Having It Both Ways: Making Children Films an Adult Matter in Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro

Miyazaki Hayao's fourth feature length film, My Neighbor Totoro (1988), became an instant popular and critical success which proved fundamental in establishing both Miyazaki's and the Studio Ghibli's reputation as producers of the finest Japanese animation of the last two decades, a position confirmed by Miyazaki's triumph at the Berlin Film Festival this year. My Neighbor Totoro, like most Miyazaki's films, is centered on the world of children, and usually is marketed and discussed as a children's film. However, the film has also proven extremely successful with the international audience for Japanese animation, one that is characterized by (and often denigrated for) its preference of more mature, or definitively adult, subject matter.