![my neighbor totoro (1988) my neighbor totoro (1988)](https://www.themodern.org/sites/default/files/myneighbortotoro_still_0.jpg)
![my neighbor totoro (1988) my neighbor totoro (1988)](https://scribemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Tonari-no-Totoro-1988.jpg)
This is instead a resolutely domestic story about a family living in a world not recognisably different from our own - Miyazaki has identified the setting as 1955, and in-film evidence tells us that it's August in the then-farming community of Tokorozawa, but it could take place anywhere that there's a big old house next to a sprawling forest just begging for children to lose themselves in its shade for a long summer day. There are hints of some of these things in Totoro, but hints only. After three features, and healthy portions of three television series, certain recurring elements had definitely established themselves (primarily in the three projects over which the director exercised an especially strong hand): a post-apocalyptic "used future" setting the loving depiction of flight a heavy thematic emphasis on the uncomfortable relationship between technology and machinery on the one hand, and the balance of the natural world on the other, with the post-technological human protagonists caught in between central female characters who are somehow tapped into mystical energy a central male-female relationship that is based on mutual respect and friendship rather than romantic feelings, that nevertheless hews closely to traditional gender roles (man=protector, woman=morally pure). When it was new, My Neighbor Totoro was a work without precedent in Miyazak's canon. Even the word "Totoro" is derived in the cutest possible way it's how a four-year-old mispronounces "tororu", the Japanese word for "troll". "Cute", "silly", "charming", "sweet": these are the key words to describe My Neighbor Totoro. The size disparity between the girl and the creature is maintained, but the lack of space above the Totoro's head emphasises his shape more, the extra space to the girl's right (our left) emphasises his roundness, and the slight redesign of the character makes his eyes much more appealing.īut all this theoretically puffery aside, I think it's probably much easier to explain: the Totoro is big and fluffy, he has no visible mouth, and he is behaving very simply and seriously (stay dry), but doing it in charmingly incompetent, silly way. The same image appears in the film proper, where the different composition (and the noticeably fatter Totoro) makes the image even cuter, if that's possible.
#My neighbor totoro (1988) movie
That poster is one of the sweetest and cutest bits of movie advertising ever, I deem: and it all comes down to the way that the big grey creature - a Totoro - is sheltering from the rain with a leaf that doesn't remotely cover his whole head. If the praise of other animation buffs hadn't been enough to reassure me that I was in for a treat, then the poster would have done the trick.
![my neighbor totoro (1988) my neighbor totoro (1988)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I0103wkhQ-c/maxresdefault.jpg)
Not that I should have needed a "plausible reason" to watch a movie that has been praised to the heavens by pretty much every single person who has ever seen it, but that's the way it goes. When I first had the idea of a Miyazaki Hayao retrospective, one of my biggest reasons for wanting to do it was that it would give me a plausible reason to see his 1988 feature My Neighbor Totoro, which I had, unthinkably, never watched until two days ago.