My Neighbor Totoro

is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. It stars the voices of Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto and Hitoshi Takagi, and focuses on two young sisters and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

The film explores themes such as animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living. ''My Neighbor Totoro'' received worldwide critical acclaim, and grossed over worldwide at the box office; the film also grossed significantly more from home video sales and merchandise.

''My Neighbor Totoro'' received numerous awards, including the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, the Mainichi Film Award, and Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 1988. It also received the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards in the same year. The film is considered as one of the top animation films, ranking 41st in ''Empire'' magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010 and the number-one animated film on the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' critics' poll of all-time greatest films. The film and its titular character have become cultural icons, and made multiple cameo appearances in other films. Totoro also serves as the mascot for Studio Ghibli and is recognized as one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation.

Plot

In 1950s Japan, university professor Tatsuo Kusakabe and his daughters Satsuki and Mei (approximately ten and four years old, respectively) move into an old house close to the hospital where the girls' mother, Yasuko, is recovering from a long-term illness. The house is inhabited by small, dark, dust-like house spirits called '' susuwatari'' that can be seen when moving from bright places to dark ones. The ''susuwatari'' leave to find another empty house. Mei discovers two small spirits that lead her into the hollow of a large camphor tree. She befriends a larger spirit, which identifies itself using a series of roars that she interprets as "Totoro". Mei thinks Totoro is the troll from her illustrated book '' Three Billy Goats Gruff''. She falls asleep atop Totoro but when Satsuki finds her, she is on the ground. Despite many attempts, Mei cannot show her family Totoro's tree. Tatsuo comforts her, saying Totoro will reveal himself when he wants to.

The girls wait for Tatsuo's bus, which is late. Mei falls asleep on Satsuki's back and Totoro appears beside them, allowing Satsuki to see him for the first time. Totoro has only a leaf on his head for protection against the rain, prompting Satsuki to offer her umbrella to him. Delighted, he gives her a bundle of nuts and seeds in return. A giant, bus-shaped cat ( Catbus) arrives; Totoro boards it and leaves. A few days after planting the seeds, the girls awaken at midnight to find Totoro and his fellow spirits engaged in a ceremonial dance around the planted seeds. They join in, causing the seeds to grow into an enormous tree. Totoro takes the girls for a ride on a magical flying top. In the morning, the tree is gone but the seeds have sprouted.

The girls discover that a planned visit by their mother has been postponed because of a setback in her treatment. Mei is upset and argues with Satsuki. She leaves for the hospital to take fresh corn to their mother, but gets lost on the way. Mei's disappearance prompts Satsuki and the neighbors to search for her, thinking that Mei has died. In desperation, Satsuki pleads for Totoro's help. Totoro summons the Catbus, which carries Satsuki to Mei's location, and the sisters reunite. The bus then takes them to the hospital, where the girls learn that their mother has been kept in the hospital by a minor cold but is otherwise recovering well. The girls secretly leave the ear of corn on the windowsill, where their parents discover it.

Eventually, their mother returns home and the girls play with other children while Totoro and his friends watch from afar.

Themes

Animism is a major theme in ''My Neighbor Totoro'', according to Eriko Ogihara-Schuck. Totoro has animistic traits and has status because he lives in a camphor tree in a Shinto shrine surrounded by a Shinto rope, and he is referred to as (master of the forest). Ogihara-Schuck writes that when Mei returns from her encounter with Totoro, her father takes Mei and her sister to the shrine to greet and thank Totoro. This is a common practice in the Shinto tradition following an encounter with a . According to Phillip E. Wegner, the film is an example of alternative history, citing the film's utopian-like setting.

Voice cast

Production

Development

After working on ''3000 Miles in Search of a Mother'', Miyazaki wanted to make a "delightful, wonderful film" that would be set in Japan with the idea to "entertain and touch its viewers, but stay with them long after they have left the theaters". Initially, Miyazaki had the main characters Totoro, Mei, Tatsuo, and Kanta. The director based Mei on his niece, and Totoros as "serene, carefree creatures" that were "supposedly the forest keeper, but that's only a half-baked idea, a rough approximation".

Art director Kazuo Oga was drawn to the film when Hayao Miyazaki showed him an original image of Totoro standing in a '' satoyama''. Miyazaki challenged Oga to raise his standards, and Oga's experience with ''My Neighbor Totoro'' began Oga's career. Oga and Miyazaki debated the film's color palette; Oga wanted to paint black soil from Akita Prefecture and Miyazaki preferred the color of red soil from Kantō region. The finished film was described by Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki; "It was nature painted with translucent colors".

Oga's conscientious approach to ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was a style the ''International Herald Tribune'' recognized as " pdatingthe traditional Japanese animist sense of a natural world that is fully, spiritually alive". The newspaper said of the film:

Oga's work on ''My Neighbor Totoro'' led to his continued involvement with Studio Ghibli, which assigned him jobs that would play to his strengths, and Oga's style became a trademark style of Studio Ghibli.

Only one young girl, rather than two sisters, is depicted in several of Miyazaki's initial conceptual watercolor paintings, as well as on the theatrical release poster and on later home-video releases. According to Miyazaki; "If she was a little girl who plays around in the yard, she wouldn't be meeting her father at a bus stop, so we had to come up with two girls instead. And that was difficult." Miyazaki said the film's opening sequence was not storyboarded; "The sequence was determined through permutations and combinations determined by the time sheets. Each element was made individually and combined in the time sheets ..." The ending sequence depicts the mother's return home and the signs of her return to good health by playing with Satsuki and Mei outside.

