Voiceover Cast

Totoro .... Hitoshi Takagi (Japanese) / Frank Welker (English)

Mei Kusakabe ....  Chika Sakamoto (Japanese) / Elle Fanning (English)

Satsuki Kusakabe ....  Noriko Hidaka (Japanese) / Dakota Fanning (English)

Kanta .... Toshiyuki Amagasa (Japanese) / Evan Sabara (English)

Tatsuo Kusakabe (Mr.) .... Shigesato Itoi (Japanese) / Timothy Daly (English)      

Yasuko Kusakabe (Mrs.) .... Sumi Shimamoto (Japanese) / Lea Salonga (English)

Kanta’s Grandmother .... Tanie Kitabayashi (Japanese) / Pat Carroll (English)

Traditional, hand drawn, Japanese animation has had no better animator/storyteller than Hayao Miyazaki, the writer/director/lead animator of, among other films, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and the soon-to-be-released Howl’s Moving Castle. In My Neighbor Totoro, as in other Miyazaki films centered on childhood protagonists, the emphasis is on the wonder and awe that underlies every aspect of childhood, and the mixture of the natural and the magical that imbues mundane, everyday activities. In Miyazaki’s world, benevolent spirits guide nature into harmonious balance, with humans often a threat to the natural world. Not so in My Neighbor Totoro where the central characters live in a two-story, rural house near a verdant forest and an imposing camphor tree, where the title character makes his home. The central characters in My Neighbor Totoro, Satsuki and Mei, are pre-adolescent sisters (one ten, one four years old) who have moved with their father, a university professor, to the countryside, presumably to be near their ailing mother, who is under constant medical care at a local hospital. The first section of [i]My Neighbor Totoro[/i] focuses almost exclusively on the two sisters as they move into their new home, explore their new surroundings, and make new friends. Their new home, however, is “haunted” by soot sprites, harmless, playful minor spirits that apparently inhabit only abandoned houses. Setsuki and Mei’s arrival sends the soot sprites scurrying into the attic (and hidden corners) of the house. As the younger sister, Mei is far more inquisitive than Satsuki, and more open to the magical possibilities of their new home and its environment. Mei is the catalyst for the first meeting with Totoro, an enormous, non-verbal, forest spirit with a furry body and catlike whiskers. Before Mei meets Totoro, however, she encounters two other, smaller forest spirits (one of them is prone to winking out of existence), who collect acorns (and occasionally leave them as gifts). Mei follows one of the smaller spirits through a thick tangle of roots and leaves, finding herself in the center of the forest. There, she encounters the sleeping, purring giant, Totoro, who looks at her first with sleepy indifference and later with genuine warmth. Here, Miyazaki’s obvious affection for his characters is in evidence. Given his large size and unusual appearance, children might be initially afraid of Totoro, but with Mei as the audience stand-in, her unstated trust in Totoro’s gentle nature becomes the audience's as well. Another director might have made Mei and Totoro’s first encounter with the giant forest spirit mawkish and sentimental. In Miyazaki’s more assured direction, the scene is filled with the tenderness natural to two friends meeting again after a long absence. Later, the older Satsuki is introduced to Totoro at a lonely, countryside bus stop, where her fear and disbelief are rapidly transformed into warmth and acceptance. Satsuki and Mei have been waiting hours for their father in rain, when Totoro casually appears. It seems forest spirits require public transportation, but in Miyazaki’s world, even something as mundane as a bus takes on a fantastical, whimsical quality. Miyazaki also injects light-heated humor into the scene, as Satsuki offers an umbrella to the soaking wet Totoro; the umbrella, of course, only partially covers his head. It’s this gift, however, that signals and solidifies Satsuki’s acceptance and affirmation of the magical possibilities inherent in Totoro’s presence. In a later scene, Miyazaki’s preoccupation with respect and protection of the natural world appears, but as subtext, with Totoro clearly marked as a, if not the, spirit responsible for the growth of new plants and trees. The mother’s illness, however, threatens to derail the Mei and Satsuki’s idyllic, summertime encounters with Totoro, suggesting the transitory nature of the moments of pure joy and wonderment experienced by Mei and Satsuki. If My Neighbor Totoro has any flaws, they can be found here, in Miyazaki’s rushed handling of the subplot involving the girls’ mother, and the abrupt, unsatisfying denouement that leaves the family at the center of My Neighbor Totoro reunited, but only off screen (and in the end credits). Some viewers might also notice that My Neighbor Totoro doesn't have a traditional villain. Instead, the conflicts are more abstract, found between Satsuki and Mei (with Satsuki torn between her love for her younger sister and her desire for friends closer to her age) and in the subplot, where the mother's illness is left unspecified (there the conflict is between knowing and not knowing the seriousness of the mother's illness, something the father tries, unsuccessfully, to hide from his two daughters). It's here in the "realistic" subplot, that an undercurrent of melancholy can be found, a melancholy that ultimately permeates the entire film, with Totoro and friends symbolic of the ways children can and do cope with emotional pain and grief, through their imaginations. © Mel Valentin, 18th February, 2005