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My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro

Fantasy · Animation · Family · 1988

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

Movie details

My Neighbor Totoro

“He's your friendly neighbourhood forest spirit!”

1988 Fantasy · Animation · Family 1h 26m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

8.1 / 10

441K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

94 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

87 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

8.1 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over My Neighbor Totoro?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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My Oni Girl

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Hayao Miyazaki

Written by

Hayao Miyazaki

Noriko Hidaka

Noriko Hidaka

Satsuki Kusakabe (voice)

Chika Sakamoto

Chika Sakamoto

Mei Kusakabe (voice)

Hitoshi Takagi

Hitoshi Takagi

Totoro (voice)

Shigesato Itoi

Shigesato Itoi

Tatsuo Kusakabe (voice)

Sumi Shimamoto

Sumi Shimamoto

Yasuko Kusakabe (voice)

Tanie Kitabayashi

Tanie Kitabayashi

Granny (voice)

Toshiyuki Amagasa

Toshiyuki Amagasa

Kanta Ogaki (voice)

Court is in session

Put My Neighbor Totoro on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Prestige Tourist

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.