I must preface this post by saying that I am not really an anime or a Manga fan at all. I’m not trying to defend some cool kid image or anything, and I’m sure there is some perfectly entertaining and legitimate stuff out there amongst the sea of nerds, I’m just not really into it. That said, I do have a soft spot for Miyazaki films. There is a reason he’s called the Japanese Disney - the films he comes out with are magic. Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are fantastic, and I’m sure I’ll end up writing reviews about them as well someday.
Deemed by the Japan society as “The first Japanese anime anyone should watch”, Totoro tells the charming tale of two sisters who live in the countryside. Their mother is sick in hospital with some unnamed illness, so they live in a haunted house with their doting father and somewhat bizarre surrogate grandmother. Whilst her elder sister is at school, four year old Mei spots two weird, rabbit-like creatures frolicking in the grass. She charges around after them, eventually chasing them back into a giant tree in the centre of a small wood. There she meets and befriends a huge furry spirit creature, which she names Totoro. Eventually her sister meets the beast too, and between them they have plenty of lovingly animated adventures. I don’t want to go any further down the plot as the ending is heartwarming beyond belief, but it needs to be watched from a neutral point of view. What I will say is that one of the characters in the film is Catbus, which is a giant cat that serves as a bus. It’s actually quite scary…
Well, I did warn you. Anyway - this movie is incredibly warm and fuzzy. What I found most interesting about it is that it doesn’t follow your typical children’s movie plot. Whilst it does have all the main characters pulling together to solve a problem, the beauty and indeed the bulk of the film isn’t in the chase but in the build up. There’s an awful lot of character development, to the point where it’s much easier to identify with our Japanese heroines than Shrek, even from a Western perspective. The artwork is, of course, stunning. Miyazaki is renowned for his amazing style, and whilst it has developed with every film, Totoro still looks fantastic despite being nearly twenty years old.
The best element of this film for me is the soundtrack. I have to state now that I am a huge fan of composer Joe Hisaishi, who also worked on Spirited Away, amongst other things. Whilst I wouldn’t say it’s his greatest work (Spirited Away is, of course…) it is beautiful, and if you’re into your film scores or your orchestras, you could do a lot worse than pick up the orchestral soundtrack, although it’s not cheap.
Overall, I absolutely loved this film, and I am quite the critic when it comes to the silver screen. I don’t think you have to be an anime obsessive to enjoy it, because I enjoyed it and I know less about the genre than most. It’s as cute as all hell, but any film that can cause me to laugh like a four year old schoolboy is good in my books.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:15 am
[...] that was interesting. I want to do a proper review of Princess Mononoke at some point as I did with My Neighbour Totoro, so stay tuned for [...]