Few animated films have stirred the collective imagination as much as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988). Set in postwar Japan, the movie follows sisters Satsuki and Mei as they move to a new home and encounter the gentle forest spirits who live alongside them. Imbued within every frame is a sense of otherworldly magic, as My Neighbor Totoro combines careful explorations of Shinto symbology and the daily wonders of childhood in rural Japan.
This lot depicts one of the most iconic sequences in animated history. Totoro, balanced on a magic top, whisks the sisters and other through the sky above moonlit forests and pastures. Looking at the cel, one can almost imagine the accompanying score by Hisaishi Joe and the titular character’s exuberant roar.
Lush in its descriptions of the forest and ecologies, the film draws inspiration from the Sayama Hills near where Miyazaki lived. The landscape there is now preserved through the Totoro Forest Trust, a testament to the film’s legacy of environmentalism. My Neighbor Totoro premiered in a double feature alongside another Ghibli classic, Grave of the Fireflies (1988), subject of lot 34 in the present sale.