The Words Don’t Really Matter

Before 1988, Hayao Miyazaki had typically imagined fantastic worlds, but My Neighbor Totoro—which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, having recently been canonized as the highest-ranking animated title on Sight and Sound’s 2022 poll of the best films of all time—was conceived in a semi-autobiographical vein. The film is set in a lovingly realized recreation of the rural city of Tokorozawa, where Miyazaki lived with his wife in the 1960s—but the mind’s-eye image that inspired the filmmaker is something more mysterious: a young girl waiting for a bus in the rain, looking out of the corner of her eye and realizing she is not alone.