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Title: 
My Neighbour Totoro

Creator: 
Hayao Miyazaki

Year: 
1988

Manga Incarnations:
None

Anime Incarnations:
My Neighbour Totoro - Feature Film (Optimum Asia)
Mei & The Kittenbus (Unlicensed)

Game Incarnations:
None

Overview:
Whilst waiting for their mother to be released from hospital two young children move into a new house with their father and begin exploring the area.  They soon encounter a legendary creature known as Totoro, and a series of magical

Mei

experiences follow.  However, when one of the girls journeys alone to see her mother the other must enlist Totoro's help to find her...
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Random Trivia:

1.  My Neighbour Totoro was the first Studio Ghibli film to have a large amount of merchandise produced for it.  However, instead of being produced to promote the film it was in fact released because of public demand after a limited run of Totoro stuffed toys had proven insanely popular.

2.  My Neighbour Totoro merchandise alone provides sufficient income to keep Studio Ghibli in the black despite their notoriously expensive productions.

3.  Financial backers failed to see the potential of My Neighbour Totoro, and it was only able to begin production when approved as part of a double-funding deal with Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies.

4.  As part of the funding deal the harrowing Grave of the Fireflies and the cheerful My Neighbour Totoro were shown together in schools as possibly the most bizarre double bill ever.

5.  For their original American release, 20th Century Fox wanted to remove a scene in which the two girls have a bath with their father.  Hayao Miyazaki, who had been incensed by the heavy cuts given to his film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind years previously on its US release, refused point blank and the film was released uncut.

6.  Renowned anime and manga guru Helen McCarthy lists My Neighbour Totoro as her favourite film of all time.

7.  Totoro makes a brief cameo appearance during a parade of ghosts and demons in Isao Takahata's Pom Poko.

8.  Totoro has also appeared in the anime His & Her Circumstances, and more randomly as a bubble in Neil Gaiman's comic book series The Sandman.

9.  A short anime spin-off called Mei and the Kittenbus was made by Miyazaki solely to be shown in the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo.
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If you liked this try:

Kiki's Delivery Service (Anime - Optimum Asia)
My Neighbours the Yamadas (Anime - Optimum Asia)
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