Like many Miyazaki films, My Neighbour Totoro centres around the domesticity of family life and transforms it into movie magic. Spirited Away created a fantasy land where the mundane took on new meaning, the main backdrop of Howl’s Moving Castle takes a messy kitchen and livens it up with an enchanted fireplace, but both these films are echoes of the earlier My Neighbour Totoro, which was released in 1988.

The iconic giant furry monster of the film, Big Totoro, is based on one of Miyazaki’s childhood fantasies about woodland creatures. Two young sisters, Mei and Satsuki Kusakabe, move to the countryside with their father to a house that is surrounded by and inhabited with sprits of nature. The most memorable of these are the Totoros; furry creatures with distinctive portly stomachs.

As Mei and Satsuki settle into their daily life, their various brushes with these creatures help them to overcome harsh challenges in their life, and along the way reinforces to the audience one of Miyazaki’s most prolific messages: that we should respect nature for its wonder and fragility.

Today, the movie is hailed to be one of the masterpieces of children’s cinema, as its sweet effortless tale of two girls and their brush with magical beings continues to enchant generation after generation.

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