My Neighbor Totoro
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- For the Clemson, SC Transit System also known as CATbus, see Clemson Area Transit.
| My Neighbor Totoro となりのトトロ | |
|---|---|
| Image:My Neighbor Totoro - Tonari no Totoro (Movie Poster).jpg | |
| Directed by | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Produced by | Toru Hara |
| Written by | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Starring | Chika Sakamoto Noriko Hidaka Hitoshi Takagi |
| Music by | Joe Hisaishi |
| Distributed by | Studio Ghibli (Japan) Troma Films - 1993 dub (USA) Disney - Disney dub (USA) |
| Release date(s) | Image:Flag of Japan (bordered).svg April 16 1988 Fox Dub Image:Flag of the United States.svg 1993 Disney Dub Image:Flag of the United States.svg March 7 2006 |
| Running time | 86 minutes |
| Language | Japanese |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ Tonari no Totoro?), or My Neighbour Totoro on UK DVD box titles, is a 1988 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.
Troma Films produced a 1993 dub of the film co-produced by Jerry Beck. It was released on VHS and DVD by Fox Home Video. Troma's and Fox's rights to this version expired in 2004.
An ani-manga version of My Neighbor Totoro was published in English by Viz Communications starting on November 10, 2004.
The film was re-released by Disney on March 7, 2006. It features a new dub cast. This DVD release is the first version of the film in the United States to include both Japanese and English language tracks, as Fox did not have the rights to the Japanese audio track for their version.
Contents |
[edit] Characters
- Satsuki Kusakabe (草壁皐月 Kusakabe Satsuki) - An 11-year-old girl. Satsuki is the traditional name of the fifth month of the Japanese calendar, the equivalent of the English May.
- Mei Kusakabe (草壁メイ Kusakabe Mei) - Satsuki's four-year-old sister. Her name deliberately echoes her sister's, reflecting the fact that the story originally featured one girl, who was then divided into an older and younger sister. (The widely-distributed promotional image for the film of a girl standing next to Totoro at a bus stop reflects the earlier conception with a single child.)
- Tatsuo Kusakabe(草壁達夫 Kusakabe Tatsuo) - The girls' father, who works in the archeology and anthropology departments of a Tokyo university.
- Yasuko Kusakabe(草壁靖子 Kusakabe Yasuko) - The girls' mother, recovering from an unnamed illness (confirmed by Miyazaki as being tuberculosis<ref name="tuberculosis">http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/totoro/faq.html#mother – Retrieved on 2006-10-30</ref>) at Shichikokuyama Hospital, which is noted for its tuberculosis treatment program. (Miyazaki's mother had tuberculosis when he was a boy.)
- Totoro (トトロ) - A grey, friendly forest spirit, at least three meters tall. Totoro is Mei's mispronunciation of torōru, Japanese for troll. There are two similar, smaller creatures in the film, also referred to as totoro; the big grey Totoro is named "Ō-Totoro", or "Miminzuku", the middle is "Chū-Totoro", or "Zuku", and the smallest is "Chibi-Totoro", or "Mimi". (These names do not appear in the film itself, but are used in ancillary materials.)
- Kanta Ogaki (大垣寛太 Ogaki Kanta) - A preteen boy of their village, ambivalent towards Satsuki. This character resembles Miyazaki in his fondness for cartoons and airplanes.
- "Granny" or Nanny (お祖母ちゃん Obachan) - Kanta's grandmother, who sometimes takes care of the girls.
- Catbus (猫バス Nekobasu) - a house cat that undergoes a metamorphosis into a passenger bus, based on the Japanese belief that if a cat grows old enough, it gains magical shape-changing powers, and is called a bake neko. [1] Bake neko are mentioned in several Ghibli films.
[edit] Plot
In the 1950s, a Tokyo university professor and his two daughters move into an old house in rural Japan, so as to be closer to the hospital where his wife is recovering from an illness. The daughters find that the house is inhabited by tiny animated dust creatures called soot sprites, which their father rationalizes as makkurokurosuke — an optical illusion seen when moving from light to dark places. (These creatures are referred to as "dust bunnies" and "soot spirits" in the 1993 English dub; in the Disney version, they are variously called "soot gremlins" or "soot sprites". In the English subtitles of the first Japanese-language version to find its way to America, they were "Black Soots".)
Mei, the younger daughter, discovers two small magical creatures outside the house, which lead her into the hollow of a large Camphor Laurel tree. There she meets and befriends a large version of the same kind of spirit, which identifies itself by roaring at an indescribable volume. Her father later tells her that this is the "keeper of the forest".
