I just watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time. That’s ridiculous, for a number of reasons: I’ve seen, and loved, other movies by Hayao Miyazaki; this is one of a number of Totoroesque posts here, although the previous ones refer to the Totoro Forest Project.
I watched it with my kids: Maddie, who is 4 (and three quarters) and Max, who is 2. They were entranced, although Maddie was also upset. The mother of the two little girls in the movie is in hospital. Maddie’s mother was at work, in the Longwood medical center. But when you’re 4, and watching a movie in which a 4-yo gets lost on the way to the hospital where her mother is… Next time we watch Totoro, we should do so all together.
Anyway, come with me to a rainy bus stop, where two girls waiting for their father are joined by Big Totoro, see the bus that Totoro catches, and stay until the end of the clip for a little context.
By the way, even in this 6-minute scene, I notice differences between the subtitles in this version, and the soundtrack of the DVD. The DVD in question is the 2006 Disney version; there’s some debate (e.g., among the reviewers at Amazon) about the (de)merits of the different DVD editions.