I just really love ghibli movies ok….they´re the only thing in the world that gives me happiness so thank you Hayao Miyazaki and here´s a sad ghibli boy that i drew. Pls enjoy my dudes
More often than not, family films are based around the idea of a child having to survive in an adult world, or a child being forced to deal with situations and emotions far beyond their years. Take a film like The Wizard of Oz, for example. It’s a film that places its young protagonist in an outlandish, adult situation, forcing her to grow up and deal with her problems responsibly.
This is all well and good, and The Wizard of Oz is a film with clear, relevant morals about maturity and good sense, but when you’re dealing with a younger child, it’s impossible to put them in these situations - it’s too much of a jump. This is something that Hayao Miyazaki recognised with My Neighbour Totoro, a film about two young children dealing with their mother’s illness in the only way they know how - by retreating into their imagination.
Miyazaki is very good at creating strong children characters. Sheeta from Castle in the Sky (1986), Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), and Chihiro (Sen) from Spirited Away (2001) are all examples of strong, well rounded children in Miyazaki’s films, but they are characters forced to grow up and fend for themselves. In My Neighbour Totoro, however, the children, Mei and Satsuki, are living in a child’s world, with all the blissful ignorance that comes with it.
With My Neighbour Totoro, Miyazaki has made a film about how fantastic a coping mechanism a child’s mind can be. The young girls are both delightful, always playing and laughing, acting as young children should - they don’t seem to have a care in the world.
Except that they do. Their mother has been in hospital for a long time with an unknown illness, and they have just moved to a new village with their father. It is here that the girl’s start to embrace the supernatural elements that seemingly surround them. Soot sprites, a Catbus (quite literally a bus that is a cat) and Totoro, a bear-like God of the forest, all enter their lives when they need them the most. But are they real?
The concept of magic is introduced early on by the character of Granny, the family’s next door neighbour, who explains that the children have seen soot sprites - this wouldn’t be a Miyazaki film without magic. It is from here that the girls start to see all manner of wonderful, supernatural things.
They’re so taken with these things that they seem to be determined to prove Totoro is real, and their father is happy to believe them. While this doesn’t answer the question of whether they’re real or not, it does suggest that this isn’t something that Miyazaki is interested in. The fact that the girl’s believe it to be true is good enough.
Miyazaki seems to be framing this act of faith and imagination on the part of the girls as blind escapism from the pains of their life. They have so much to deal with that they need something to preoccupy them, and their magical friend Totoro is almost too good to be true.
In this sense, My Neighbour Totoro isn’t a film about personal growth. It’s about holding onto the naivety of youth. If the children here were older they’d be rebelling against themselves, but Miyazaki’s sense of nostalgia (and possibly regret at his own lost childhood) allows the characters to flourish in their childishness.
At one point, their mother says “the girls act so strong but I think it’s been harder than they let on”. They’d have found it so much harder without Totoro.
