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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Image of Totoro at the bus stop from www.totoro.org
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki again) is a romantic story about animism that turned all my world weariness to jelly and melted it away (for an hour or so). There are big strange creatures, spirits resembling animals to some degree, that inhabit nature and remain neutral with regards to human concerns. Yet they might relate to us, and occasionally there can be a meeting between person and spirit beast. In this case the spirit is Totoro, a furry sleepy grumbling creature. He stands with the girls at the bus stop and although he is cute he is also scary; his eyes are inhuman and stare with fixed incomprehension at such foreign curiosities as little girls. He rumbles and roars, and when he opens his mouth it is huge enough to swallow a house. He seems to be on the brink of eating somebody most of the time. Eventually a cat bus pulls up. Yes it is a flying cat with many legs, wild eyes, a crazed manic grin and zany, bus-like enthusiasm for freakish careening around. The cat has a furry, enclosed seating area in its back. When it picks someone up it opens a door-shape in its own hide for them to enter.
Totoro gives the girls a packet of seeds and they plant them. They wait and wait for the seeds to grow. One night Totoro and his two little companions (small-sized and smaller-sized versions of Totoro) show up, hopping around by the garden. The girls run out to join them and they do a sort of yogic dance, raising their hands and bowing to the earth. The plants start to grow and all of a sudden a giant bursting tree is boiling up out of the earth. It's momentous and breathtaking. Too much growth -- that scary out-of-control power of nature spirits. But its okay, fun even, a sort of permission to mania and exultation in life. Totoro has a spinning top for flying around. The girls jump onto his chest and hang onto his fur, and up they go into the air. Then they all sit up high high in a tree branch and play little owlish night tunes on their ocarinas. It's beautiful.