My Neighbor Totoro Turns 25

I am mildly ashamed to admit it, but I was a very late convert to the magic of Studio Ghibli and the genius of Hayao Miyazaki.

My introduction was Spirited Away and only due to the attention it gained post-2003 Oscars at which it won Best Animated Feature. But even then it was a good few years before I ventured into anything else by either the studio or the director.

Made in 1988, My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro - となりのトトロ) only came onto my radar in at least 2007 long after I had first noticed him in those Morning Glory stores filled with brightly coloured Japanese figurines.

Totoro is the story of two young girls who move into a house in the country with their father, which they find is inhabited by small sooty house spirits. The spirits guide the children's discovery of their new home and leave the house once the children become used to their new environment.

Later Mei is led to a tree nearby her home and happens across another spirit, whom she dubs Totoro, and magic ensues.

What I find wonderful about Miyazaki's work is the way that he balances emotions and wonder in his films. In Totoro the children have been uprooted and moved to a new and unfamiliar place because their mother is sick. Moving home and having family members in hospital are generally not easy situations to deal with, however here they are guided through the transition by the house spirits, initially, and the guardian of the forest, Totoro. 

As they wait for their father at the bus stop, the whimsical Totoro appears to Satsuki providing her with a comfort, reassurance, and almost distraction, until her father arrives. In the cold, he brings her warmth and this radiates throughout the film.

Oh, and of course there's a Catbus.

I think there's a special something in Miyazaki's films that is just for grown ups. It's a feeling of nostalgia and an awakening of that long lost sense of whimsy and belief in the unbelievable. For me, this experience is heightened by listening to the characters speak in their native Japanese, a language that is far more expressive, at least in my experience from Miyazaki's movies, than any English dub. I think that's something children miss from these films, but at the same time it is these elements that I hope they too come to appreciate some day.

So as it turns out, My Neighbor Totoro is now 25, and to celebrate the lovely people at Madman have released a special anniversary limited edition box set, which includes a DVD and Blu-Ray as well as an official Art of My Neighbor Totoro book and exclusive art cards. This would make a great gift for anyone passionate about Miyazaki and Ghibli or, alternative, a keepsake for those children in your life who one day you'll be able to share it with.

-Stevie O'C

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Haganai (I Don't Have Many Friends) Reviewed

Haganai (I Don't Have Many Friends) follows the story of Kodaka, a teenage boy with sandy blonde hair, who transfers to St Chronica’s Academy mid-year. Kodaka manages to immediately get all of his classmates offside through a series of misinterpreted events that make him come across as physically and sexually aggressive. At St Chronica’s he meets Yozora, whom he interrupts mid-conversation with her imaginary, and only, friend. What Kodoka doesn’t know is that he has already met Yozora, but not as he’d recognise her.

Kodaka is generally harmless despite the perception that he’s a bully, while Yozora is a very angry young lady. Having no real friends, she starts the extracurricular Neighbour’s Club, initially with the intention of attracting Kodaka, but soon others begin to join as well. One of the first is Sena the headmaster’s daughter, she is attractive and blonde and therefore the subject of the leering eyes of her male classmates. She’s the token cheesecake, and like Yozora, Sena has no friends of her own.

Sena and Yozora do not get along, with Yozora apparently determined that they never will. In fact, Yozora is outright mean to Sena, giving her the nickname ‘Meat’, which Sena does not mind as she has never had a nickname before, figuring that a bad one is better than none at all. In the beginning their relationship is bearable because there’s the potential for it to get better, however by the end of the season the character of Yozora really begins to grate. She is so unconfident in herself that she needs to bully Sena at every opportunity, while poor Sena takes it, almost thankful for the attention. It’s a real shame, because there are some genuinely enjoyable moments that are destroyed by the relationship between these two.

The rest of the club-members include Kobato, who is Kodaka’s sister and convinced she’s some sort of vampire; Yukimura, Kodaka’s stalker who for some reason thinks she’s a boy; Rika, the super-intelligent science-geek who is actually quite perverse and perverted, and who also has a tendency to speak of herself in the third person; and Maria, the ten-year-old nun responsible for supervising the club.

The first thirteen episodes follow the formation of the club and the various activities they employ to get to know each other better, after all the purpose of the club is to make friends. The final episode is the one that both bothered and interested me the most. The activity for the day is a round-robin story, during which the members take turns writing a page of the story, one after the other. It’s here that Yozora is particularly cruel to Sena, whom she writes into a rape scene. It’s portrayed as though Sena is being attacked and eaten by some fantasy monster, but it is both the idea and hearing Yozora dictate her words that turn the stomach. I know teenage girls can be cruel, but I would have hoped they wouldn’t go writing rape scenes about their supposed friends.

While true of the whole series, this final episode also seems to be the most self-aware and self-deprecating. When it comes to her turn, Rika, who herself has previously spoken of her own rape fantasies, writes an explicit mecha-on-mecha sex scene. When Kodaka points out that the story no longer makes any sense, Rika reminds him and the others that nobody actually cares, just as long as there’s a sex scene in the end.

This, it appears, is exactly what Haganai is about. Nobody cares about what happens in between, as long as there’s some gratuitous wobbly booby shots along the way, and Haganai has a lot. I want to understand anime, I really do, and the more I think about it the more I realise that maybe Haganai is the best place to start when it comes to grown up anime. The characters are clear tropes of Japanese animation, and they know it. The look, feel and plot lines also have (blatant) hints of familiarity, from teenage girls in short skirted school uniforms, video games about relationships and sex, characters believing they are immortals from the underworld, exaggerated wobbly girl-bits (and nudity) and even a mecha-sex scene or two.

However, Haganai is desperately uneven. While not without some funny and almost tender moments, these are often overshadowed by the almost unrelenting nastiness of Yozora. Shame, because at the outset Haganai had potential.

Haganai: Season One Collection is available on DVD and Blu-Ray here through Madman Entertainment. It's rated M and contains sexual references, sexual violence and animated nudity.

-Stevie O'C

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