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My Neighbor Totoro

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My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 animated movie written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.

Troma Films produced a 1993 dub of the film co-produced by Jerry Beck. It was released on VHS and DVD by Fox Home Video. Troma's and Fox's rights to this version expired in 2004.

The film was re-released by Disney on March 7, 2006. 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.

In the 1950s, a Tokyo university professor and his two daughters 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 rationalizes as makkurokurosuke — an optical illusion seen when moving from light to dark places.

Mei, the younger daughter, discovers two small magical creatures outside the house, which lead her into the hollow of a large Camphor Laurel tree. There she meets and befriends a large version of the same kind of spirit, which identifies itself by roaring at an indescribable volume. Her father later tells her that this is the "keeper of the forest".

One rainy night, while the girls are waiting for their father's bus, they encounter Totoro, who is looking rather forlorn with only a leaf on his head for protection against the rain. When Satsuki, the older daughter, offers him an umbrella, he's delighted at both the shelter and the sounds made upon it by falling raindrops. The girls give the giant the umbrella as a gesture of friendship, and receive in return a bundle of nuts and seeds. Totoro then boards the shape-changing Catbus.

After the girls have planted the seeds, they awaken one night to find Totoro and his two miniature colleagues engaged in a dance-like ritual around the planted nuts and seeds. They join in, the seeds sprout and then grow into an enormous tree. Totoro then takes 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. "It was a dream but it wasn't a dream!" they shout.

The final encounter with Totoro in the film occurs when Mei, distraught when she learns that their mother's visit home has been cancelled due to apparent worsening conditions (a suspicion which proves to be unfounded), 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. He summons the Catbus, which rescues Mei and whisks her and Satsuki over the countryside to see their mother in the hospital. When the Catbus departs, it fades away from the girls' sight.

The closing credits 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 - An 11-year-old girl. Satsuki is the traditional name of the fifth month of the Japanese calendar, the equivalent of the English May.
• Mei Kusakabe - Satsuki's four-year-old sister. Her name deliberately echoes her sister's, reflecting the fact that the story originally featured one girl, who was then divided into an older and younger sister.
• Tatsuo Kusakabe - The girls' father, who works in the archeology and anthropology departments of a Tokyo university.
• Yasuko Kusakabe - The girls' mother, recovering from an unnamed illness (confirmed by Miyazaki as being tuberculosis) at Shichikokuyama Hospital, which is noted for its tuberculosis treatment program.
• Totoro - A grey, friendly forest spirit, at least three meters tall. Totoro is Mei's mispronunciation of tororu, Japanese for troll. There are two similar, smaller creatures in the film, also referred to as totoro; the big grey Totoro is named "O-Totoro", or "Miminzuku", the middle is "Chu-Totoro", or "Zuku", and the smallest is "Chibi-Totoro", or "Mimi". (These names do not appear in the film itself, but are used in ancillary materials.)
• Kanta Ogaki - A preteen boy of their village, ambivalent towards Satsuki. This character resembles Miyazaki in his fondness for cartoons and airplanes.
• "Granny" or Nanny (Obachan) - Kanta's grandmother, who sometimes takes care of the girls.
• Catbus - a house cat that undergoes a metamorphosis into a passenger bus, based on the Japanese belief that if a cat grows old enough, it gains magical shape-changing powers, and is called a "bake neko".

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "My Neighbor Totoro".

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