My Neighbor Totoro Manga

Volume 1

The story opens with older sister Satsuki and younger sister Mei having to move to the countryside while their mother is in the hospital. The place is somewhat run down, but there's lots of flowers and trees nearby, and one really tall tree. Satsuki and Mei open the back of the house and there's a lot of soot there, but it seems to move away.

An old woman visits and says the house has soot sprites. Their father, the old woman and the two sisters get the house cleaned and the furniture moved in. They also meet a neighbor boy, kanta, who's sort of shy.

In a scene that is totally culturally dependent, the father takes a bath with the two girls. In the U.S., this would probably be considered some form of perversion, yet in Japan it's quite normal and not at all connected to anything sexual.

While the father and girls are laughing, the soot sprites leave the house.

Volume 2

They go to visit their mother in the hospital. Satsuki goes off to school. (The scenes of the countryside are all very beautiful).Mei goes out and explores and spies an acorn. (When they first got to the house, they found acorns inside.)

As she explores she finds a small ghost-like creature walking around, and a larger, darker one, carrying a bag of acorns. She follows then to some woods and finds a small rounded tunnel. She keeps following them until she finds a huge tree. She then falls down a hole (like Alice) and finds a third creature, but this one is huge (and sleeping.) All three creatures are totoros. Mei falls asleep on the big one.

When Satsuki gets home from school she goes in search of Mei and finds the tunnel. She finds Mei sleeping in a small clearing. Mei tries to find the tunnel to the tree but can't, but her father says she found one of the spirits of the forest and he believes her. That night, all three totoro are on a tree limb.

Volume 3

Mei joins Satsuki at her school. On the way home they get caught in the rain. Kanta passes by and gives Satsuki his umbrella to use. Later Mei and Satsuki are waiting for their father to come home on the bus. It's raining and they have an umbrella. In a little bit the giant Totoro is standing next to them with a small leaf on his head.

They see a bus coming, but it's not a human's bus; it's a giant cat whose eyes glow. Totoro leaves on the cat bus and in a bit their father arrives on a regular bus. He gives the two girls a gift of acorns.

The girls plant the acorns and one night all three totoro show up and, along with the girls, do a sort of ceremony around the acorns. They get the acorns to start growing and later the group goes to a high branch and sits on it, playing some forms of gourds or something for music.

Delightful.

Volume 4

The girls get a telegram from the hospital. Satsuku runs to phone her father and Mei follows her but gets lost. Satsuki finds her and tells her their mother can't come home that week end as planned, and that gets Mei upset.

Mei leaves later on her own to go to the hospital and give her mother some home-grown corn that she thinks will help heal her mother. Everyone then goes in search of her.

Satsuki then goes to the woods and asks for the tunnel to open, that she needs help finding Mei. It does and she ends up falling on the huge Totoro and tells him what's going on. He agrees to help, lifts her up to the top of the tree and calls for the cat bus.

Satsuki gets in the cat bus and together they find Mei and then go to the hospital. Mei leaves the ear of corn on the window sill. The cat bus then takes them home.

This is a really neat, very, very nice story.


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