My Neighbor Totoro is probably my favorite movie of all time. Hayao Miyazaki is a well-known Japanese director and has produced many films of astounding quality (like Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke), but I think that Totoro is the greatest thing he has ever done.
The more I watch this movie, the more I like it. It's so visually appealling. It's obvious that a lot of care was taken with the animation. The backgrounds are stunningly detailed and the characters always look so friendly and inviting. I think it's a truly gifted person who can make a giant, growlly "monster" come across as a lovable, fuzzy "friend."
I would easily call Miyazaki a genius in his medium.
I know that some people take fault with Miyazaki movies because the characters (across the different movies) tend to look the same. Personally, I don't think it's all that awful. Miyazaki's people look like real people. They have normal proportions and normal features. No Barbie-syndrome (big breasts, small waists, impossibly long legs) in his films. It's a nice change of pace from other anime or cartoons where the *girls* are given Jessica Rabbit's body...
While the story may not be as in depth as his other works - Totoro is aimed at a much younger crowd than than Mononoke or even Kiki's - and yet there is *something* there that defies generations. An adult can take as much joy away from the film as a toddler. I suppose it's because the story is layered. You can watch Totoro as a "face-value" storyline, but if you look you see that there's much more to it.
The setting is timeless. Because the movie is set in the country and the characters don't spend time watching TV or shooting at each other, you don't really notice that the story isn't taking place in modern-day. Somehow, the film is able to focus attention away from extraneous, ephemeral things like clothes or technologies and refocus attention on the story. They live in the country - necessary for the Totoro part of the story - so that could account for some of it. But, I'm not sure that's the whole answer.
The characters have real-life type relationships with each other. Ones that anyone can relate to. No-one is from outer-space or another dimension. Even the totoros - as fantastic as their existence is - seem plausible in the face of all the normalcy. Which is something else I liked so much. No-one ever told Satsuki and May that the Totoros weren't real. The girls talk to their father about it and even write their mother. But neither parent tries to cheat the girls of their childhood. To me that's one of the most important lessons the movie has to offer: the importance of childhood and imagination.
I, for one, never found myself doubting that the totoros were anything but 100% real. And yet, in such a "realistic" movie (by "realistic" I mean the human characters, interactions and setting) that seems a bit odd. I suppose it's debatable whether the Totoros are real or imaginary. In the end, I don't think that it is important. Whether May did sleep on O Totoro's belly, whether O Totoro made the seeds grow, whether Cat-Bus helped Satsuki find May, whether any of the magical things actually happened, in the end what was most important was that the girls were able to come together and support each other during the tough times.
Note: When I originally wrote this review, My Neighbor Totoro was not available on DVD. It was released (dubbed) on DVD by Fox at the end of 2002.
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