My Neighbor Totoro

[osprey_archer]

I love My Neighbor Totoro. I love it I love it I love it so much that I have nothing coherent to say about it and must instead list all the things that I love.

I love Totoro and the soot sprites and this magical world that lives alongside the mundane - neither creepy nor sappy, but uncanny.

I love Satsuke and Mei's father, kind and zany and always there; and I love their mother, who gets little screen time but becomes a palpable presense anyway - and as an individual, this mother, not just a generic missing mother figure.

I love Kanta, so shy he lends Satsukea and Mei his umbrella and runs off into the rain without speaking. I love that he and Satsuke become friends - real friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend to be.

And most of all, I love Mei and Satsuke. Four-year-old Mei, adorable and funny and sometimes so sad - some days there's nothing in the world as hard as being four. Her old sister Satsuke, mature but still very much a child: lively and imaginative, easily embarrassed and easily affectionate. I love their love for each other: the strength of the bond around which the warmth of the movie wraps.

So much love!

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Jin, I love this movie so much, too. I first became aware of it when my older daughter, then just two, would come home from Japanese daycare singing the introductory song (in Japanese, of course). Whenever I wanted to her and her older brother cheerful for a walk, we'd sing that song. Finally, we bought the video--at a VERY high price, because in Japan VHS tapes cost a whole lot--and the kids watched it and watched it and watched it.

I love everything about it. I love the sibling relationship. I love the dad. I love the tiny details of life, the way the "camera" focuses on the first drops of rain hitting the dry ground, and then how they become so fast that a mist is rising up where they're hitting. I love the color of sunset when Satsuki's run and run and run after Mae. I love that the threat and danger in this movie isn't from an evil bad guy, and that even though it's a threat that could be treated as a huge tear jerker in a Hollywood movie, it isn't, here.

I love when Kanta runs off too. And when he flies his airplane at home, so happy.

Oh man, I... I just get all choked up thinking about this movie, I love it so much. I love it on its own merits, but also so much for what it has meant for me personally and for our family.

I should scan in the sketch I made, when we lived in Japan, of my two older kids (the only ones I had, at that point) watching it on our tiny TV.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Do! It must be an adorable sketch. (The movie came out in '88. I guess your older kids must be around my age - early twenties?)

My only sadness about the movie is that I couldn't get the original soundtrack to play, just the dub. The Fanning sisters do an excellent job, but I think the songs lost something in translation.

And yes, the sunset when Satsuke is running. I should have added a section about how I love the animation, but then how could I ever stop writing? There's the sunset, and the rain, and the trees - and the shot with the tree growing and growing and GROWING - and the scene where they're standing at the bus stop, and the streeplamp comes on, and it's glowing down on them and Totoro is standing beside and...

Oh, and the wind - the scene when the girls are the wind with Totoro! And the soot sprites racing out of the light at the beginning! The whole movie, really!

Now I want to watch it again. I am at work! I am a responsible worker! I must concentrate on work things!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It had already been out a while when we saw it (we were in Japan 1991-1993), so my kids are actually slightly younger than you, but not by much: oldest is 21, next is 19--they were the two who were in the Japanese daycare. Then the third was born over there; she's 17, and the youngest is 12 going on 13 :-)

I will upload the sketches today!

And yes, the songs are cuter in Japanese

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Here is one, from November 1991--the TV is what they're looking at:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/86761435@N00/4911224757/)

And here's a more detailed one, from just after Christmas 1991

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/86761435@N00/4911226473/)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

So cute!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I love this movie so much. I have never liked another Studio Ghibli movie quite as well, though the latest one was awfully good.

My favorite scene is waiting in the rain when Satsuke gives the Totoro an umbrella. And I really, really want these Totoro cupcakes: http://shibuya246.com/2009/08/29/totoro-cupcakes/

I miss Tokyo.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

TOTORO CUPCAKES. (Really, all cupcakes. But especially cupcakes with adorable cartoon characters.) OM NOM NOM NOM NOM...

[amanen.livejournal.com]

I love this movieeee! My family has had it since before I was born, so I remember watching it when I was four years old. Mei was my favorite character, and I felt so bad for her when her dad and her sister didn't believe her, and she has her angry pouting face and is saying, "I'm not lying!" (Or, "it's not a lie," maybe. I watched it in Japanese...)

Except when I was little, I'd get very worried when Mei went missing, and wanted the movie to hurry up to the part where she got found. But I loved the part where they eat the fresh cucumbers, and and THERE IS SO MUCH I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE.

I remember our family singing the introduction song on hikes while in England. Ahhh, good times.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Mei is the best fictional four-year-old ever. She's just exactly like real four-year-olds except even more intensely so.