YMMV / My Neighbor Totoro

• And You Thought It Would Fail: The film was initially rejected by Tokuma Shoten (the former owner of Ghilbi) and by various distributors several times, as they believed that there was no audience for a Slice of Life film with little conflict set in modern rural Japan and starring two little girls and a furry giant. In fact, the reason why the film was paired up with Grave of the Fireflies at the time was to try and use Grave of the Fireflies as a way to help boost the film's success. Unfortunately, it seemed at first like the distributors were right, as the film did poorly in Japanese theaters at the time and had the lowest opening of any Ghibli film. However, despite a rough opening, they would ultimately be proven wrong a year later, as the film would become Vindicated by Cable thanks to it airing on Nippon Television, which gave the film the boost it needed to become one of Ghibli's most widely successful and beloved films today.
• Awesome Music:
  • You must admit that you have at least once walked around humming the mysterious yet mythical "The Path of the Wind". The later re-orchestrated version by Hisashi himself takes it to awe-inspiring heights.
  • The ending theme, Tonari no Totoro, is an incredibly cheerful, upbeat and whimsical song. Joe Hisaishi's orchestral version of the song is also beautifully epic.
• Common Knowledge: Many viewers tend to assume the pre-Disney English dub was done by 20th Century Fox, to the point that it is often referred to as "the Fox dub" by fans. However, the dub was actually done by Streamline Pictures. Fox only distributed its home video release in North America (the 1993 theatrical release was handled by Troma through their 50th St. Films division).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: With all of the fanart and merchandise, you'd think that Catbus was a main character rather than one who only appears in a couple of key scenes. He even got his own short film made exclusively for the Ghibli Museum in Japan.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: A common idea present in Time Skip fanworks is the idea that Satsuki will eventually outgrow Totoro in her later years and dismiss her encounters with him as little more than a childhood fantasy, while Mei will still fully believe in Totoro's existence even as an adult. This, unsurprisingly, tends to cause friction between the two sisters in the fanworks that explore this idea.
• Fanon Welding: Due to the presence of spirits in all three films, some fans like to interpret My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away as all being set in the same world across different periods, with Princess Mononoke taking place in the distant past, My Neighbor Totoro in the middle of the 20th century, and Spirited Away in the early 21st century. It helps that the Soot Sprites are featured in both Totoro and Spirited Away and that Totoro actually started development as an early draft of Princess Mononoke.
• Friendly Fandoms: While the Ghibli fanbase is pretty interconnected overall, there tends to be a particularly close bond between fans of Totoro and fans of Kiki's Delivery Service due to their similar grounded and Slice of Life tones, them being Miyazaki films that were released a year apart from each other (My Neighbor Totoro was released in 1988, and Kiki's Delivery Service was released in 1989), and both being amongst the first Ghibli films to be released and dubbed outside of Japan, leading to a bit of shared nostalgia between the two fanbases.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The film is very popular in the United States thanks to Fox distributing the VHS tape in the United States and Roger Ebert giving it a glowing review. The film is so huge there that it's been referenced in everything from The Powerpuff Girls (1998) to Toy Story 3.
  • 80% of the film's worldwide gross comes from the December 2018 release in mainland China, despite the film having several Direct to Video releases beforehand. Merchandise of Totoro can be found just about anywhere in that country as well, with a good majority of it being unlicensed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The original release of the film was by Troma's 50th St. Films imprint, who would contract out the film's home video release to Fox Video before Disney picked up the film and redubbed it, though they had to wait for Troma and Fox's rights to expire. Interestingly, Disney would purchase pretty much all of 20th Century Fox many years later. After Disney already lost the distribution rights to the film (outside of Japan and China).
• Hype Backlash: While the film is still widely beloved today, there are a portion of viewers who, while not considering it to be bad per-se, find the film to be overrated and/or lacking compared to Ghibli's other films.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The visual◊ of Satsuki with Mei on her back waiting at the bus stop with Totoro is one of the most popular and oft-parodied scenes in all of animated film.
  • My Neighbor Jotaro.^explanationDuring production of the film's English dub, executives considered changing the title and Totoro's name to a more American-sounding one, with one of the suggestions being My Neighbor Joe Toro. Since this sounds like Jotaro's name, people started making jokes about replacing Totoro with Jotaro, or drawing Totoro wearing Jotaro's iconic hat.
  • Going with the fact that the film originally premiered as a Double Feature with the depressing Grave of the Fireflies, people have been calling this double feature "the original Barbenheimer".
• Once Original, Now Common: My Neighbor Totoro was a very bold film back in 1988, to the point that distributors and Tokuma Shoten were initially unconfident in the film's success, as a grounded Slice of Life animated film set in modern Japan with little conflict was an unusual and risky idea in the then-action obsessed Japanese film industry at the time. Nowadays, while the film is still regarded as a classic, it's easy to look at the film and its simplistic plot and characters as being quaint and lacking compared to Ghibli's later films and the plethora of Slice of Life animated films that have come out since Totoro.
• Retroactive Recognition: In the Streamline dub, Cheryl Chase, who would later play Angelica, voices Mei.
• Ron the Death Eater: In the film, Totoro is shown to be a harmless, if boisterous creature who is very friendly and helpful to Satsuki and Mei. However, there are plenty of fan theories and fan art that depict Totoro as a "death god" or as a monstrous creature that actively harms and eats people. Humorously enough, as a Secret Test of Character, Hayao Miyazaki himself would play with the idea during a job interview with a group of job applicants by once describing Totoro as a "terrible creature" who was only nice to Mei and Satsuki due to being unhungry at the time.^note As one job applicant (future anime director Kenji Itoso) states, Totoro's teeth are flat molars meant for grinding grass, making him a herbivore who couldn't eat Satsuki and Mei. According to him, he was the only one to pass that Secret Test of Character (with the lesson being to think for yourself).
• Signature Scene: The scene where Satsuki, Mei, and Totoro are waiting at the bus stop. There are many parodies of this scene and it's been used as the DVD cover at least once.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: There's no real unanimous agreement over which is the best way to see the film: with the Japanese version, the Troma/Fox/Streamline dub, or the Disney English dub? As with most hotly debated dubs, you'll have to decide for yourself. Of course, plenty of people just Take a Third Option and come to the conclusion that all three versions are good on their own merits.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans' reaction to the Disney dub, even though critics greeted it with favorable reviews. Also doubles as Critical Dissonance. That said, some fans have argued that both dubs have their merits and that either is an acceptable way to view the film.

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