He is enormous. He is ancient. He appears only to children and only when it matters. And he carries an umbrella in the rain with the patient dignity of a forest spirit who has been doing this for considerably longer than umbrellas have existed.
Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro arrived in Japan in 1988 as a quiet, plotless, almost uneventful film about two young sisters who move to the countryside with their father while their mother recovers in hospital, and discover that the forest behind their new house is home to something extraordinary. Totoro — the great grey forest spirit, part cat, part bear, part something entirely without precedent — does not speak, does not explain himself and does not do very much in any conventional narrative sense. He simply is. He exists in the way that ancient things exist: completely, without apology, as a fact of the natural world for those who are open enough to perceive it.
What Miyazaki understood in making this film, and what audiences have understood in watching it for nearly forty years, is that wonder does not require a plot. It requires attention. Satsuki and Mei pay attention to the world around them with the full, unselfconscious concentration of childhood, and the world around them responds accordingly. Totoro is the reward for that attention. He is also — in his rounded vastness, his gentle gravity, his absolute unflappability in the face of two small children climbing him like a tree — one of cinema's most purely comforting presences. There is no villain in My Neighbor Totoro. There is only the world, and the forest, and the bus that is also a cat, and the knowledge that something kind is watching over things.
Our My Neighbor Totoro collection brings together officially licensed figures, plush toys, accessories, homeware and gifts from Studio Ghibli's most beloved film — from Totoro and Catbus Funko Pops and collector's pieces to mugs, bags, cushions and keepsakes for fans of every age. For children who have just met Totoro for the first time, and for adults who have never quite stopped needing him.
The forest is full of things worth noticing. Totoro noticed that about you first.