One rainy night, while the girls are waiting for their father's bus, they encounter Totoro, who is looking rather forlorn with only a leaf on his head for protection against the rain. When Satsuki, the older daughter, offers him an umbrella, he's delighted at both the shelter and the sounds made upon it by falling raindrops. The girls give the giant the umbrella as a gesture of friendship, and receive in return a bundle of nuts and seeds. Totoro then boards the shape-changing Catbus.
After the girls have planted the seeds, they awaken one night to find Totoro and his two miniature colleagues engaged in a dance-like ritual around the planted nuts and seeds. They join in, the seeds sprout and then grow into an enormous tree. Totoro then takes the girls for a ride on a magical flying top. In the morning, the girls find that there is no tree in their yard, but that the seeds have indeed sprouted. "It was a dream but it wasn't a dream!" they shout.
The final encounter with Totoro in the film occurs when Mei, distraught when she learns that their mother's visit home has been cancelled due to apparent worsening conditions (a suspicion which proves to be unfounded), sets off on foot to the hospital and gets lost. Desperate to find her sister, Satsuki returns to the camphor laurel tree and pleads for Totoro's help. He summons the Catbus, which rescues Mei and whisks her and Satsuki over the countryside to see their mother in the hospital. When the Catbus departs, it fades away from the girls' sight.
The closing credits feature scenes of Satsuki and Mei playing with other human children, with Totoro and his friends as unseen bystanders. Miyazaki has asserted that the girls would never see Totoro again, but that the spirits would always be watching over them.
[edit] Totoro and Shinto
In the film, Mei refers to Totoro as an obake. At another point in the film, Satsuki talks to Mei about what she has just met. Mei says "totoro" and Satsuki asks whether she means a troll. Mei responds in the affirmative and repeats "totoro", which seems to imply that totoro is a childish mispronounciation of the Japanese version of troll (torōru). This would fit with other features of the film which mix traditional with modern/western influenced elements (eg. the house, the cat-bus, totoro's umbrella). Whether the Westernisation is in the perceptions of the urbanised family who are the main focus of the film will remain a moot point because the film is deliberately vague about the distinction between perception and reality.
Many people interpret totoro as a kami spirit of the Shinto religion. Shinto kami are often guardian spirits of the land, concerned with natural phenomena like wind and thunder and natural objects like the sun, mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks. There are no clearly defined criteria for what should or should not be worshipped as kami, and they have no defined shape.
Totoro's home is in a shinto shrine, which is demarcated by a shimenawa rope around his tree, and a torii on the path leading to the shrine.
[edit] Release history
My Neighbor Totoro was released as a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies. There are two theories for this: one was that Totoro would not be successful. Another theory is that Grave of the Fireflies (directed by Miyazaki's longtime colleague Isao Takahata) was believed to be too depressing for audiences by itself, and thus needed a lighter animation to accompany it. The late Yoshifumi Kondo provided character designs for both films.
In 1993, Fox released the first English-language version of My Neighbor Totoro, produced by John Daly and Derek Gibson (the producers of The Terminator) with co-producer Jerry Beck. Fox and Troma's rights to the film expired in 2004. Disney's English-language version premiered on October 23, 2005; it then appeared at the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival. The Turner Classic Movies cable television network held the television premiere of Disney's new English dub on January 19, 2006, as part of the network's salute to Hayao Miyazaki. (TCM aired the dub as well as the original Japanese with English subtitles.) The Disney version was released on DVD on March 7, 2006.
As is the case with Disney's other English dubs of Miyazaki films, the Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, and Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe.
[edit] Other appearances
- Miyazaki made a 13-minute "sequel" to the film, "Mei and the Kittenbus", that has never yet been distributed or broadcast. It is shown exclusively in the Ghibli Museum and initially was only shown for a short time [2]. It reappears at intervals there, most recently from October through mid-November 2006. [3].
- Totoro also made a brief cameo appearance during a scene in Pompoko, another Studio Ghibli film.
- Episode XXXIII of Samurai Jack has Jack encountering an annoying creature whose design is clearly influenced by the big Totoro. The episode also includes an artifact called the Crystal of Cagliostro, an apparent allusion to Miyazaki's earlier film The Castle of Cagliostro.
