The precise location is later identified as Matsugo, near Tokorozawa, about twenty miles due west of Tokyo-today a bedroom community, but then still sufficiently rural that children would occasionally get a day off of school to tend to farm duties. The year isn’t given onscreen, though Miyazaki’s storyboards place it at 1955. My Neighbor Totoro begins with a father and his two little girls, Satsuki and Mei, arriving at a new house in the country. Now I am contrite, and I am climbing trees to try to find a Totoro. Thus has a little experience spoiled many a perfectly good blowhard opinion. Hell, if Hanna-Barbera was good enough for me, wasn’t it good enough for their posh little darlings? Then, only a couple of years ago, I actually got around to watching Totoro-followed in short order by the entire Miyazaki filmography. When I worked at an East Village video store in the early aughts, I was immensely distrustful of the toff parents who would come in with their designer children every Saturday looking for something, anything by the Great Miyazaki. When Miyazaki announced his retirement shortly after the release of his eleventh animated feature, The Wind Rises, in the summer of 2013, the collective ululation of lament might’ve registered on the Richter scale.Įveryone, it seems, loves Miyazaki and Totoro-which for certain personalities is a red flag. In a list of the “50 Greatest Animated Films” arranged for Time Out by Terry Gilliam, Totoro was ranked #1. Akira Kurosawa expressed his love for the movie’s twelve-legged “nekobus” (catbus). The anime-centric Japanese magazine Animage awarded My Neighbor Totoro their 1988 Grand Prix. The results have been, to say the least, amply rewarded.

This is a lot of time and work to pour into a project with such simple stated goals, but nothing requires so much effort as the appearance of simplicity. The final film, a brisk 86 minutes, was released to theaters some fifteen months later. This is the kind of film I want to make.” Lovers will feel each other to be more precious, parents will fondly recall their childhoods, and children will start exploring the thickets behind shrines and climbing trees to try to find a Totoro. “ My Neighbor Totoro aims to be a happy and heartwarming film, a film that lets the audience go home with pleasant, glad feelings. The concept of the film-to-be is given as follows:

Hayao Miyazaki’s original “Project Plan” for his animated feature My Neighbor Totoro, dated December 1, 1986, appears in the book Starting Point, 1979-1986, a sort-of memoir in the form of the director and draftsman’s collected ephemera.

My neighbor totoro mei