ http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/totoro/faq.html#mother - Retrieved on 2006-10-30
  4. ^ Totoro FAQ // My Neighbor Totoro // Nausicaa.net
  5. ^ a b Lebra, Takie Sugiyama (1976). Japanese Patterns of Behavior. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. pp. 50–155. ISBN 978-0824804602.
  6. ^ Tasker, Peter (1987). The Japanese: a Major Exploration of Modern Japan. New York: Truman Talley Books. {{cite book}}: Text "pages 66-109" ignored (help)
  7. ^ a b Vaughan, Josephine B. (1952). The Land and People of Japan. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company. {{cite book}}: Text "pages 32-48" ignored (help)
  8. ^ Greydanus, Steven D. "My Neighbor Totoro (1988)". Decent Films Guide. Retrieved 2008-04-23. As elsewhere, Miyazaki's reverence for nature is here expressed imaginatively in terms drawn from the animist tradition of Japan's Shinto heritage. Miyazaki's films are rife with tree-spirits, river gods and the like.
  9. ^ Rycar, Nick. "Okami - Review". Deeko Entertainment. Retrieved 2008-04-23. I'd wager that Okami's designers were touched by the same muse that inspired many of Hayao Miyazaki's Shinto themed features (movies like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke", for those not in the know).
  10. ^ a b Wright, Lucy. "Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki". Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
  11. ^ McCarthy, Helen. Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. pp. 120–1. ISBN 1-880656-41-8.
  12. ^ Cacaoatl (2007-01-17). My Neighbor Totoro Review. Spectrum Nexus.
  13. ^ "Mei and the Kittenbus". Nausicaä.net. Retrieved 2008-09-30.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to My Neighbor Totoro.
Wikiquote has quotations related to My Neighbor Totoro.


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