My neighbor totoro bus stop
Miyazaki excels at keeping his stories planted in a true sense of reality while adding in fantasy elements. With the recent experiences behind them, they are more ready to face future challenges on their own.
In the end, the girls maybe didn’t really need the help of the forest spirits, but they did have their burdens eased.
There are only the everyday fears of loss and mortality to be conquered. There are no villains here, no bullies to be defeated. The drama of the search, and the question of the mother’s health, provides all the conflict the story needs. Mei’s disappearance follows the receipt of a disturbing telegram, which gives the story some sudden emotional weight.
While waiting at a bus stop, they end up meeting the huge Totoro once again, and encounter a “cat bus.” Their relationship with the forest spirits pays dividends when they wish to have some acorns sprout, and more importantly later on when Mei goes missing while trying to walk all the way to the hospital to find her mother. Vignettes of Tatsuki and Mei at the school, and talking with their neighbor “Granny” follow, leading to a more magical sequence where the two sisters try to bring their father an umbrella. Mei relates her story of the Totoro, and surprisingly her father believes her, explaining that she has met a spirit of the forest. Mei befriends the creature, and later falls asleep, only to be discovered later by her sister and father. She finally emerges into a large cavern where sleeps an immense creature similar to the smaller ones she followed, that we come to know as a Totoro. Mei gives chase to them, and her chase eventually leads into a tunnel formed within the foliage. One day, Mei spots a pale, translucent creature and then a larger blue one joins that one. Their father (Tim Daly) works at a Tokyo university, and as he commutes there daily by bus and rail, this leaves the girls plenty of time for looking around their new place. The soot sprites are the least of the wonders they encounter, however. Early in their explorations, they encounter little fuzzy black creatures in the house, which they learn are “soot sprites,” and thus they are introduced to the magic present around them. They are quick to explore their new surroundings, including their new character home and the surrounding yard, while admiring the rice fields just across the road. Two sisters, eleven year-old Satsuki and four-year old Mei (played by real-life sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning), move to the country with their father, while their mother (Philippines performer Lea Salonga) recuperates from an illness in a nearby hospital. Still, each film is now seen as a classic, and Totoro has in particular endured as a merchandizing success in Japan. Predictably, the double bill was not entirely successful, as the two films had wildly different tones and targeted different types of audiences. The idea was to get the publisher of the well known Grave of The Fireflies story to produce a film version which Ghibli would animate and then pair the two films together to enhance the potential viewership. Simply put, My Neighbor Totoro was seen as a financial risk. This may seem like an odd couple, and indeed it was but there was a reason for it. Oddly enough, it was originally double-billed in Japan with the Ghibli film Grave Of The Fireflies, a devastating World War II film. The mix of themes provides the film its uniqueness, and has had some critics hailing it a classic. He wrote My Neighbor Totoro himself, intending it to be a gently told yet harshly true-to-life tale that juxtaposed our everyday reality with magical creatures.
Two young sisters meet helpful spirits of nature that help them cope while they wait for their mother to come home from the hospital.įollowing his rather adventurous features Nausicaa and Castle In The Sky, Hayao Miyazaki set out to create a film set in Japan which could be enjoyed by all ages.
My neighbor totoro bus stop plus#
Studio Ghibli (1988), Walt Disney Home Entertainment (March 2, 2010), 2 discs, 86 mins plus supplements, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, Dolby Digital 2.0, Rated G, Retail: $29.99