Movies - My Neighbor Totoro

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	Movies - My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ - Tonari no Totoro) is a 1988 Japanese animated movie 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.

Characters

Satsuki Kusakabe - 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 - Satsuki's pre-school-aged sister, four years old. 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.
Mr. Kusakabe - The girls' father, who works in the archeology department of a Tokyo university.
Mrs. Kusakabe - The girls' mother, recovering from an unnamed illness at Shichikokuyama Hospital, which is noted for its tuberculosis treatment program. (Miyazaki's mother had tuberculosis when he was a boy.)
Totoro - A grey, friendly forest spirit, at least three meters tall. Totoro is Mei's mispronunciation of tororu, the Japanese version of the English word troll. There are two similar, smaller creatures in the film, also referred to as totoros; the big grey Totoro is named "Ō-Totoro", the middle is "Chuu-Totoro", and the smallest is "Chibi-Totoro". (These names do not appear in the film itself, but are used in ancillary materials.)
Kanta - A preteen boy of their village, ambivalent towards Satsuki. This character resembles Miyazaki in his fondness for cartoons and airplanes.
"Nanny" - Kanta's grandmother, who sometimes takes care of the girls.
Catbus or Nekobasu - a cat that has become a 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. Bake neko are mentioned in several Ghibli films.

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 in the house, 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 called "Soot Gremlins".)

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 she decides is a "totoro". 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 the giant 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 it makes as water hits it. He gives the girls a bundle of nuts and seeds in exchange for the umbrella, and then departs on the Catbus, an enormous grinning cat who has taken the shape of a bus.

After the girls have planted the seeds, they wake up one night to find the three totoros engaged in a dance-like ritual around the planted nuts and seeds. They join the totoros and the seeds sprout and then grow into an enormous tree. The big 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, 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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for My Neighbor Totoro ]

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Movies - My Neighbor Totoro

Characters

Plot

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