My Neighbour Totoro (1988) is one of the best-loved films created by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Nearly forty years after its first release, Totoro remains beloved in Japan and abroad, a child’s-eye vision of the sublime and a celebration of the magical richness of the Japanese countryside. Everything feels placed at a child’s level, from the implicit spiritual environmentalism to the characters’ fears of death. Totoro has no fighting, no villains. The film’s artistry is as unassuming as it is extraordinary. Andrew Osmond’s study places Totoro in the context of Miyazaki’s and Studio Ghibli’s films, and considers what makes it so exceptional and seemingly inimitable.