- The character of Totoro made a cameo appearance in one episode of the Gainax TV series Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo (His and Her Circumstances), which was likely director Hideaki Anno's way of paying tribute to Miyazaki. (Anno worked as a key animator on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 and considers Miyazaki a mentor.) In fact, Gainax reportedly invited the animator who did the original key animation for Totoro to work on that scene, although they never revealed the animator's name. In addition, one KareKano character, Tsubasa Shibahime, is a huge Totoro fan.
- Totoro has made three cameo appearances on Comedy Central's Drawn Together. He is a student in "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education", a Japanese businessman in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", and a wedding guest in "Freaks & Greeks".
- In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Brief Lives, Delirium blows bubbles into a number of impossible shapes, one of which is Totoro holding an umbrella.
[edit] Trivia
- The main Totoro has become a mascot for Studio Ghibli, gracing the studio's logo at the start of their films.
- There is a real park in Higashimurayama, Tokyo named Hachikokuyama which was used as the inspiration for the mountain where Satsuki and Mei's mother was hospitalized.
- Matsugo, the area where Mei and Satsuki live, is a real district of Tokorozawa, Saitama.
- When the cat bus is about to take Mei and Satsuki to the hospital, the destination sign displays several real locations in Tokorozawa. In the final display, the final character for 七国山病院 appears upside-down.
- Asteroid 10160 has been named "Totoro" by Takao Kobayashi. The name was approved by the International Astronomical Union.
- The 2005 World Expo in Japan featured a "Totoro" house, a recreation of Satsuki and Mei's house in the movie.
- Ken Jennings, the winner of the most games in the history of the TV game show Jeopardy!, carries a small plush "Totoro" figure in his pocket for good luck.
- The track "Kaze No Toorimichi" from the My Neighbor Totoro soundtrack was arranged and used in the videogame Goemon's Great Adventure (for Nintendo 64). It is played in the Mokeke Forest stage and its name is "Tororo-kun Is My Neighbor".
[edit] Credits
- Direction, Original Story & Screenplay
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Music
- Joe Hisaishi
- Production
- Studio Ghibli
- Executive Producer
- Yasuyoshi Tokuma
- Producer
- Toru Hara
[edit] Cast
The movie stars the following voice actors:
| Character | Disney English version | Streamline English version | Original Japanese version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satsuki Kusakabe | Dakota Fanning | Lisa Michelson | Noriko Hidaka |
| Mei Kusakabe | Elle Fanning | Cheryl Chase | Chika Sakamoto |
| Professor Kusakabe | Timothy Daly | Steve Kramer | Shigesato Itoi |
| Mrs. Kusakabe | Lea Salonga | Alexandra Kenworthy | Sumi Shimamoto |
| Kanta | Paul Butcher | Kenneth Hartman | Toshiyuki Amagasa |
| Nanny | Pat Carroll | Natalie Core | Tanie Kitabayashi |
| Totoro | Frank Welker | The late Hitoshi Takagi | Hitoshi Takagi |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- My Neighbor Totoro at the Internet Movie Database
- My Neighbor Totoro review by Roger Ebert
- My Neighbor Totoro at Nausicaa.net
- Synopsis & Media at the FilmFantastic Film Festival
- Transcript of My Neighbor Totoro; a comparison of the Fox English dub with a more literal translation of the original Japanese
- DVD Image Comparison: contains stills comparing the quality of the Japanese and American DVDs
- Journal of Religion and Film: Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime
[edit] References
| Studio Ghibli Films |
|---|
| Pre Ghibli Films |
|
Hols: Prince of the Sun (1968) • Panda! Go, Panda! (1972) • Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1977) • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) |
| Ghibli Films |
|
Castle in the Sky (1986) •
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) •
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) •
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) •
Only Yesterday (1991) •
Porco Rosso (1992) •
Ocean Waves (1993) •
Pom Poko (1994) •
Whisper of the Heart (1995) •
Princess Mononoke (1997) •
My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) •
Spirited Away (2001) •
The Cat Returns (2002) •
Howl's Moving Castle (2004) •
Tales from Earthsea (2006)
|
| Studio Ghibli Shorts |
|
Nandarou (1992) • On Your Mark (1995) • Ghiblies (2000) • Ghiblies Episode II (2002) • Mei and the Kittenbus (2003) • The Night of Taneyamagahara (2006) |
| See also... |
|
Ghibli Museum • Katsuya Kondō • Yoshifumi Kondō • Gorō Miyazaki • Hayao Miyazaki • Kazuo Oga • Yasuo Ōtsuka • Toshio Suzuki • Isao Takahata • |
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