My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

My apologies; I meant to keep this Studio Ghibli marathon going every day, but I found myself super busy the last few days.  But I'm finally free to continue!  Today, we'll be looking at their third official film, My Neighbor Totoro (1988).

SYNOPSIS:
10-year old Satsuki (Dakota Fanning) and 4-year old Mei (Elle Fanning) move out to the countryside with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother.  While exploring their new home, they come across several spirits of the forest whom they befriend.

REVIEW:
Just a forewarning, there will be some spoilers in this review, just because this film is mostly a day in the life of two children, without very much conflict or drama.  It's hard to not spoil a film where the most interesting turn of events is literally the climax of the film and its last-minute resolution.

As I mentioned in my previous review, this film originally released as a double-feature with Grave of the Fireflies (1988).  It was a fun and light-hearted story written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, as opposed to the dark and tragic story of his Studio Ghibli co-founder, Isao Takahata.  Both films went on to become well-known classics.  Studio Ghibli actually derives its famous logo from the Totoro's of this film.

A classic and globally-recognizable logo comes from this film!

As with a lot of Studio Ghibli films written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, this takes place in an simpler era.  Not too far into the past, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was in the early 20th century.  It takes place out in the Japanese countryside, so it could just be that their technology is a bit behind the times, but our only examples of technology we see in this film is an old-fashioned truck, a motorcycle, and an old-timey phone.

This phone alone dates this film to a long-ago era.

The house that the kids and their father move into is an old traditional Japanese home, but it's a bit run down.  It has rotting pillars and needs a lot of cleaning to make it livable.  The girls find soot sprites living in the house, which decide to float off into the forest once the family settles in.  We'll see these soot sprites again in the film Spirited Away (2001).

A classic fixer-upper Japanese home!

A neighboring old lady was the previous caretaker for the home and insists the kids call her Granny.  She acts as a pseudo babysitter anytime the father has to go into town.  He's a professor at a nearby university, but he seems to do a lot of work from home.  Satsuki starts attending a local school, but her sister Mei stays home with her dad, playing by herself in their yard.

While playing, Mei sees a small furry creature wandering through the yard.  She chases it and another slightly larger furry creature into the forest, where she falls into a hole in the roots of a massive tree. She comes across a giant furry creature, like the other two, napping.  She crawls onto his belly and asks his name.  When he lazily roars out, she replies, "Totoro?"  Apparently, she was trying to say "troll," but the 4-year old couldn't enunciate it well.  It works better in its original Japanese, where their phonetic pronunciation of the English word "troll" would be "to-ro-ru."  A mispronunciation of this word by a Japanese child might come out as "to-to-ro" instead.

Mei meets Totoro for the first time

These trolls, or "Totoro's," are forest spirits, living in the massive tree next to a shrine and protecting the woods.  Mei describes them to Satsuki and their father, but she can't find them again to prove they exist.  The father takes them to the nearby shrine in the forest and bows toward the massive tree, thanking the Totoro's for looking out for them.

Later, during a downpour, the kids try to bring an umbrella to their father's bus stop.  But their father is delayed and they stay alone at the bus stop past dark... until the large Totoro shows up!  They offer him an umbrella in place of the giant leaf he's wearing as a hat.  He's so excited about the umbrella, he offers them a small package of acorns and seeds.  A giant cat bus runs up to the bus stop and Totoro boards it, taking off into the night.  The girls' father arrives soon after and Satsuki excitedly exclaims that she finally got to meet Totoro!

The famous bus stop scene!

One of the nice things about this film is that the adults never tell the kids that magical or spiritual things don't exist, nor do they accuse the kids of lying when they talk about seeing fantasy creatures.  Mei and Satsuki's father tells his daughters that he believes them about the forest spirits, and even provides them with more context on the spirits.  After the children described the soot sprites, it was Granny who explained what exactly they were, speaking about them as if they were fact and not a fantasy creature.  She even claims she used to be able to see them when she was a kid.

Mei finding soot sprites in the attic.

The parenting throughout this film is excellent!  The kids' concerns are handled very well, and none of the adults are just trying to correct the surface behavior, but instead addressing the root cause of frustration and empathizing with the kids.  On top of that, the kids are realistic in their behavior.  They're not super mature and can't always logic their way through their problems.  They actually behave like real children, sometimes being unreasonable or just angry, upset, or frustrated, with no real understanding of how to properly express those feelings.

The kids get excited for their mother to come home in a few days, but then they get a telegram from the hospital stating that she's gotten sick again and will need to stay a bit longer.  This sad turn of events causes an argument between the girls.  Satsuki runs home, where she breaks down crying because she fears that her mother is going to die in the hospital.  Mei, determined to help her mother, decides to walk to the hospital herself.

Of course, the hospital is miles away and little Mei gets lost on her own.  A search party is formed to find her, and Satsuki begs the large Totoro to help out.  He calls the cat bus, which takes Satsuki directly to Mei.

The twelve-legged cat bus with the Cheshire grin. It'd be super creepy in any other situation.

Here's an interesting detail you likely missed: When Mei is found, she's sitting next to a shrine with six figures.  This represents Jizo, a Buddhist deity in Japanese folklore who is known as the protector of children.  So it's implied that Mei, while lost, is still safe and sound.

The shrine honoring the Japanese Bodhisattva, Jizo: protector of children.

Learning that Mei was just trying to get to the hospital, the cat bus changes its destination and brings the children to the hospital.  They see from a distance that their mother is lively and well, chatting with their father.  Satisfied that she'll be fine, they ride home on the cat bus.

Hayao Miyazaki based parts of this film on his own childhood with his brothers.  When he was a kid, their mother was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and suffered from it for nine years, spending most of that time in the hospital.  He's claimed that this film would've been too hard to make if the two kids were boys instead of girls, as it would've hit a little too close to home for him.

In the end credits, we see the kids being read a bedtime story by their mother.  The book she's reading is the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and the troll under the bridge looks exactly like Totoro.  In case you doubted he was actually a troll.

Three Billy Goats Gruff, with a familiar-looking character under the bridge and on the back cover.

This film was originally supposed to only have one 7-year old girl as the protagonist, but Hayao Miyazaki felt the ending needed a suspenseful conflict and couldn't do it well enough with the one girl.  So he split the character into two sisters, 10-yr old Satsuki and 4-year old Mei.  They forgot to update the film poster after the change, though.  It still shows a single 7-year old girl instead of the two sisters who were in that scene in the film.

Interestingly, Satsuki is an old Japanese word for the month of May, and Mei is the Japanese phonetic spelling of the English word May.  Also, in the English dub of this film, both sisters are voiced by real-life sisters, Dakota and Elle Fanning.  This was actually Elle Fanning's first acting role ever.

RECOMMENDATION:
This is a wonderful film!  It's truly a day-in-the-life style film, without much of a plot to speak of.  But the realistic interactions between the children, and the superb way the adults communicate with the children, makes it a beautifully crafted film for all ages.  It's a must-watch for everyone!