<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/664/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/556/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/600/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/664/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/700/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/07/03/0/0/1600/887/800/0/75/0/46fae72_1688389372842-5336017-jpg-r-1920-1080-f-jpg-q-x-xxyxx.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="The storm scene in Hayao Miyazaki's " my="" neighbor="" totoro"="" (1988)."="" width="100%" height="auto">
The scene only lasts 10 minutes, out of a film that runs for one hour and 27 minutes − but it's a cinematic moment that stays with you forever. In Hayao Miyazaki's feature film My Neighbor Totoro, released in Japan in 1988 and then in France 11 years later, the storm scene is an iconic moment in animated films. Its images are featured on a whole range of merchandising products – mugs, tote bags, bucket hats and t-shirts – showing the large, furry, clawed plush imagined by the Japanese animator, holding an umbrella under which he tries to protect himself from the rain, alongside the film's two other main characters: little Mei and her big sister Satsuki.
Let's take a look at the story behind My Neighbor Totoro, a hymn to nature and childhood, Miyazaki's fourth feature film. The filmmaker (whose latest film The Boy and the Heron was released in Japan on Friday, July 14) hand-drew the masterpiece with his Studio Ghibli team. It is set in the 1950s, during the period of the filmmaker's youth (he was born in 1941). With their mother hospitalized, these two girls and their father move from their Tokyo apartment to a house in the countryside.
For the two sisters, it's a new world − a luxuriant vegetation inhabited by unknown creatures, guardians of the forest invisible to adults, whom they quickly integrate into their daydreams. Starting with the most imposing of them all: a chimera that's half-cat and half-panda, with tender eyes and a chubby belly, that Mei discovers one day when she loses her way in the woods, and who meets Satsuki one rainy evening as the girls wait for their father at a bus stop.
It's at this point that the elements begin to rage. A dark night falls on the countryside, a violent wind shakes the trees, and torrents of water pour down on the girls. This is when the figure of Totoro appears, Mei's name for her new friend. As they wait for the bus, the film shifts into a fantastical realm.
Rain imprints itself on the image, covered with fine white stripes. It's the same on the soundtrack, which is filled with water, conveyed with remarkably realistic precision. The plip-plop of the drops falling on Totoro's nose, the flip-flop of the rubber boots in the puddles, the bim-bim of the downpour on the umbrellas – all noises that seem to delight the hairy hero, whose joy rubs off on the little girls, comforted by his presence.
This magical scene closes with Totoro's departure in an extraordinary cat bus, whose beady eyes make the raindrops sparkle. Then the last drop falls, its plop marking the arrival of their father getting off the bus, and the return to the real world, set to the music of Joe Hisaishi. The storm scene will be remembered as a moment suspended out of time, experienced by these two girls, who alone have access to the imaginary world of childhood.