Miyazaki stated that the story was initially intended to be set in 1955, however, the team was not thorough in the research and instead worked on a setting "in the recent past". The film was originally set to be an hour long but during production it grew to respond to the social context, including the reason for the move and the father's occupation. Eight animators worked on the film, which was completed in eight months.

Tetsuya Endo noted numerous animation techniques were used in the film. For example, ripples were designed with "two colors of high-lighting and shading" and the rain for ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was "scratched in the cels" and superimposed for it to convey a soft feel. The animators stated one month was taken to create the tadpoles, which included four colors; the water for it was also blurred.

Music

The music for ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was composed by Joe Hisaishi, who previously collaborated with Miyazaki on the movies '' Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind'' and '' Castle in the Sky''. Hisaishi was inspired by the contemporary composers Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and John Cage, and described Miyazaki's films as "rich and personally compeling". He hired an orchestra for the soundtrack and primarily used a Fairlight instrument.

The soundtrack for ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was first released in Japan on May 1, 1988, by Tokuma Shoten, and includes the musical score used in the film, except for five vocal pieces that were performed by Azumi Inoue, including "Stroll", "A Lost Child", and "My Neighbor Totoro". It had previously been released as an Image Song CD in 1987 that contains some songs that were not included in the film.

Release

After writing and filming '' Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind'' (1984) and '' Castle in the Sky'' (1986), Hayao Miyazaki began directing ''My Neighbor Totoro'' for Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki's production paralleled his colleague Isao Takahata's production of '' Grave of the Fireflies''. Miyazaki's film was financed by executive producer Yasuyoshi Tokuma, and both ''My Neighbor Totoro'' and ''Grave of the Fireflies'' were released on the same bill in 1988. The dual billing was considered "one of the most moving and remarkable double bills ever offered to a cinema audience".

Box office

In Japan, ''My Neighbor Totoro'' initially sold 801,680 tickets and earned a distribution rental income of in 1988. According to the animation scholar Seiji Kano, by 2005, the film's box-office gross receipts in Japan totalled (). In France, the film has sold 429,822 tickets since 1999. The film has been internationally released several times since 2002. The film has grossed worldwide since 2002. A ''South China Morning Post'' article in 2021 reported that the film has grossed more than $41 million in total.

Thirty years after its original release in Japan, ''My Neighbor Totoro'' received a Chinese theatrical release in December 2018. The delay was due to long-standing political tensions between China and Japan but many Chinese people had become familiar with Miyazaki's films due to rampant video piracy. In its opening weekend, ending December 16, 2018, ''My Neighbor Totoro'' grossed , entering the box-office charts at number two behind Hollywood film ''Aquaman'' and ahead of Bollywood film '' Padman'' at number three. By its second weekend, ''My Neighbor Totoro'' had grossed in China. As of February 2019, it had grossed in China.

English dubs

In 1989, US-based company Streamline Pictures produced an exclusive English language dub of ''My Neighbor Totoro'' for use as an in-flight movie on Japan Airlines flights. In April 1993, Troma Films, under its label 50th St. Films, distributed the dub of the film as a theatrical release. The songs for the Streamline version of ''My Neighbor Totoro'' were sung by Cassie Byram.

In 2004, Walt Disney Pictures produced a new English dub of ''My Neighbor Totoro'' to be released after the rights to the Streamline dub had expired. As is the case with Disney's other English dubs of Miyazaki films, the Disney version of ''My Neighbor Totoro'' has 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 retain the translation as the earlier dub but are sung by Sonya Isaacs. The Disney dub was directed by Rick Dempsey, a Disney executive in charge of the company's dubbing services, and was written by Don and Cindy Hewitt, who had written other dubs for Studio Ghibli.

Disney's English-language dub premiered on October 23, 2005; it was screened at the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival. The cable television network Turner Classic Movies (TCM) held the television premiere of Disney's new English dub in January 2006, as part of the network's tribute to Hayao Miyazaki. TCM aired the dub and the original Japanese film with English subtitles. The Disney version was released on DVD in the United States on March 7, 2006. In Australia, the original English dub was also released by Madman Entertainment on March 15, 2006.

In 2023, the film was re-released in 970 United States locations as part of celebrations to mark the 35th anniversary of its first theatrical release, with showings in both Japanese with English subtitles and with the English dub.

Home media

Tokuma Shoten released ''My Neighbor Totoro'' on VHS and LaserDisc in August 1988. Buena Vista Home Entertainment Japan (now Walt Disney Japan) reissued the VHS on June 27, 1997, as part of their series ''Ghibli ga Ippai''. Disney released the film on Blu-ray in Japan on 2012.

After the rights to the Streamline dub expired in 2004, Walt Disney Home Entertainment re-released the movie on DVD on March 7, 2006, with Disney's newly produced English dub and the original Japanese version. The company reissued ''My Neighbor Totoro'', as well as '' Castle in the Sky'', and ''Kiki's Delivery Service'', with updated cover art highlighting its Studio Ghibli origins, on March 2, 2010, coinciding with the US DVD and Blu-ray debut of ''Ponyo''. ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was re-released by Disney on Blu-Ray on May 21, 2013. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017.

In Japan, ''My Neighbor Totoro'' had sold 3.5million VHS and DVD units as of April 2012, equivalent to approximately () at an average retail price of ( on DVD and on VHS). In the United States, the film sold over 500,000 VHS units by 1996, with the later 2010 DVD release selling a further 3.8million units and grossing in the United States as of October 2018.

In the UK, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared on the annual lists of ten-best-selling foreign language films on home video for five consecutive years, ranking number seven in 2015, number six in 2016 and 2017, number one in 2018, and number two in 2019 below ''Spirited Away