My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
★★★★ — My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
There are films that arrive quietly and never really leave. My Neighbor Totoro, released in Japan in 1988, is one of them. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, it follows two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who move with their father to a rural house in the Japanese countryside to be closer to their mother, who is recovering in a nearby hospital. The countryside, it turns out, is not quite empty. The ancient camphor tree at the edge of the property is home to Totoro, a large, wordless forest spirit who becomes an unlikely companion to the children. When the younger sister goes missing after a family worry tips her over the edge, the search for her draws the spirits into the human world in a way that is quietly extraordinary.
By 1988, Miyazaki had already established himself as a filmmaker of real ambition and visual imagination. His earlier pictures for Studio Ghibli, including Castle in the Sky and the pre-Ghibli Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, had shown a director fascinated by flight, nature, and the relationship between the human and the non-human. My Neighbor Totoro pulls back from the epic scale of those films and settles into something smaller and more domestic, which, in retrospect, is precisely what makes it so affecting. The film was produced by Studio Ghibli in association with Nibariki and Tokuma Shoten, and released as a double bill alongside Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies, an unusual pairing given the tonal distance between the two films (a gentle family fantasy and one of the most emotionally devastating war films ever made, sharing a single cinema programme). At 86 minutes, My Neighbor Totoro is lean by any measure, never padding its running time for the sake of it. The following year, Miyazaki would release Kiki's Delivery Service, continuing what was becoming a remarkable run of work.
The voice cast in the original Japanese version is anchored by Noriko Hidaka as the older sister Satsuki, Chika Sakamoto as the younger Mei, and Hitoshi Takagi as their father. Shigesato Itoi, primarily known in Japan as a game designer and writer rather than an actor, brings an appealing, slightly distracted warmth to the father, a man trying to hold his family together under real strain without letting it crush the lightness of daily life. Sumi Shimamoto takes the smaller but significant role of the mother. The performances are naturalistic in the way that the best animated films tend to be, the children in particular sounding like actual children rather than polished, stage-school approximations of them.
My daughter's favourite Ghibli film. An absolutely beautiful film. It's gentle, magical, and full of warmth—the kind of movie that feels like a warm hug. My daughter adores it, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. Totoro has this quiet, comforting presence that sticks with you. The animation is stunning in that classic Studio Ghibli way, and it captures childhood wonder so perfectly. It does end a bit abruptly, but maybe that’s part of its charm. A true gem.
For me, that slightly abrupt ending is something I've turned over a few times since watching it, and I think he's right that it might actually be the point. The film is not interested in tying everything into a neat resolution. It trusts the audience, including the younger members of it, to sit with something that feels more like a memory than a plot. That restraint is rarer than it ought to be in family animation, and it's a large part of what separates Miyazaki's work from the more mechanically assembled end of the genre. If you want to see what else he was doing around this period, his later fantasy work shows how that sensibility developed across decades. My Neighbor Totoro remains, though, the one that feels most like something a child found rather than something made for them. There's a difference, and it matters.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 1988 | Watched: 2025-04-15
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for My Neighbor Totoro (1988) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Kids · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · YouTube TV · HBO Max
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Hayao Miyazaki: Castle in the Sky (1986) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) · Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
