Member-only story
My Neighbour Totoro is the cutest Studio Ghibli film I have seen thus far.
Story
My Neighbour Totoro tells the story of two sisters Satsuki and Mei, who meet and interact with friendly woodland spirits who live near their new house.
Unlike the last two Studio Ghilbi films I watched (Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away) this one doesn’t have a super structured story. When you think about the other two movies, there is a reason for the motivations of the main characters. Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle is trying to reverse the Witch of the Waste’s spell and Chihiro in Spirited Away is trying to get her parents back and change them back into humans, but here, the movie is about two little girls and an adorable wood spirit. That’s it.
Voice Acting
Voice Acting in animation is very important because you need the actors to sell the characters and emotion and that is exactly what the voice actors do. Satsuki and Mei and pretty happy-go-lucky character and their voice actors Noriko Hidaka and Chika Sakamoto capture that joy, They also manage to capture the cadence that children tend to have in their voices.
Fun fact about the voice cast, Dakota and Elle Fanning actually voiced Satsuki and Mei in the 2005 version of the film.
