My neighbor Totoro is a family favorite. Children and adults love the story of two sisters in the idyllic Japanese landscape with magical creatures. But for some viewers it simmers under the darkness. Totoro is not a cuddly toy. He’s a murderer.
Reading Totoro as the god of death explains the climax of the film – a climax that has always struck me as strange for a variety of reasons. Here is the theory, courtesy of the website Cherry Pistorus (via website fellow):
Rumor has it that Totoro is the god of death, so the people who can see Totoro are near death or already dead. For the story, this means that Mei actually drowned when Mei is missing and a sandal in the pond Is found. When Satsuki is asked about the sandal, she cannot face the truth and lies that it is not Mei’s sandal. So Satsuki goes on a desperate search for Totoro, calls for him and actually opens the door to the realm of the dead himself. With Totoro’s help, she finds her dead sister and they go to her mother’s hospital together. There only the mother, who will soon die too, noticed that the sisters were there.
And in the final scene, Satsuki and Mei have no shadows, some say.
That theory doesn’t stop there. There’s a famous murder case called The Sayama Incident (My neighbor Totoro Takes place in Sayama hill), in which two sisters appeared dead. The story goes that one of the girls said she saw a cat apparition before she committed suicide. According to the Japanese side Flow management, however, this was an urban legend. Most likely it was linked to the Totoro-is-a-god-of-death rumor to make it sound more believable.
Although this connection is not entirely correct, the Sayama incident occurred in May, and both sisters in Totoro are actually called “Mai”: “Satsuki” means “Mai” in Japanese and “Mei” is the Japanese pronunciation for “Mai”.
In Japanese there is also the “May Blues” (五月 病 or gogatsubyou) and typically affects new students and new employees as both the school and work year start in April. This type of depression occurs in people who have difficulty adjusting to a new environment. In My neighbor Totoro, the family has moved to a new area. This can be spun out further as a more general indication of depression.
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The theory of the god of death from Totoro is not new – but it is a theory that won’t die. As it continues to attract attraction and online discussion, the Japanese website is Byokan Sunday pointed out that Studio Ghibli, the studio that Totoro created, disproved these theories several years ago.
“Everyone, don’t worry,” wrote Studio Ghibli. “There is absolutely no truth or configuration that Totoro is the god of death or that Mei is dead My neighbor Totoro. “
Studio Ghibli continued to address the problem of the lack of shadow that surrounds both Satsuki and Mei at the end of the film. This was because, according to Studio Ghibli, the movie’s animators decided that no shadows were required in this scene. “We really don’t want people to believe this rumor,” added the studio.
Art is not finished when the artist says it is. Art has to be seen and interpreted by an audience. Sometimes it is interpreted correctly, sometimes it is not – that is up to the audience.
This rumor, right or wrong, provides an interesting subtext My neighbor Totoro. It provides an additional level of audience interpretation. While some facts may be wrong (particularly regarding the Sayama incident), the idea of a totoro as the subtext of the god of death opens the film up for further discussion – a discussion that Studio Ghibli does not want and has tried to stamp out. But the theory lives on.
This story was originally published on July 16, 2012.
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