I Remember: Totoro**

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Thursday, July 16, 2009

When I was a kid, I saw this cartoon and I never forgot it. It was called My Neighbor Totoro, it is a Japanese Anime film, back then Japanese Animes were famous. I don't know if you know him, but I really loved him.

The Setting: 1958, Rural Japan

The Characters:
Satsuki -- the older sister
Mei -- the youngest sister
Totoro -- the Keeper of the Forest
The catbus
Soot Spirits -- small house spirits seen when moving from light to dark places, but they leave when the girls become comfortable in their new house and laugh with their father. They look like dust bunnies with eyes, so cute!

So the story begins when Satsuki and Mei's mother became ill and they moved to a house closer to the hospital where she was confined and there they discovered all sorts of magical creatures living in their house and in the forest. One day, Mei when was playing outside, she saw what looked like 2 rabbit ears, only it turned out not to be a rabbit but a small see through kinda creature and so she followed it under their house, she didn't know what it was, she was too happy when she saw a bigger version of it appear, she called that bigger version "Totoro", although it said in the original Japanese dub, the word "totoro" stemmed from Mei's mispronunciation of the word "troll". Their father tells her later on that Totoro is the Keeper of the Forest.

One rainy night while waiting for their father's bus to arrive at the bus stop, Mei was at Satsuki's back, asleep, Totoro appeared beside them with only a large leaf covering his head, this is the first time Satsuki actually meets Totoro, she gives him an umbrella and he loves it, in turn he gives them something wrapped in leaves, which turned out to be seeds and some nuts, and then he boards the Catbus. That is my fave part, check out the video. I couldn't find one in English, I think the one is in French, but you get what they're saying.